Ebony's Fable

"Did she get that much more Potential than me?" Ebony asked the Divination mage. She wasn't here in person, this was her clone. An astral clone of sorts that Ebony had to use Mana Discern to roughly image her form. Invisible to the naked eye but could interact with the physical world.

"No clue. But it's lengthy because of divine interference, not the volume of Potential."

"I see."

"Let me see that skill once more."

Ebony had no reason to decline. He created a clone and had it perform Rhythmgrav Establishment. It took half a step forward and thrust its knife hand into a wooden log. Its arm sliced into the wooden log.

Then the clone dissolved back to ambient mana within his Domain. With Ebony's light tap, the log spun 90 degrees.

Both of them waited…the older lady watched the wooden log more closely, not blinking in fear of missing it.

4 seconds later, a crunch sounded as the wooden log was torn through the centre. Exactly how deep and wide Ebony's clone's knifearm thrust went. A cross-shaped incision through the wooden log was made with one attack.

"…I can't read it." Ebony could only 'see' the outlines of the clone, not its features, and even the voice was heard only because Veronica did something to transmit it.

"Mmm." Ebony was rather proud to hear that, but this was just a clone of hers so he didn't let it get to his head.

'4 second limit for a manually controlled clone…it's increasing too slowly.' Ebony could do the same with his body but it was far more effective since his Fortifications helped. He could delay the duplication of the motion and vector by up to 3 minutes. That was a gulf that completely reworked how he could fight now that he had another dimension to adjust to.

It was quite fitting for the Path of the Formless in his opinion.

The pattern he currently preferred was delaying an attack by 10 seconds, then performing another move, but delaying it by 8. The move he performed later would be executed in reality later or at the same time, depending on his control.

It was a whole new world for him, and not even his simulative prowess could determine the limits of his fighting style. Of course, the key point was not in seconds by his control to the millisecond.

The bigger key point was that he couldn't really use this against people like Veronica. The only reason she couldn't 'see' it was because he pumped 80% of his Will into Sequester running through the flames within the clone to hide the 4-second delay of a single movement.

H only needed Sequester for Veronica and other hyper-perceptive people. Normal people wouldn't be able to see anything, even if he didn't use Coreflame of Sequester. Gravity mages might have a better chance, while normal mages would need to be extremely sensitive to changes in ambient mana.

Not impossible to react to, but he had a feeling even Navin's reflexive mana would have a hard time sensing or reacting to a sudden attack that should've been over at the current state.

Today was a good day.

Veronica coming back was a good sign.

Or so he assumed but she was actually here because too many people had been complaining to her, and she was here to get him to eat something.

Ebony made a slight mistake in her calculations regarding food intake during his evolution. He'd never thought it would be a problem since Constitution had been keeping his energy usage low.

Mana – mental power, ecetera didn't take much food sustenance for optimal output. Since his meals consisted of Epic and higher-ranked ingredients, food was not a problem.

Except when you had to regenerate billions of points of mana per minute…he was burning through calories just by breathing. It wasn't killing him by starving himself but he needed constant input if he wanted to have Resolve Cadence boost his mana regeneration.

Normal meal times with his wife would have kept this in balance.

But he hasn't eaten a proper meal since he finished all her packed food.

Hence, the table of fruits that Veronica forced onto him. Ebony could smell the ploy a mile away, they were trying to bribe him to take a break from training with them.

Most of these uncles and aunties were not rich by any measure. They don't trade, they don't work, besides some personal income streams. They don't even go out to hunt except maybe Butcher Pang.

But they were all still capable of sending him crates of Ancient ranked fruits.

Not all of them had extreme mana regeneration, nor were they constantly in meditation but it was clear as day that their natural mana regeneration was much higher than the average human King. Just by the nature of their higher baseline stat.

That was sufficient to live by and never starve if they were connected to Eidolon, their bank, and their trade network. Though not living in luxury, they were not poor by any means just because they were born—built with higher potential than many creatures.

Ebony didn't disturb everyone.

There were a couple of hermits stuck inside their house, experimenting.

He could tell from the manas and energies around their house. These people could be found coming out and entering their training field frequently, and he left the invitation to train together open but none took it.

He was fine with that.

