Ebony's Fable

Every one of the prostrating Altarbound Kin had their heads raised to Five, then to the sky.

"A NEW ALTAR HAS BEEN RAISED! APOSTLE, SHOW YOURSELF!" The High Priestess once again made her voice heard throughout their community.

A hornless member of the kneeling entourage shifted forward, still on his knees and said his head was hurting.

They watched as he grew a nub, a nub that slowly grew.

"Young Ishram, calmly tell us what you feel. What is the new faith of our people?"

"Incomprehensible. O-overbearing Yoke. Alien…"

The High Priestess and listeners didn't know what Ishram was saying, but they didn't fault him. He just grew a horn unfamiliar to him. She touched his horn and closed her eyes.

Five had his Will focused on the High Priestess. 'Is that how she mind controls…'

"Rejoice! Today is the day the Altar of Overseer lights!"

'That's not too bad.' Overseer did not sound that bad. It sounded nicer than some sort of faith spreader since they knew him as the one who helped spread knowledge of Xin, the one who can fly, the one who can do the undoable. Move the unmovable.

In that sense, Ebony was a far more unknown creature to them than their Holy Maiden.

'Hoh…He began evolving.' Five couldn't help but feel intrigued when Ishram, the first person with a horn drawing power from the Altar of Overseer started evolving all of a sudden.

Five slid down the cube and stood up.

Someone just scanned them. The entire community.

'Almost unnoticeable, one of the Saints present found me…' Teheil wasn't only invaded by Emperors and below, but the Saints had never shown themselves. No matter what Ebony did. No matter how many people died in the war. They always acted as if they were never here.

The problem was, Five didn't know which Saint scanned them. If it were one of the Cinderashians, they might just sic the Boiler Knight on him.

Only the High Priestess managed to sense the scan besides him.

"Those foreign devils again…"

"Do you know from which faction?" Five asked since it seemed like it wasn't the first time she sensed the scan.

"Those dark skinned ones."

'The Veilarans have a Saint too?' The most stealthy of the bunch, having the best perception was unshocking.

A Saint's mana probably had high enough purity to resist Teheil's absorption even if it wasn't a mana chassis or specially trained to be hard to break down.

The difference between mana purity past Emperor ranks simply gulfs so much, racial advantage starts to blur.

Ebony didn't know the specifics, but it was general knowledge that Skill levels and levels in general weren't the limiting factor. There were more requirements to evolve than in the prior evolutions.

He believed that the most obvious factor was Natural Potential. It was common sense enough.

The most important resource for evolution was obviously a requirement. Just that the sheer volume required went from requiring purely high skill levels to more than just that.

Simply said, it boiled down to requiring an exponential increase in required Potential to evolve. If the barest requirement had been raised significantly, even if evolution with 1.1x skill level over level 1000 was used, the weakest of Saints would still have far higher base stats and traits compared to Emperors.

That said, this wasn't a mana scan. Simply pure mental prowess. Like any mage sensing ambient mana to get a gauge of their surroundings rather than pushing their mana out to gain control over this space.

Five was constantly doing the same, but more subtly. At least he wasn't blaring his mental reach with so much intensity.

'Not a mage then. Knowing the Veilarans, they should be a rogue, assassin-type Saint.' Five cannot believe a Mage can be so poor with mental sensing at the ranks of a Saint. The pure muscle of brainpower required can be powered by anyone, even a Warrior at the ranks of a Saint might have higher mental power than he could imagine, but the finesse at control was something that doesn't grow simply by evolving but by practice and usage.

Poor mental finesse from a stealth-based fighter seemed to be of poor performance but Five was unable to say anything about it because he could not send their perception through the Cushioning the way this Saint just did. The obvious mental scan might be his scan being interrupted by the Cushioning.

"How many unique scans have you felt?"

"Only this one, Lord Overseer. This is the third time. Equally spaced apart in time, we can't tell if they are specifically looking for us."

"Do you know I'm not Ebony?"

"Of course. Yet you are one and the same as far as we are concerned."

"Fair enough. I assume they'd never directly attacked."

"Attempts have been made to cross our borders but we've stopped every one."

Fighting inside the Cushioned curtain was the Altarbound Kin's home ground advantage. They used to be pushed back by sheer numbers and power, even with the home-ground advantage due to their lacking skill development compared to their invaders but that recently changed thanks to the Altar of Might that was rapidly growing.

