Ebony's Fable

"Could we rebuild our house for a bit?" Ebony changed the topic. This house was made of special cement that takes the properties of mana injected. Perfect for a sturdy home considering the properties of his mana.

Except that his Grandmaster mana and his current mana was as different as day and night.

"Why is that even a question? Of course we can."

"I'm projecting that it would take us at least 2 years to build."

"Huh?"

"Sophia managed to build some connection through the agriculture robot selling dwarves to a place quite a bit closer to our Supercluster's core. Supposedly."

"And…?"

"She recently secured trade with a higher being's merchant group. They are willing to trade Legendary ranked materials for 'mortal' money, at a steep cost but it's still rare for such trade to be conducted." Ebony thought that Legendary materials were just a higher grade material and ingredients.

After learning about concepts, he knew that the jump between the ranks of Ancient and Legendary and Emperor to Saint was similar. The fact that he ate Legendary flesh cooked by the chefs invited to his wedding and his Wife stopped cooking Legendary-ranked flesh was also due to wasting these concepts.

Essence purity and volume was another thing altogether and comparatively much less important.

Sadly, Ebony had tried Ancient-ranked cement that he could obtain. It simply couldn't hold his mana. Even at a waste, he needed another material that take on the properties of mana that could hold the volume, purity and density of mana he was trying to build his house from.

Now, added with the requirement of not breaking down to his mana radiation.

Letting his door get kicked down by a trespasser so easily was not something he wanted to happen again.

A little after Xin started evolving, he got a sample shipment from Sophia on a couple of Legendary-ranked building materials the merchant group suggested. All from Legendary Worldcores that were many Sectors away. This shipment also came with the Ancient ranked monster repelling charms he got for Five.

The most suitable material he decided on was a stone, supposedly carved directly from a stone cliff. Instead of making bricks that he could slowly swap out one by one, it was recommended that he bought a large slabs and swap out an entire wall. This Worldcore seemed to have exceptionally high natural mana densities and purity.

His queries about life force had replies that assured him they had a more suitable material. From the same Worldcore, there was a rocky cliff bathed in monster blood for generations. That piece of mountain had one of the best stones for mana and life force alike. Though it wasn't provided in the sample he got, he trusted their assessment after testing the various samples he received.

The best part was that it apparently couldn't be spatially teleported easily. Meaning, it can't even be stored inside a normal spatial storage to be transported. Yet the merchant group guaranteed safe transport to be delivered within 2 years across at least a dozen Sectors.

Ebony recalled that he had a debt to Eidolon Bank a while back but that was already paid off.

At this rate, he could buy another unowned Worldcore without borrowing money. Sophia had long created their merchant group officially.

Thanks to owning a Worldcore, completing transactions on the scale of turning an entire Worldcore into an agricultural property along with some mana production facilities, they were finally officially recognised as a Micro Merchant Group on the Supercluster scale. In terms of trade volume, they could already classify for a size larger at the Local Cell Merchant Group

The Higher Being owned Merchant Group Sophia dealt with was two sizes larger on this scale, System-Span Merchant Group. This required the ability to conduct trades across Regions with a success rate above 70% of at least a ten thousand recorded trades. It was almost impressive that they were willing to deal with a Micro group such as they were. Perhaps their trade volume and credit record were good enough but Ebony couldn't take away from Sophia's amazing ability. With a portable module of Eidolon on her wrists, it was like adding wings to a tiger to the double spy.

Not only was her information gathering skills impressive, but her socialising was also off any charts Ebony could refer to.

As of a couple of months ago, the first batch of machine robots had already landed on their Worldcore. Sophia had professionals hired to do an ecological survey and a land survey years ago. The Emperors that she bought the Worldcore from had helped to clear the wildlife to the bare minimum required for a healthy ecosystem. Supposedly, they erased more than a couple of species.

Ebony did consider moving there but he was safer on Elcra thanks to the laws protecting Elcra. Not to mention…he did feel a little attached to this place. 'A pity.' Yet he didn't think taking on emotional attachment was an evolutionary mistake.

However, if the laws protecting Elcra were going to be loosened after the Worldcore's evolution he would have to reconsider moving houses.

So far, none of his Numbers took on the job of being the manager and researcher for that Worldcore that they owned. The workload on Sophia hadn't decreased thanks to that.

