Ebony's Fable

At the end of the day, Uncle Wu clasped his left fist over his right and bowed. "As expected from one of the Shi Clan….it is my loss, senior."

"You didn't exert any strength." Be it physical or mental, Ebony wasn't blind enough to overlook the lack of any sort of exertion on his opponent's end.

"Just a friendly training, you've picked up all I was trying to show. I see no point smashing a young boy into the ground with stats when you achieved what you needed in skill."

"Mmm." That was fair enough. Other than augmentations that may allow Uncle Wu to out-stat him, in terms of skill and combat ability, Uncle Wu did not stand a chance.

The 3-day learning session with Uncle Wu left him a little dissatisfied, but this method of learning was also fresh. It ended without any sort of pain or massive undertaking. Yet the chances he had against the Spirit Possession Emperor probably increased noticeably.

The odd way spirits manifested physical bodies out of nowhere should not catch him unaware any more. Sequester should have a better chance at hiding from the man's various perception types from all his summons and tamed spirit creatures he carries around.

Since the two Emperors weren't back, he focused on his skill refinement. Especially with solidifying the usage of internal gravity enhancement.

'I need a concentrated volume of gravity mana so that my external spells aren't affected. I can create mountains' worth of ice for gravity mana, but carrying them around would not be realistic for now. Storing them in my bracelet would have to do for now.' This still required him to summon the ice he had conjured out of his storage. He couldn't just extract the gravity mana out of his bracelet and leave the mass of ice within. The connection would destabilise and the internal space of the construct would get damaged.

Not to mention, this method of extracting gravity mana was slow.

He didn't mind summoning an entire mountain range every time he needed to fight, but there were situations where he couldn't do that or induce a weakness for himself. A good spell or strong warrior can simple disintegrate his ice, turning mass into heat, sound, light and an ocean of mana. Completely disturbing any internal spell he would use with gravity mana.

In the end, his easiest solution was the gravity cube. He needed to go back to Teheil to get more.

He posted a notice for his Numbers. He received a taker almost immediately.

"Five. You want to go to Teheil yourself? The risk is high." Ebony called out to the mission taker.

"I actually just want the promised 50,000 points of Will. I don't think my ice body can store anywhere close to that much. How big a crystal would I need to hold that much Will?" Five replied honestly.

"I have a better idea." Ebony said but he already transmitted his idea by Will.

"…I like the sound of that. Tell me."

"Hang on." Ebony paused his communication with Five and looked for Uncle Wu. "Uncle, is there an Intent user you know?"

"Intent user, just go to butcher Pang. He saw him peddling meat and bones, haven't you?"

"Mmm, thank you." Butcher Pang was the village merchant for meat. His hunts used to be unknown. Now Ebony knew they did not come from Elcra at all. The Butcher would wave his knife in the sky from time to time. He had assumed the man was performing and brandishing his knife-handling skills in the past.

Now, Ebony saw these casual swings in the air as an attack.

As for what the man was attacking, Ebony still didn't know.

"Butcher Pang."

"I heard you call. What do you want? Had enough fish from Ah Wu, didn't you? What meats are you looking for?"

"Meat…I have it right in front of you." Ebony contemplated the word.

"What are you talking about Senior Shi?" Butcher Pang had a face full of untrimmed and untidy facial hair. He was a man with a large upper body and wore a robe with an almost fully displayed chest.

"Please chop some of me out." Ebony clarified as if his words were clear to any listener.

"…Yall are incomprehensible."

"Please use intent and chop off some of my flesh with mana chassis, make sure I can't regenerate from my mana anymore."

"…where do you want me to chop off?"

"Hmm…." A pouting and angry face suddenly flooded his mindspace. "My hair?"

"I'm not a hairdresser, go down the street and look for Cui. Be polite and…be careful."

Ebony then left and the Butcher continued to relax in his chair, whistling and forgetting Ebony even talked to him. His knife continued to dance in his hand. If there was any indicator of strength, it was that the knife had thick intent imbue within it.