A couple such as Cui the hairdresser also did not join.

The rest were the 'lazy' ones who were slacking or taking a vacation that extended for too long.

He also didn't bother those who were completely non-combatant, even less than Sister Jing was. There was a pattern that there were Clans that were less known for fighters. However, they were interesting people too.

Ma Tang from the Ma Clan spends his days free and easy.

Aligning with their horse Clan Emblem, they were horse riders. Not tamers. Not summoners.

The Ma Clan members simply ride horses and other similar creatures.

Ma Tang himself had not a lick of combat skills, and that was the same for a good majority of the entire Ma Clan. The only true combatant of the Ma Clan was the second-generation Ma.

Yet they weren't defenceless. They were very good at raising animals, and they were the Xeng's go-to for monster and animal-related knowledge and training. Too bad it was hard to get hold of one of them because they were always moving about.

Ma Tang was about the only person that was 'stationed' here because his ride was healing from an injury.

Shang Ru was another oddity. It was rarer for a female Xeng to not have any combat abilities than it would be for a male, and she was one of them.

Using her Clan's affinity for air, wind and mastery over the skies she spends her days creating reactions between particles and elements. Her forte was her eyes and eye-related skills. Including, supposedly, Tier 5 Identify type skill.

At Tier 5, Identify type skills usually allowed the user to see one's Class, Sub-Class and Profession titles, and the full list of Core Skills and Class skills. Some could see Sub-Class skills as well.

Identify-type skills were among the hardest to grasp higher tiers. Tier 5 was already considered as high as mortals usually got them to before the end of their lives. It was rare even for long-lived species like the Elves to get them to Tier 5.

That was to say, people hated them and it was better to keep it a secret that one had a high-tier Identify.

It was rumored that Shang Ru's Identify was scarier than just reading Core Skill names but she could 'see' how they worked and study these unseen skills even if they weren't in use. For her amazing skill, she was sadly not academically inclined and never used her power for in-depth research on skills that didn't help her create weird reactions.

Not a combatant, but still deadly if these magical, chemical and particle reactions she studied were explosive, poisonous or just lethal in nature.

Despite her skill, she was not an outcast amongst the Xeng for the Xeng were considerably open with their skills to begin with. However, she liked being alone and away from people, so no one really disturbed her whenever she floated in the sky and encased herself within a tiny Domain to experiment. With Perception being her thing, she saw and rebuked Ebony's mental peeking and kicked his Will out long ago so she was always completely invisible to Ebony's senses even if she stood right in front of him.

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Her stealth was number 2 within Xienor.

A member of the Lei Clan was also here, one who wasn't a King but a proper Emperor. Lei Xia of the fourth generation died as a King evolving to an Emperor, went to hell and came back with her soul alone.

She was busy trying to make a body for herself, hence he didn't disturb her for being lazy.

Not that he could.

Lei Xia was the only one amongst the Xengs to literally come back from the dead on her own so she was quite respected even amongst the Xeng for not even death managed to take her. An oddity for sure.

She was the stealthiest for not even Veronica knew where she was, and they only knew Lei Xia was present because she made her presence known occasionally. It didn't help that the Second Gen Lei couple were so proud of their descendant that they never failed to bring up how death couldn't catch up to them. It was unknown whether Lei Xia depended on speed or lightning element to escape death, leave hell and then leave the Nether Realm as a soul into the physical plane and continue to exist this way without a body.

Living? Proof that by King ranked, Xengs had souls strong enough to survive without a body for some time.

He couldn't discount that Lei Xia had skills that helped her continue to exist without getting dragged back into the Nether Realm.

The question he had was, how much control over movement would he have?

Can he even move his soul?

In any case, this was good news for Ebony. It was even harder to die. It also brought to question….did he really kill the Dullahan?

A user and manipulator of the soul would be more than capable of moving his soul within the Nether Realm, wouldn't he?

Ebony discounted that possibility. There should not be a soul left if he directly popped it. It would be different if he had tried to kill the Ecstasy Lord physically.

Ebony manually dropped his mana regeneration to reduce his basal metabolic rate. Considering the skill evolutions and stat gain, the mana reduction from shutting Resolve's Cadence off didn't slow Dusk and Spines' growth but brought it back down to the growth rate he had before he evolved.