Sophia was already becoming a great boon to him. Regardless of the merchant group's business side, the fact that she could reach out far enough to put his money to better use by obtaining resources he could never have obtained on his own proved her benefit to his personal strength and safety.

'She needs to stay alive.' Ebony posted a top priority mission for his Numbers, enough that he personally had to think of protective measures for her.

"What about Gearhart? Didn't you say he'll likely come for us?" His wife questioned.

"Surely a mighty Saint, owner of a world and ruler of his people in the middle of multiple warfronts, has better things to do than personally hunt a mere King down the instant a natural Worldcore's lawful protection drops."

"Let's test that." Xin ran upstairs.

She returned with a coin.

Ebony almost forgot that her divination probably improved after evolution.

She didn't say a word and flipped the coin.

He looked at her and waited for her verdict since he had no idea what she was asking in her mind before she flipped the coin. "He does have better things to do."

She continued her coin flipping activity. "He intends to come for you? No, for us."

"You too?"

"Apparently."

Ebony didn't apologise but he implicated her, no surprise. He wasn't mad or blamed Gearhart. Eye for an eye, this was expected after he took the man's family hostage.

"He's going to send people here."

"Boiler Knight?" Ebony helped guide her with additional information for her divination.

"Hmm….yes, but more."

"A subordinate Saint?" Ebony didn't confirm any, but he was certain that Gearhart had Saints under his employ and not just as a fellow resident on Cinderash. He was the ruler of that planet after all, and that 'small' place couldn't possibly hold so many Saints that was okay with sharing. Most of them had to be either friendly or subordinate.

"Doesn't seem like it, but my divination might fail against a Saint."

Fair enough.

"Time frame?"

"Not immediately. Wait…or at least, they won't be the first to enter Elcra. I can't tell."

"I heard from the villagers that the first invaders would almost always be cultists here to spread their faith." Ebony told her of the stories he heard during her evolutionary coma.

One possibility was the advent of an aggressive cult, believers of some God that only allowed living beings of their own faith to live on a Worldcore under their rule. This would mean the cultists of this faith aim to rule and take over the Worldcore from its residents. This was also the most unlikely to happen. There is no known faith like that in the Sector.

The highest likelihood was Hydra's Cult. The Demi-God, Hydra in charge of the Sector's station has a clear home-ground advantage. Publicly, the Demi-God did not serve under any God. But what about the Hex Region in charge? What about the Gods within the Supercluster?

Most probably didn't care about the birth of a new – mere Legendary-ranked Worldcore.

Younger Gods might see the value of a few billion new believers, followers.

Hence, what was going to happen was the visit of Hydra's ambassador-equivalent personnel along with other peaceful priests and priestesses' visits. Gods that didn't require a person to bend to their Wills. Gods that may or may not be okay with their believers also believing in another God.

Cultists would follow for sure, but it was a complete unknown as to what type of cultists would come. The possibility of Lure's members coming openly was low because their entire organisation wasn't known for fanatic believers.

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Ebony had knowledge of the most prevalent Gods, for obvious reasons that outside of Elcra, many if not most people who travel across Worldcores were 'religious'.

Much like humans on Earth, it wasn't like Gods replied or interacted with their believers in normal times. In fact, many Gods don't even interact or communicate with their believers, including their Priests and Priestesses or whatever church spawned under their name. These are the type where their faith grows themselves and the Gods don't even bother spreading their faith.

Hydra for example, could be considered a Demi-God of water. Whether or not that is his main source of power was not the point.

Did They need believers for water?

Water exists….

Living creatures depend on it for survival.

That alone was enough to be considered a believer that water…exists.

This generated the concept of water. The concept that water was required for life. The concept that without water, life was harsh if not impossible for most races.

That generation allows Hydra to draw power from water. In terms of water, Hydra did not need to spread any faith for that was already inherent in living creatures. Unless he was trying to modify peoples belief and impression of what water was and is. However, that was a feat beyond the Demi-God. At least this particular one had no such intentions.

However, under this logic one could say that Hydra was a believer of the God of Water. Even if he wasn't a servant of the God of Water.

This type of classification was none of Ebony's business. He did not know how that affected their individual powers and did not care to know. For now.

It does help him understand why so many Xengs had not evolved beyond Emperor. They were probably too proud to use concepts that a higher power 'provided' or borrowed. Either that, or be helpless in front of a greater being that used the same concepts.

His wife pulled him back from contemplation by drawing his attention to her divinations. Her foresight stopped her from divining anything about any higher powers, so there was that.