Ebony knew who the butcher was referring to the instant he walked down the street. An open shophouse not to dissimilar with Kong Jing's aunt's tailor was out here. Excluded from Ebony's mana senses not by spatial shenanigans but blocked by another person's life force.

"Haircut?" The lady called Cui held a pair of scissors as if telling him she was the barber of the village.

"Haircut." Ebony walked past the life force bubble and almost drowned in Intent.

She was the most bloodthirsty of the Xengs he'd seen in this village and in Sky's Edge. In terms of volume, it made Xin's Intent feel cute. In terms of killing intent, Cui was number one by a long shot on Ebony's list of killing intent perceived. And she wasn't even aiming it at him.

She didn't even lack sharpness in her intent. More importantly, she was an old lady. Actually wrinkling old lady. 1.5 metres in height and skinny. Dressed in a worn-out brown dress without any decorations or Clan Emblem. Her hair, loose and untied. Unmasked.

Married, and lost her husband.

Not wearing her mask and her untied hair already told him this information.

She stopped evolving on purpose to age.

There was only one chair in the empty storefront. No mirrors, furniture. Nothing.

One dishevelled woman with a pair of scissors standing here for an unknown length of time, and one empty chair.

Ebony only had one thought in the moment and he spoke it out loud. "I don't fit in that chair." The chair was made for the smaller-framed Xengs in mind, not his large self.

"Sit your ass down." The old lady was behind him and nudged him onto the wooden chair. Instead of having his butt sitting on the armrest, the chair expanded.

He didn't even have to reduce his weight gravitationally and the chair could hold him.

The wooden chair could spin. It had a round bottom and did not stand on four legs.

She spun him around to face her after seating him down.

Then they exchanged eye contact as she tried to scan his face and hair.

In that moment, their heads both jerked back in tandem.

"Kid….you're lucky this old lady learned some self-control recently."

It was like they both tried to kill each other tens of thousands of times in that instant they shared eye contact.

Ebony held the twelve red blades around his neck and pushed them away with 12 conjured ice hands. It was unbelievable that she made his body react to mere killing intent. The instant he jerked back, she already placed one of these red energy blades behind his neck. Manifested life force filled with Intent. It was like mana solidified but with life force, far harder to do so as life force's physical nature was weaker than mana.

"My only customers are single."

"I'll give us a reason." Ebony thought that Cui was afraid his wife would be angry that he let some other woman touch his hair. And this was their culture, so he ignored the red life force blades and stood up. "Sever my chassis too, I want it to regenerate separately from me."

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Snip.

Snip.

Cui had crossed arms and her sharp scissors scraped against each other.

A gust of wind blew his face and a fist was in his face. "Your wife better not come looking for me."

Ebony held the bundle of hair she dropped into his hands from her fist. Nicely tied up.

'I barely saw a flash,' Ebony had been overwhelmed by speed before, but this was something else altogether. His hair was far more receptive to his Will than a crystal but this wasn't going to be enough.

Teheil was a parasitic Worldcore that could even drain him dry of mana. Sending a mana construct over was suicidal. Five would be on a timed mission.

He would have to be made completely out of coagulated mana. Now that he evolved, his coagulated mana should be even harder for the parasitic Worldcore to break down and absorb.

Then, he needed to prepare an escape route for Five. Booking a flight months to years in advance wasn't going to cut it.

Ebony wasn't even sure if Nebula Watch under took Teheil since there were supposedly invader Saints there but he had never seen them. Putting aside the Saints, even the Emperors were a problem for an Apparition. When Ebony moved around, he hadn't been taken seriously enough for the strong people to hunt him down. But he was also just about the only person who could use mana to a degree, and was a massive advantage compared to warriors that couldn't even enhance themselves unless they were vitality-focused.

Being shooed away by someone he guessed already fully filled her repertoire with Tier 6 skills. He returned to Butcher Pang who helped bleed him out without any aggression.

