Ebony's Fable

Five flexed his fingers.

It was unfamiliar.

The same icy conjured body.

Extremely different sensations.

It felt like it was actually his. It felt like he truly had a body, not a make-up of the ice element.

Although he was aware he did not have any bits of soul, it felt all the same with the blood orb holding Ebony's hair and mana chassis. Still, Five did not spread the blood throughout his icy body and kept it as a core. He was even more like a golem now.

Having a bit of Ebony's mana chassis meant he was capable of mana regeneration, taking away from Ebony's true body and mana regeneration by a small fraction. About 0.05%.

Despite having nearly a quarter of Ebony's blood, the mana regeneration they had was much lower. Not having a brain connected probably mattered and they weren't sure if distance from their source of mental power would affect their mana chassis's mana regeneration.

Despite having mana chassis throughout his body, the largest density of mana chassis was in the brain. Ebony did not ask anyone to use Intent to separate his brain.

This should be enough to survive Teheil's parasitic Worldcore. His current body was condensed completely of coagulated mana, giving him the stability to resist the mana absorption of Teheil to some degree. It would depend heavily on the area of Teheil he needed to pass through. In areas of greater Cushioning, the mana absorption was more intense.

Back when Ebony and Xin were here, they had passed through the Altarbound Kin's curtain that protected them from the invaders, which was rated level 6 to 8 cushioning and the worldcore was known to have areas with Cushioning force that exceeded 20 on this scale.

A part of him felt like the Saints of various forces were hiding, treasure hunting or maybe even training in these areas.

Even Sophia couldn't find out what was the current situation of this worldcore. Ships and people both had trouble moving in and out. Not to mention, it was Sectors away and at war.

'I wonder how strong all of them really are outside Teheil.' The Parasitic Worldcore heavily weakened fighters, be it the incredibly high gravity or the constant suction of mana. If a person couldn't adapt and stop their body from naturally regenerating mana like Ebony could, they would constantly be mentally and physically drained.

The resources the Worldcore produces were so abundant for that reason. It was practically a world-sized Dungeon, without the negatives of a dungeon, such as tainted essence of spawned flesh or vegetation.

Making natural, farmed food and ingredients for alchemy be 'clean' and free of impure essence. Not to mention, the Cushioning force was a massive academic study and point of research. It would be an extremely good defence mechanism for many territories if they could copy it with magical or maybe even scientific technology.

'I'm not looking forward to seeing the Altarbound Kin. Guess I'll try to stealth my way underground and check what's going on with them since they are a source of power for Scarlet.'

Five fumbled around the one-man ship.

The manual he was given was unshockingly not very helpful for practical driving. He almost smashed into a meteorite on multiple occasions and had to use the gravity cube's mana to adjust themselves while also repelling the meteor. While this ship had some basic mana shield for space dust and small particles, it wouldn't protect them from smashing into a meteorite of unknown hardness and durability.

Other than control of his vehicle, he didn't really come across any spatial threat. Nothing dramatic afoot with a monster-repellent charm fitted and swapped every 6 hours.

Worked like a charm.

The power of money was truly underutilised by Ebony. Each monster repellent Ancient ranked charm only costs...Five didn't even know. Ebony had found it irrelevant to give him that information.

When Five finally got the hang of it and the wondrous autopilot function was discovered, he hibernated for months except for a subconscious swapping of charms. This one-man ship was slow compared to Kong Jing's spatial magic.

Anyway, he counted himself lucky that he woke up in one piece, and so was his vessel.

'Not at Teheil yet….I see, ran out of charms.' He had to go the rest of the way semiawake, slightly increasing the consumption of Will. His lifespan now that he was out and alone was how much Will he had. Far from Ebony and not within their network.

He was closer to Cinderash than Elcra now that he should be in Teheil's Sector. If he had a chance and spare Will, he might get close enough to sense Aegis and send them packets of Will to help them survive longer. At this time, their hibernation should be much better at preserving Will compared to the first time Dusk was left disconnected. They could only hope no one could sense and mess with Will on Cinderash.

Leaving his blood and hair core inside the ship, Five touched the wall surface and seeped his icy mana through every gap and melded out of the ship and its mana barrier.