Having a seer as a wife was nice to have for protection planning. If he knew something dangerous was coming in advance, he could prepare for it more effectively.

"Anything else you foresee that I should take note of?"

"Yes – I foresee you giving me a massage after this meal so prepare for that."

He chuckled. "I don't know…I wonder what happens when your divination doesn't come true."

"If it doesn't come true, you will face my impending wrath." She placed her hands on her hips angrily.

The divination came true, and more than what was foretold came true too.

The worldly changes didn't affect his daily life, building Dusk and Spine. Helping his wife rehabilitate and teaching her unarmed martial arts.

Her twin blades would literally melt from the sheer speed and force of her swing. Considering their material, and their naturally high heat capacities it was rather ridiculous.

Purely physic terms, she was swinging numerous times faster than sound. Mana made things wonky, but Ebony still believed physics could be used to estimate power. He experimented and calculated her base swing speed without her Art building up to be around Mach 200. That was insufficient to melt her swords just by swinging them but her Art, her mana changes everything.

Without that, she cannot properly swing that hard without causing the atmosphere to instantly vapourise. That wouldn't happen in space but at these speeds, low mana densities might act the same way as air and simply break down into plasma and the like. Fortunately, higher natural mana densities stabilise the atmospheric environment and she did not cause a big problem, unaugmented and Artless.

Her Art directly increases speed instead of power, and was a woozy when it came to what it does. Not quite a problem in their training field, a massive pain in the outside environment. The 'higher' mana densities of Elcra ignite as her blades slice through, letting Ebony study that even Elcra's mana had an ignition point instead of instant vaporisation.

He wondered the same about his mana, and made a sphere of crystallised mana for her to melt. A series of test was all it took for him to record data about his mana that he never knew. For one, his mana does not have an ignition point. It can melt to liquid mana. It can vaporise and expand from extreme heat, but it wouldn't ignite.

'Elcra's mana reacts with oxygen but mine doesn't. Fascinating as always.' You learn something every day.

Now he had to wonder if ignition on this world is the reaction with oxygen or just a reaction between different mana types, and it just so happens his does not ignite with Xin's mana.

Magic research was an endless endeavour.

"We can't willy-nilly get careless on other planets." His wife muttered about the results of their experiment. If the atmospheric mana was combustible or even reactive to ice mana, they might one day accidentally kill themselves on a weird planet and worldcore.

"I'll depend on you for that." He shamelessly said. Compared to his experimental method, if they ever landed on a complete unknown, her foresight would be more useful. "Focus," Ebony regained her attention to his lecture, "This is a copy of your new musculature and body."

"You scanned me so intently…." She shied away from him and covered her body with her arms.

"I've developed a few Tier 5 Masteries that your body is more suitable for that prioritise your forte in arm speed and power." Ebony acted as if he didn't see her coy act.

"You make it sound easy developing Tier 5 Arts."

"With your transmutation, learning from my Apparition would be even better than learning from me." Ebony created an Apparition without injecting any Number. He injected himself and had his body transported into Spine.

It was in his form, but the internals were the same as Xin's internals. "Block." He chopped at her neck. When her arm reflexively raised to block his chop, the contact point of his ice body turned into frostblaze and wrapped around her forearm before resolidifying and he poked her cheek instead of chopping her neck.

"I can do that but your magic body will prevent me from reforming my body properly." She argued.

Ebony reconfigured his form, looking exactly like his wife's current self.

"Well…prove to me you're a better user of your body than I am. Let's set our stats to 100 times base human. You can still use augmentation and skills." With their level of control, they can agree on a stat value they rely on and project relatively accurate levels of stats. Ebony had greater control to a dozen or so decimal points but there was not much difference so Xin's control was more than sufficient to achieve the same purpose.

At the same stat count, Xin's augmentation boosts her physical stats more than Ebony's.

She was clearly slightly uncomfortable at fighting a mirror image of herself and also slightly embarrassed because he knew her make-up down to a cellular level.

Ebony used this opportunity to blend the 323 Tier 5 unarmed Arts that he created last night into one, removing useless movements and optimising good ones.

The fact that she can transmute changes things, but he wanted her to have fully physical options in case her transmutation was not viable, as she just brought up.

As for her comment as to how easy it was to create new Arts, he had nothing to say because it really was that easy. Now that his main Art was Tier 5 and he understood the movement of a humanoid better than a random biological creature, he knew what exactly made a Tier 5 Art – Tier 5.