Now Ebony had a quarter of his blood that wouldn't regenerate within his body until he took it back.

Ebony froze his blood in an orb around the bundle of hair. Now his Apparition was a proper golem with a core.

While Five hibernated, Ebony window shopped through Hex. It didn't take long. The numbers on the mental screen representing monetary price didn't mean much.

Flipping through the manual he received in advance after placing his purchase, he injected the information to Five alone. Now, Five should be pilot-worthy of a spaceship in theory.

In practice, the Apparition will have to figure things out himself.

Over the next weeks, Five was the sole beneficiary of receiving a blood core with an immense amount of Will that would've been amazing for Dusk instead.

A small shuttle was resting on the banks of the massive lake. Five's personal shuttle. It was very….primitive.

It might as well be a simple pod that had thrusters powered by mana and made for deliveries and transportation rather than a habitable transportation for people. Because it was indeed a delivery pod. The simpler, the fewer chances of messing up with unknown technology. Apparitions didn't exactly need a luxury ship. The fact that it was so simple and small made it far cheaper as well, no loans required.

"Gravity cube too? The risk of loss is great." Five cocked his head.

"If you're in space and lack bodies of mass, you can't exactly bring out mountains of ice safely." Ebony obviously procured another bracelet for Five, even if it's just for spatial storage. Within the spatial storage were mounds of ice, a mana storage, gravity mana storage stored in a spatial storage rather than direct ice mana ores. Sadly, only about 1% of the ice mana storage was made of coagulated mana since that was much slower to generate but it should be more than sufficient to keep Five in operation for a month. If Teheil hasn't changed, and his simulations were accurate regarding the strength of the absorption and the resilience and stability of his new mana.

Five set off before Veronica returned.

Hector arrived before she did. Horizontally.

"Mallory. Can he not wake up?" Ebony tried to ask in concern and only managed to change his tone to a question.

"No….and Great-grandmother still hasn't been found." The Crown Princess elegantly bowed to all the Xengs she walked passed.

"Ebony." Navin dropped in from the skies right after he greeted and invited Mallory in.

"Navin."

"Do you have any news…."

"She's not anywhere within my network. Could be hidden well enough to hide from my scans, or the few places I don't have access to." Navin probably knew he meant the Elven Domain, the depths of the forbidden lands and so on.

"…."

"That's not why you're here, are you?" Ebony got straight to the point.

"No. Let's spar. I want to know how far I am from talent." Navin shook his head, receiving an answer he expected. The Empire had Seers. They likely had a better chance of finding someone than Ebony.

"Lets." Ebony couldn't hope for more.

What a good day it is to have the King knock on his door to ask for a spar out of nowhere.

"You….how are you level 581 already?" Navin changed the subject.

"As much as I hate to say, Potential." The current rate of leveling had him believe he required a hundred times less experience to level compared to most Kings on Elcra.

Navin was a pure mage through and through. He did not go into flight, knowing that would increase the angles and direction he could be hit from, and stayed on the ground.

The initial bombardment of enflamed projectiles was just a test and confirmation of Nvain's reflexive mana that protected him before that man could even manipulate mana, and that in terms of defensive spells, the Barrier King was not afraid of any competition.

Ebony had seen a Lord family member in action before and already guessed that they had a 'Reflexive mana speed' fortification of sorts. At the ranks of a King, that was a 1000% Fortification or a 11 times multiplier.

'His Will is in the midst of being birthed and manifested, but still too early.' Navin was a short distance away from becoming a beginner Domain mage. Since he was around 200 years old, that was already very fast for Elcrians.

Ebony had surprisingly set up his mana wires a step slower than Navin's triangular arcane barriers that he used to maintain spatial control. It was sharp, meant to cut. translucent but made of mana too thick and reflected some light in rainbow hues from time to time. If he could calculate the angle of light and other people's gaze and focal sight, he could probably do the same thing as Ebony with ice by refracting light in just the right way.