He held an ore of uranium that was delivered some time back and wondered if his body can digest this metal. With this ore at Common rarity, it most likely wouldn't hurt him at all.

Putting aside eating uranium, this was a better chance to observe radiation and its effects on people and objects. It would do him good for his mana radiation control. While he had some control over how physical warping would occur, he had little control over its potency due to the extreme volume of mana he usually dealt with.

After coming to a draw in the game of standard Earth chess to the Divination mage who was literally seeing his next moves, he got ready to hop into the training field once more.

Although it wasn't exactly getting dull, he did reach a plateau in the burst of skill improvements that he'd been lacking Potential for. It was back to repetitive motions, barely pushing his Prime rate up by the day.

While things haven't been quiet on the Continent, it was for Ebony.

He received a letter from Mallory, who also sent one for Xin, but he didn't open it. Why a physical letter?

He wasn't sure but it was just a short report about how she was doing well and underlined her questions and research findings about a partial mana-being. In this regard, he was her senior and wrote back more questions for her to answer while giving his comments about her questions.

Mallory used an extravagant method of sending letters. A runic golem in the physical form of a sparrow that opened warp portals that only allowed the golem to pass through. During the time that the warp portal was opened, Veronica commented that she would have to focus on the golem if she wanted to stop it and couldn't do it by reflex or if something else was attracting her attention.

Now Ebony wanted a couple of these himself, but they were not for sale on the open market, so he had to ask her how she got them. If these can warp uninterrupted even by Xeng Emperor standards, it was great stuff.

Of course, Veronica added that it wouldn't be able to open a warp portal if they were within her Domain but it could stealthily slip through most mages' senses and Domains, including Ebony's. That was good enough. At least the message wouldn't have to go through Eidolon.

'Her bodyguard is Mark.' Ebony noted the trace of Mark's mana around the runic sparrow, but it never crossed his mind that Mark made the contraption. It was quite beyond him even if he was Kong Jing's student.

The stealthed sparrow didn't allow any of his mana to Discern it, so he couldn't even study the runes beside visually. He also asked permission to do that next time in his letter. Kong Jing might have made the item, but he doubted it. Visually, the runes were nothing like Korun, the runic language she developed.

He wrote to Mallory about how Hector went on a solo adventure to get Apa back. The Prince had gotten out of his Scout Pigeon's range and was out on his own.

Assuming she was more well-informed about the Empire's situation or simply didn't care so that she could travel free and easy, he did not write about that. She never asked either.

After pondering on it, he decided not to send Mark the design he came up with for Curse Brand. It was not something he could draw on a piece of paper, nor was he going to send it through transport means he did not have control over, no matter how secure.

While he finalised the Curse Brand design, he hasn't put it into his body. Branding was semi-permanent, and this version would be moulded directly onto his Mana Chassis. It would require Will to permanently 'engrave' the Brand onto him. The risk was a little too high in that, after Will was used his Chassis might not be able to recover properly.

Healing wasn't all that worrisome. It was future potential that bothered him.

The longer he had the first finalised version moulded into him, the harder and longer it would take to heal if he ever improved the Brand drastically. The design had some redundancies in runic formulations that he intentionally made. Leaving leeway for both failure in the case of damage to his Chassis, and the option to remove some of these symbols for future improvements.

Experimental success was seen from his Numbers who used the Brand.

Interestingly enough, those Branded cannot dissolve or reshape themselves. Once they did, the Brand would completely lose effect and had to be remoulded from scratch. The cast time for this was not friendly for high-speed battle. Without Dusk, it would take the Numbers over ten minutes to Brand themselves again. An extremely long duration for battles that would require this augmentation.

On the bright side, the Brand gave an improvement that simply made it so that the Numbers didn't really need to resort to reshaping a large part of their body in a fight. Some degree of shifting is still fine thanks to the redundancies he designed.

Should they require melting themselves down to travel as a mist or clump of ice for various purpose of travel or stealth, they wouldn't really need the Brand.

It was too bad Oplot was occupied – maybe kidnapped by the Angel. He would have been a better duel than these non-combatants or vacationing Xengs. Fighters like Veronica didn't fight, they cast weird spells that he couldn't resist well against.