He stood out in space, blind. No large bodies of gravitational waves to give him sight, and not even vibrations as the ship under his feet suppressed all vibrations within the mana barrier.

Dragging gravity mana from the cube Ebony gave him, he pulsed the mana outwards as far as he could to gain a scan of the surroundings.

'Dust and a few floating rocks.' Gravity mana, once out of a mage's mental control, always finds its way back to their origin of mass.

Five didn't have to recover it as the gravity cube would go back to normal by itself.

Generating Scout Pigeons connected by a thick wire 1/10,000,000th of Spine in runic layering, he repacked gravity mana within the Pigeon and their wires to expand his perception and network.

'I think I'm on track.' It took 3 days for him to confidently assure himself that he didn't get lost and the coordinates he keyed into autopilot were not wrong. Travelling through space was quite a hassle without proper perception.

He was slowed down by the stingray with a weird and long tail it dragged around. Five had only managed to put it down after it stabbed a hole in his ship's hull.

Whatever the stingray was capable of, it was preventing Five from removing the stingray from the ship's hull. Now he had to drag it around. Its tail seemed to have spatially bound itself with his ship, when he tried to cut the tail, his sharpened arm just slid through the tail.

Even dead, the stingray had a body with spatial properties. Five couldn't justify using a ton of Will to try to copy Intent and cut this creature off for good. As far as he could tell, the ship was still moving fine and only had to drag around an additional ton of weight, nothing to worry about as long as he consistently used gravity magic to drag the creature towards them.

He got lucky.

Ice and arcane sound seemed to pass through the stingray's body. Stuffing a Gravity Vortex down its throat had managed to deal damage. The stringray's belly merely bloated, but its body didn't tear when he released the vortex in an outward blast.

Ignoring the fact that his icy body was completely erased when he stuffed the vortex down as the stingray absorbed his whole body, it was an easy hunt. Except he needed to generate a new body within his single-man vessel. He had better keep his blood orb core safe.

'Only a level 580 King. Space creatures are pretty intimidating.'

One of his Scout Pigeons suddenly got dragged, and the connection instantly cut when the wire was torn at the forceful drag.

He arrived.

Teheil's gravitational storms tugged at his Scout Pigeon. The wire cut itself to prevent it from dragging onto the rest of Five's moving network.

The mana drain of the parasitic worldcore was stronger than he recalled, if it was dragging mana from outside its atmosphere. Yet that could be due to the ongoing storm.

'Crud, I'm not all that good at stealth.' Five didn't regret it, but Teheil was at war for resources. This place was under lockdown.

He found them, they found him.

He considered his options, covered himself around his core and abandoned his ship as fast as he could, but he hid the gravity cube in his spatial storage. 'Humans.' The one who fired an entire beam of laser, unprompted, was the humans.

It seemed like he found his way in their spatial territory. This was better than if he were found by the Cinderash.

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As far as he was aware, the Ferroquad did not hold any territory around Teheil in space. Their invasion were always forceful, but they didn't have the technology or money to hold an outpost in space. Every time they sent reinforcements to the Worldcore, they basically have to charge through either the humans or the Cinderashian spatial territory.

'Simple heat weapons and no mana? That's quite a lot of power for an energy beam.' Five didn't spend any more time figuring this out and fired back. Gravity tunnel propelled his icy projectile back where the attack had come from, latching onto the icy beam Five reconjured himself onto the target once he came into contact with metal.

'No barrier of mana at all, that was easy.' He only had trouble slipping his core from their target sight.

The ship was a body of mass and gravity. He found the person with killing intent and Flickered through everyone's perception. Sharping an edge around his hand, he sliced down once he was right behind the aggressor.

Alarms were already blaring, the vibrations knocking against every metal and non-metal surface to give Five a better scan of where he was without exposing his invisible self by pumping mana outwards.

'Quite a few Emperors on board and much stronger than whoever Ebony challenged on Teheil. Ah, probably because they can still use mana here.' Five cannot fully believe Ebony's memories of his time in Teheil due to the lack of mana. The people there may be a lot stronger the moment they left Teheil.

He was itching to fight them, but he held back from exposing himself. At least not till he had assured that he could complete the mission of picking up more gravity cubes from Teheil and have a route back to Elcra.