'Sharp…' Ebony's makeshift wired robe was sliced the instant it came into contact with these barriers that attempted to flood his surroundings. It was resilient against Dusk's control to some degree.

More importantly, gravity mana was passing through the arcane construct and was unable to weigh them down by even 1% of their usual effectiveness.

Ebony was aware that due to him, the Eclispe Guards took into account gravitational stealth. There were a couple of dwarven families that used gravity magic, but almost none of them were gravity mages or combatants in general. They used it for construction and crafts more so than fighting.

Was it a natural property of his mana, a conscious technique or a fortification?

Sonic blows expectedly didn't work. He was once told his sonic usage was a copy of Oplot's Impact Staff Style. As Oplot's old party member and an arcane mage himself, Navin was more than familiar with vibrational attacks.

The Barrier King simply didn't expect the freezing to be so intense that Ebony could stop the man's control over his own barriers. Within Dusk's range, Ebony had the advantage in conjuring his spells and quickly flooded the triangular sheets of barriers with wires, then burst into seemingly endless flames. The sheer volume of mana was causing his barriers to be under Ebony's wire control.

Navin dispersed them before Dusk could gather the barriers into a large protective sheet for themselves, and was pushed to keep his arcane spells closer and more personal.

'How far do I have to push him before he starts using curse magic?' He was patiently hoping to experience curse magic to get good data for his runic branding.

Ebony saw the new construct coming a mile away and Flickered to the cylindrical barrier. 'A cannon?'

Navin was unwilling to overreach his mana reserves, allowing Ebony to seal it regardless of whether he could or could not break the barriers. As far as he could tell, it was unbreakable to any levels of physical force he could exert till he was fully augmented with Will.

Ebony limited a lot of tactics and spells Navin used during his fight against the ex-Elcrian noble who returned as an Emperor. The mage required spatial dominance, laying traps of his barriers for reflective offence, bouncing arcane projectiles around his own barriers, stopping any instant conjuration of prisons, pushing back the conjuration range of two wall-like barriers that could crush his target in the centre.

He was left with using arcane weaponry not unlike Ebony's arsenal of ice weapons, but mostly his sharp, triangular sheets, and a massive weighty hammer to crush. Navin's ranged projectiles with shrapnel enhancement didn't face any success after Dusk helped Ebony with speedy scale shield construction.

Navin had the slightest advantage with casting speed. And that was rather shocking, considering Dusk increased his casting speed.

Was Ebony's mind so slow? He'd never thought he would lose in casting speed to another King. Still, he outclassed Navin in multicasting by an incomparable degree, which led to Ebony having a magical offensive advantage for once with numerous more Armament conjurations and jets of ice-cold flames.

A lineage of arcane mages didn't mess around with specialisation. They were born for it. Not a single warrior's bone in his body.

When Ebony decided to charge in, Navin fully relied on magic to deter him. He didn't move a muscle.

Navin's main weapon was a small wand that he whipped out. Ebony didn't even see him use it against the Emperor.

A pitch black obsidian wand.

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Eye Rot - Vision clarity reduced by 0.58%'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Nerve Decay - Reaction speed decreased by 0.23%'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Muscular Degeneration - Strength and Constitution decrease by 3 per hour.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Shatter Tenacity - Endurance decrease by 5 per hour'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Blood Chill - Energy conversion rate decreased by 0.02%'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Hollow Pulse - Vitality regeneration reduced by 100%.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Blighted Veins - Vitality degeneration increased by 0.01% per minute.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Thought Erosion - Cognitive speed and accuracy reduced by 0.00%'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Mind Splinter - Focus stability reduced by 0.00%'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Ash Fever - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Pale Fever - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Arcane Burn - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Arcane Silence- Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Arcane Fever - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Arcane Erosion - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Arcane Degeneration - Unknown.'

'Ting' 'You've been inflicted with Curse of Regression - Unknown.''

Navin was finally willing to communicate with him.