He knew how much each movement could be boosted. He knew how to utilise stamina to produce an effective speed equivalent to a Tier 5 Art. He even knew how to utilise stamina to produce an effect on Perception inside a Tier 5 Art by vibrating his skin, and if the person had bodily hair or fur like a beastmen they could sharpen their close contact senses.

Essentially, he could create as many Tier 5 Arts as he wanted depending on the target user's musculature, bone structure, flexibility, strength, speed, etc. Since he knew his wife's body better than anyone, including herself making unarmed Arts for her gave him the most possibilities.

"So your Fortification for dual-wielding swords now affects both your arms whether or not you're holding swords." Nothing too surprising there and this was even better, so he modified the Art he was preparing for her once more. She had tried to catch him unaware by an explosive burst of speed with her swordless arm stab.

The soft part of her hand would've hit his face, and her left arm would've stabbed under his ribs and through his heart if she had her swords.

This was not her first time fighting without swords. Gen let her experience that with the heat-sink bats before.

With her sword proficiency, acting as if she was utilising her original Sword Art without her swords was better than randomly punching and kicking all of a sudden.

He had also taken that into account hence the limited Tier 5 Arts he had in mind was only as little as 322.

Anyway, the keyword was 'would have' as neither the face stab or the under rib heart stab hand touched him. He'd closed the distance and basically made her hug him around the neck and around his chest.

He hugged her back as hard as he could. While 100 times of base human physical stat wouldn't crush her, she probably got the idea that he could have crushed her torso otherwise.

"How dare you suggest I hug my opponent to death. I'm not gonna touch them."

"You misunderstand; I was just taking advantage of the situation."

Yet his grip remained firm, and Xin saw a knee flying at her face.

She turned her torso to flame and escaped a step back. She succeeded since this was not Ebony's main body. They have tested that the current Ebony's magic body was naturally potent enough that Xin cannot transmute if they were in contact when she tried to do the same to evade his sonic-infused kick in their earlier spars.

Then her head dispersed into flames as she stepped back into a backhand with all his hip power backing it.

After being perpetually kept in flame form without even being able to move from the spot for ten minutes, she grew tired of it and tried to learn instead of react and fight back.

Ebony used gravity to simulate her arm speed and power Fortification, but with just 100 times that of a human baseline, he didn't have enough mental power behind the spell to completely copy her Fortification.

Xin's current main issue was overestimating the reach of her arms as she no longer has her swords in them. Once she got over that, she could be more than capable of learning the Art he was trying to blend, maybe even help him perfect it faster thanks to her natural instincts.

Ebony could easily think of active moves that can become a Skill. Such as high-speed punches, forming physical punches from transmuted flame balls. While not 'teleporting' her punches can come from more angles than if her arms were attached to her body and joints. But this was still a secondary Art for Xin, it was not a priority over the Art itself.

'Doable…but still only around the middle of Tier 5 for Arts, the polished effect won't be pushed up to Tier 6.' Ebony didn't know why he was so sure of this when he wasn't a user of a Tier 6 art. He simply was.

He didn't even have complete knowledge as to how high a Tier 5 base improvement can get for an Art.

'Is this perhaps the natural benefit of having Sage in my Class title? Or is it just unfounded confidence?' The longer he blended the arts he had in mind, and she tried to pick up useful movements, the greater he blended Fluid Blitz to her Cascading style.

By the end, he even discovered how he could use the motions to expedite stamina expenditure. There was more room for Fluid Blitz growth.

As expected, having an opponent at roughly the same power and skill levels was the best for growth. He can't wait till her rehab is done with and she reaches level 750.

It took him Tova, an entire continent's worth of dungeons to reach level 750 in half a year or so. He pretty much emptied them, so it would be harder for Xin to do the same, and she can't even divide herself across the Continent, so this method wasn't duplicatable for her.

On the bright side, her after-evolutionary flow over level-ups got her a little higher than he did since she stayed at Grandmaster longer and had to deal with multiple Emperor–class Demons.

A couple of levels made no difference to him, so he didn't bother asking her if she levelled up every few hours or days.

'A couple of high-level elites should speed things up but those would be wasted levels. We should just focus on raising our Prime Rate to the limit before caring about levels and stat points.'

He was not the only one to fall into battle lulls. The rate of improvement and learning for Xin had her not willing to stop their training either.