He churned the gravity mana throughout the outpost to disturb their floating butts and left the ship, chasing the blood and hair core that was already being dragged into the gravitational storm. He'd never brought the core onto the outpost to begin with.

'That's not good.' The mana drain was way stronger than it should be. Fully hiding his Will within the blood orb, their coagulated mana was quickly being pecked at, torn out and broken down for the parasitic Worldcore

Five did their best to find a workable countermeasure.

Gravity mana was aplenty, but the gravitational storm was strong enough to drag away control of gravity mana from him.

'I'm falling right into a region of Cushioning. Am I near the Altarbound Kin?' That would be convenient. He wouldn't have to deal with Cinderashians or humans.

Ferroquads were the least problematic for Five. They were quite like Beastmen, reasonable enough when bigger muscles met smaller muscles. Five was not a human either so he wouldn't get outright attacked.

'I got eaten again, didn't I?' Five had felt the calming of the gravitational storm when he entered the region of Cushioning since strong Cushioned areas were generally free from any mana-based environmental effects. Yet he hadn't even hit the ground before he felt his core enveloped.

What were the odds?

There weren't even many wild monsters in this place.

Though to be fair, monsters could only live in Golden Fields or regions of Cushioning since the rest of the Worldcore is completely barren of any resource or living creatures for food.

This creature's internals exerted condensed Cushioning, an oobleck-like force for both kinetic force and mana. When he did use mana, it was absorbed. It was much stronger than the Cushioning curtain that separated the Altarbound Kin from the rest of the invaders.

Five… waited to be excreted when he found out that forcing his way through was wasteful.

This was truly the worst place for a being of mana.

Even after freeing himself, Five was lost. Conjuring a bunch of Scout Pigeons that could survive long enough to scout was going to be extremely wasteful, even more so in the Cushioned region.

'Should I drill underground and find my way just by gravitational perception range? That might take too long, and I'll die before I find anything. I need a landmark.' Five truly hoped he landed on the continent where the invaders and the Altarbound Kin were.

He actually didn't even know if this place had a sea or large bodies of water.

'I can't rule out that there aren't any Golden Fields or any other places producing gravity cubes.' Finding the Altarbound Kin was top priority since it was the known location of an almost Legendary-rarity gravity cube being formed.

Within the Cushioned area was pure darkness. Not that light would've made a difference for Five, but his perception was still useless.

In every direction was emptiness, other than the creature that excreted him out because his core couldn't be digested so easily. And even that creature was burrowing down. The entirety of his gravitational perception was showing him flat lands, not even a rock could be found. Only dead earth in every direction for as far as he could sense.

This might be how Xin felt navigating this place.

'Going high put me back into the storm.' Unlike Ebony, going high wouldn't help his sight either. Five and all the Numbers didn't have traditional sight. They wouldn't be able to see far and wide.

Staying on the ground lets him 'see' further horizontally since mental perception and control extended spherically with the caster at the centre. Five had a mental reach of over a thousand kilometres. Even with a dastardly amount of Will, this distance was shorter than Ebony's.

It wouldn't matter on Elcra or anywhere with their network, as their entire network is their perception range. Teheil has no network, and Scout Pigeons cannot be activated without significant loss. If his blood core regenerated enough, it would've been fine but in this Cushioned region, Five was dying. Mana regenerates more slowly than he was absorbed by the planet. He had to leave as fast as possible.

'That is the fastest way….' He spent an hour creating a 1/1,000,000th Spine of an orb around his core before he Flickered through the Cushioning and went back into the gravitational storm.

He should've started strengthening a shield around his blood core while travelling. That was thoughtless of Five.

From now on, a small portion of his capacity consistently increased the durability of the shell casing on his blood core. It would never reach the same state as Spine since it lacked the size and the shape was slightly different. Neither does he have endless mental processing power to copy Dusk's runic operations. But, he should be able to get it 20 to 30 times tougher than its current state over the next few days.

Five didn't really like it, but he combatted the storm for gravitational control. It was practically hopeless. Will's mental processing capabilities weren't proportional, and his manipulation was not equal to Ebony. Not that it seemed to matter, this storm was unnatural.

Its been quite a long time since he didn't know which way was up and which was down with it being out of his control, he was but a leaf in the wind. Five did what Ebony could never and stopped resisting, stopped taking this as training and simply held its core tightly.