"Tell me about your lost Altars." Five didn't believe that they could not make use of the gold and grey light particles. They were literally born on this worldcore, and there were monsters that lived and used the environment to their advantage.

They should have an overwhelming advantage till something or some Saint came and extinguished their Altars in some manner.

At their prime, they had many Altars but were also separated by small communities. Double and triple-horned were rare and they weren't always friendly till they figured that they were all part of a whole.

Their ancient scriptures did depict the Radiant and the Dull Altarbound Kin, kindling the Altar of Radiant and Dull, respectively. This was too ancient and extinguished long before the invaders arrived.

The Altar of Courage, Fertility and Liberation were extinguished with Might, having recently been relit with a change in symbol. The High Priestess was the most attuned, able to see the older Altars that are broken, or even find rubble of older Altars beyond the 7 that their generation knew of.

The High Priestess herself was a symbol of one of the Altars.

The Symbol of Longevity.

"Mmm, I see." Five did not bother with most of the Altars. The Radiant and the Dull were clearly the only ones of interest to him.

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"Lord Overseer. Wi—will you help us rekindle the Altars?

"If Ebony or any of my fellow Apparitions feel like it, but I won't be staying long."

"I-I see. Do you have any instructions or advice for us? We are not familiar with the desires of these foreign devils."

"Hmm….the Ferroquads, those 4 leged creatures, can be friendly. They are likely trying to migrate. You may teach them your ways or try to integrate. The others, I have no comments. Slay them, slay each other, up to you. As far as you are concerned, they are the paratistes on this planet. Make them think it's no longer worth staying here would be the most efficient, I doubt even Ebony's capabilities in slaying everything they can send to Teheil, so I suggest a different method."

Five put all 30 of the gravity cubes down and made his way around creating an Explorer Wolf large enough to contain a gravity cube, the one he originally had.

'Still recovering.' Five acted as the middleman for gold light particles for the Explorer Woilf. This time, he went against Ebony's dislike and personally invited the High Priestess and the Emperor-ranked guardians to watch.

While he had no visible sight, they did.

"Tell me what you see." Five wanted the ability to sigh.

Once more, balling their eye sockets out, they were praising Lord Overseer for being able to touch and 'manipulate' the Golden Field's Blessings.

"I'm not manipulating it, just guiding the energy along the…." Five did not like futile efforts; they were not listening at all so he stopped explaining.

The High Priestess had one of her horns mutated on the spot. Morphing into a shape similar to the one Ishram was growing.

Five did not feel anything, not an active connection to her nor a power up in any way. He didn't know if Ebony was the only recipient or if he just couldn't sense it like Scarlet couldn't at first.

"High Priestess! Look skybound!" one of her most loyal guards and the Guardian of the Altarbound Kin was not referring to the sky in the physical world.

As they all looked skybound within their special space. They looked as if they couldn't take the enlightenment they were receiving all in the span of a few hours.

"The Altar of Radiance exists!!!!"

'How…did watching me guide these gold light particles actually change something in that weird inner world of their race?'

Ebony had been convinced that the Altarbound Kin's powers were fully based on their perception. It had nothing to do with reality.

Five had already guided this gold light a while back, but the Altarbound Kin only found a change in their weird racial inner world after they saw him do so. More evidence supporting that the Altarbound Kin were…..absolutely delusional. So delusional that they drew power from their imagination, and combined throughout their race.

'I like the hivemind theory more now, it would fit the gold and grey light particles' nature and properties.'

Five couldn't and wouldn't test guiding the grey light particles for now, just touching it kills him. The two particles hate each other so they don't interact, trying to avoid each other so badly that they have clear borders between themselves.

It was more surprising how it wasn't half of the world being bathed in gold and the other in pure darkness at this point. Or whatever the ratio of gold to grey is currently at. Probably 95% grey and 5% gold.

"What do you need, Lord Overseer? Your wish is our command."

"…don't disturb me."

They vanished.

'Quite fast…do the powers they draw from the Altar of Might reflect Scarlet's fortes?'

Five was recovering, and he didn't have an immediate route back to space. With his shuttle being destroyed and all, he was not in a rush.

He manually controlled the Wolf Explorer for days, weeks.

Ending up with the conclusion that there really was nothing inside the Cushioned curtain. No creatures this time.

After 3 weeks, Five was back to a little below peak capacity that Ebony gave him. The loss of blood in the journey, mostly from the gravitational storm, had stopped him from recovering more. Will regeneration was very slow, but mana wasn't a big problem.