Perhaps he wasn't looking for a 'fight', he was looking for a brawl. Amongst the Kings present, how many had multiple concurrent Augmentation-type skills that they could run nearly indefinitely or for a long time?

Even for Xengs, not all of them had. Their current advantage came in the form of skill Tiers and pure levels, with a few having better base Physiques than him just due to their age. With enough years, they had a few Physique Refinements over time. Even for the lazy.

With a boring old stat advantage, even with less refined skills, it was hard for him to lose. Or at least, harder to find learning points from casual sparing.

Veronica and the combatant Xengs must feel the same way towards sparring with him. There was not much for them to gain if they were to seriously try to suppress him in some way. Stronger mages could use their Will to shatter his Domain. And if they were strong enough to do that, then the strength of his Will-less spells wouldn't trouble them. Stronger close-range combatants might cause his body to disintegrate.

Finding a balance and someone just perfectly at his strength, or a little stronger was rare. Hence, adding to how much he missed having his wife or a rival around him. The Spirit Possession Emperor would have been perfect to have around, but he left after Uncle Wu was done with him. It was a damned shame, but they did exchange contacts and were on friendly terms.

Next time, he would spar with the man when he was at his top form. With all his Spirits and his Domain around him.

Before that, he still had a seal to break.

He wasn't physically trapped but the house and space he was in were boxed in by the life force sheets of Butcher Pang. This seal traps his mana within so that his mana's volume wouldn't spread and damage the environment. This also stops the radiative effect of the thick mana from warping the earth. Air being warped was currently not that big of an issue. All it did was induce winds of erratic flows. It did not directly warp air particles.

The life force screens were filled with Intent of a singular purpose of keeping his mana sealed within. Should he try to walk through, he would lose his entire mana pool and the mana would explode within the seal while his body walked out. Not only that, but the screen would stretch and encase him in a film, making sure that no mana leaked out.

Ebony would've tried going to the other side of the continent to see how far this can stretch but he remained within Xienor to be by his wife's side.

In any case, this has sealed his mana completely, and his mana cannot interact with anything outside this seal.

Whenever a certain ambient density of mana was reached, the life force screen would eat up the mana. Even if it came in billions. Even if trillions had already been eaten up. It continued to treat the volume of mana like nothing had happened.

The only obvious answer was to interrupt the Intent with his Will. Will was the only thing he could use that could interact with Intent to some degree. But any Will that tried to interact with the life force screen gets sliced into smithereens and loses whatever effect he tried to imbue into the Will. Since the screen also absorbed mana, the final effect was like tossing Will and mana to the void.

To the credit of the Xengs who tried to trap him initially, he was slightly grateful to them. Spine was now always floating because contact with the earth simply warps the earth around it.

The longer something was exposed to mana radiation, the worse it gets. A piece of metal being warped will continue to warp till the metal gives in and breaks into smaller particles. Still, the warping wasn't causing any molecular damage immediately, so the end point of an iron ore exposed to his mana would be iron sand. When clumped together, the iron sand would shift about, but there was a limit to how far it broke down to. For now, it wasn't all that far and it would take time for iron ore to warp, bend and break into chunks, pebbles all the way down to clumpy sand.

Soil particles were a bit different. His mana radiation doesn't really do much to them. Only when they were clumped together would they warp slightly. Constantly.

Butcher Pang specially made this to prevent Ebony from causing environmental damage to their village. To achieve this, Ebony's sparring with him had allowed him to improve significantly. A Core Skill evolution that he had not expected to come.

Intent was even better at reinforcing rules than Will. This cuboid of life force's rules were to seal Ebony's mana and mana only. One or multiple of Butcher Pang's skills were capable of consuming mana to convert to life force, making this seal pretty much perfect to keep Ebony's mana within.

Having run the mental calculation from the past week of tests, Ebony would need quite a bit of effort to break free. Since mana is absorbed, even Will-infused mana would be taken and trying to destroy the Intent would require stronger and more Will. It also had to be strong enough to directly overload the absorption rate.

Yet, it was still more than possible.

Once Ebony was confident of his mana control and wouldn't harm the environment, he could free himself whenever he'd like.