He was on a known timeline, any additional expenditure would shorten his life. There was no reason to fight the storm when he was trying to let it take him out of this place.

'Is this what nauseousness feels like?' Five felt the world of vibrations and gravity mana spin and sweep him around for hours on end. Days.

Soft ground finally greeted him after the moon told him over a week had passed. How did he see the moon?

He didn't need to. Surprise surprise, they did not need sight for the Lunar Bioclock to work. Five recorded the strong possibility that they had a natural affinity to Lunar energy.

He was deficient in both mana and Will the entire time, so it would've been bad if it lasted any longer.

Out of the storm, and very forutantely also out of an area of blackout levels of Cushioning Five, found movement all around him.

Almost too much movement.

'What a turn of events.'

"What do we have here?" The gruff voice encased his large hands over Five's entire core. Speaking Gia, Five was completely encased in Aether.

The number of people with proper aether usage on Cinderash could be counted under 3 digits. Aether Sorcery was something of a lost art on the Cinderash.

'Not any of the Boiler Knights as expected, but similar aura. King.' Five was more than aware of the Cinderashians. He was given such memories for obvious reasons. 'Capable of using Aether even on Teheil...Ebony didn't find a single one of them during his time here and I landed right into one's hands?'

'Can't leak or conjure mana outside the aether shell.' Five waited no longer and blasted himself out, instantly conjuring a thin ice body.

While the person who held him was clearly shocked, he also got into a combat position by reflex. These mana-less Cinderashians were built for close combat and did not lack reflexes, even going for a forward lunge before Five fully formed.

Five could almost sense the flash of steel coming but didn't move away. The steel weapon clanged on his shoulder, digging a centimetre deep before freezing shut. He sent mana down the blade but it didn't get all the way to the man's arms before the metallic blade heated up. Aether-lava-based infusion.

The Cinderash made a secondary lunge with the hind leg and pushed for a palm to Five's face with a glowing gauntlet. Yet Five was swifter and made the same lunge to palm strike the helmet, overpowering the unknown fighter. Suppressing the full-plate armoured Cinderash on the ground, Five froze his legs and repeated blasted frostflames throughout all contact points while he sat on the knight and palmed him to the ground.

'What great resistance. He's not just any soldier. Cinderashian soldiers don't wear full plate…only the Boiler Knights do. A son or descendant of one of the Boiler Knights?' Five tripled down on icy output at the thought that this man had the legacy of any one of the Boiler Knights.

Even after tripling down, the Aether inside the warrior seem to have grown stronger in resistance.

Five's free hand formed a knife hand and Crystalline Avalanche aimed to decapitate the man before any swift counters could be formed against him.

It was rare to hear a clang, for them to fail to slice through metal like that. Using the entirety of his gravity cube's mana, he drove his knife arm and sliced the very earth under the warrior. Without a magic body on Teheil, Five conjured a pillar of ice and drove it into the warrior's chest after the decapitation.

As a Number, he receives no notifications. Only Ebony would. Now that he was disconnected from Ebony, he had to be sure.

All sorts of spears and railgun-like projectiles spiked Five's body. But unlike the warrior he decapitated, none had mana or aether within them. Five had created holes in his body at every contact point, saving the mana to reconjure damaged parts.

'Big camp,' Five held onto the frozen head, unwilling to let it go. Shockingly, he was unable to destroy the head any further. Not only that, the chest also suddenly got covered in a shell. Some high-level craft, possibly Saint-made with Aether sorcery, protected the man from dying.

To begin with, Kings don't die by decapitation for minutes, even for baseline humans, excluding an ongoing attack. Five sensed the very gradual weakening of the aether. He nodded. This item was likely not able to withstand Teheil's absorption either. The man's item had a time limit before it ran dry.

Five breathed in the vibrations, the yells, the words.

The outcry.

The fear.

The information.

'So, they know Ebony. That means Mr Guru or Gearhart was forced to leak news about Ebony to some degree. Not surprising, seeing we moved their entire island and took it as hostage to escape.' Five even considered if Gearhart would have Mr Guru erase everyone's memories there, but Cinderash was a Worldcore with more than 1 Saint.

The others likely wouldn't have allowed it, and there was no way they didn't know about that event.