Five went to the farmland where the High Priestess was willingly serving her sentence and patted her shoulder once more, significantly changing the properties of the Sequester he had hidden within her. It wouldn't last long, but at least far longer than it could since she was always in the Golden Fields, but if she touched anyone with hostility, his mana would transfer and Sequester in their opponent would go off the moment they did not sense any Altarbound Kin within a certain range and a timer would go off before the mana blew off. The range was wider if the contact time between the High Priestess and her attacker was longer.

He gave a short explanation of this effect, then said farewell without listening to any of the noisy praises she was going to chant.

Five exited and returned to the Central Plains.

He released all of his blood to form another one of himself and leaving himself back to normal ice body. They carried along 30 gravity cubes inside the storage bracelet and still have a chance of moving all of them.

He led them to the humans and hid them in a weak Sequester, taking up only 80% of the Blood Five's will generation while they froze themselves into a package that was marked to leave on the next flight. The remaining Will-mental output was used to hide the leaking gravity mana.

Such a small consumption for Sequester would be found by most Kings, mage or not. Simply, not on Teheil.

After two days, Five saw his Blood portion off into the skies. He kept Ebony's hair.

"You waited well, Boiler Knight. I'm right here." Five released the small amount of Sequester he was keeping up.

"Impressive stealth, I couldn't find a trace of you. You should've run with your tail tucked while you still could. Now you've come to die."

"I'll bet the rest of my lifespan that you won't be unscathed before I die."

"Let's test that out."

"Let's." The hot powers did nothing to warm the Boiler Knight's cold voice.

Five sensed the flash of energy pulse to his face. His mind couldn't slow or speed up as he did not have a mind. 'I can't even have a good fight.' He was going to be wiped off the face of the planet in moments.

The gulf had been incredible.

He may just be an Apparition, but to not even be able to react when he had Will capacity greater than Ebony was a wake-up call that not every Emperor was the same.

Only after his outer layers started to be eviscerated did Five manage to react and do something, anything.

Five couldn't even tell if this was pure physical shockwave and wind pressure or added with Aether Soccery. It honestly didn't matter when he was going to be evaporated into nothing soon.

He couldn't raise a hand; reforming his body into other shapes wasn't going to save him. conjuring the simplest shield was…. impossible. He was made of mana and was already being melted, trying to push mana outside his body only met with faster evaporation of self. Effectively, his mana couldn't form any spell before it was destroyed as he was bathed in this unrelenting wave.

'Is this not just a simple swing? Why's the attack still going…' Five didn't feel an end to this bathing of pressure.

He had no choice. Physical and magical options seemed to be futile when he couldn't move his body or cast a proper spell.

Ebony would have an easier time because in the end, that man had a flesh body and conjuring his mana wouldn't necessarily weaken his body as long as he had enough mana. Five would weaken no matter what, as long as he tries to use any external spell,s because he would need to remove mana from his body to form those spells.

There was no more time to form a plan. Five did what he knew as the only option he had left and broke himself down to cast the only spell he thought most effective.

Unable to direct it in a specific direction, the roaring vibrations of the pressure and shockwave engulfing Five were silenced and overrode by an internal blast of sound that caused the Boiler Knight to frown, almost flinching.

Soul Basillisk Pseudo Imitation Roar.

Five dissolved himself as fast as he could into the roar, hopefully faster than the Boiler Knight's odd, singular slash that didn't appear to pass through and remained engulfing him as if to meet the challenge, but it seemed like he failed to do so. The rate at which the skill was consuming him didn't beat the rate at which the Boiler Knight was beating him.

Yet the unmoving expression under the man's helmet cracked for a moment as Five was erased and erased himself for---as a final roar.

"Essence attack using your life. A monster indeed." Five had already lost all his perception and couldn't sense whether or not the Boiler Knight had been hurt at all.

Five felt Ebony's hair and mana chassis breaking down last and heard the words….wondering if he managed to transmit this feeling to Blood Five before he was gone.

Not the helplessness that Ebony feared.

But the disappointment that he never got the chance to act on his Will and have a good battle throughout his short life. Five was built for battle.

Born for it.

He had a feeling that as long as the bigger half of Five was able to receive this Will, they would definitely be different from the rest of his brother Numbers.

Within the humans' ship, Blood Five hibernated on with the lingering last moments of Ebony's hair creeping in but not awakening him.

They weren't even able to test and check what kind of Mastery the Boiler Knight used.

What a shame.