Ebony's Fable

Ebony's idea of building a new house in the village was denied before Roya stormed back into the house.

They were nearing the time limit that Kong Jing or Xin’s grandmother dictated. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen but he had a feeling they wouldn’t be remaining in Arcta for much longer this visit.

‘An opportunity’ was as vague as it can get.

They’ve not heard from her mysterious grandmother for a long time and neither of them has dreams of an unknown Xeng giving them a message either.

Hence, he didn’t argue with Roya’s strong denial.

Ebony chose not to train and just stretched his body and reconfirmed his mobility and range of motions the next morning. He tries not to bring up his status to mind so that he doesn’t get blinded by the numbers and give himself an unfounded ego boost but he doesn’t ignore the convenience.

Name: Ebony Rime

Core Skill:

Perpetual Tranquillity Spring Lvl 636 (Ⅳ)

Arsenal of Will Domain Lvl 602 (Ⅲ)

Empty Skill Slot

Class: Frigid Tranquility’s Martial Grace - Lvl 300

Class Skills:

Ethereal Form Arts Lvl 6 (Ⅳ)

Phantom’s Flicker Lvl 611 (Ⅳ)

Ice Mana Command Lvl 614

Woven Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 604 (Ⅲ)

Ignited Frozen River Greatsword Style Lvl 553 (Ⅱ)

Woven Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 602 (Ⅲ)

Imperishable Frost Armament Lvl 603 (Ⅲ)

Fluid Blitz Lvl 572 (Ⅲ)

Frigid Tranquility’s Martial Grace Conditioning Lvl 300 (Ⅳ)

Entity Evanesce Lvl 1290

Glacial Model Lvl 556 (Ⅱ)

Blossom of Shimmering Chill Lvl 600 (Ⅲ)

Stalactite Sunder Lvl 450 (Ⅲ)

Frigid Distorted Refraction Lvl 452 (Ⅲ)

Frostweave Vital Constriction Lvl 450 (Ⅱ)

Sub-Class: Oppressive Resonance Lvl 300

Sub-Class Skills:

Battle Song Lvl 455 (Ⅰ)

Sheer Mana Vibration Lvl 508 (Ⅱ)

Gravity Mana Control Lvl 523

Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane Lvl 510 (Ⅲ)

Sonic Intrusion Lvl 503 (Ⅱ)

Firm Path Lvl 502 (Ⅱ)

Gravity Vortex Lvl 452(Ⅱ)

Tremor Stomp Lvl 482 (Ⅱ)

**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar Lvl 450(Ⅲ)

Empty Skill Slot

Profession: Mana Adjudicator - Lvl 300

Profession Skills:

Inscripted Mana Moulding Lvl 554 (Ⅱ)

Coagulated Mana Repository Lvl 607 (Ⅳ)

Stalwart Foundation Lvl 550 (Ⅲ)

Mana Chassis Implosion Lvl 450 (Ⅲ)

Empty Skill Slot

Health: 9800/9800

Stamina: 6720/6720

Mana: 12,203/61,915

Unallocated stat points: 0

Strength: 650

Vitality: 700

Constitution: 1000

Endurance: 400

Agility: 800

Intelligence: 1326

Wisdom: 2030

Perception: 350

Generic Skills:

Appraise Lvl 18 (Ⅱ)

Extreme Cold Resistance Lvl 195 (Ⅳ)

Running Lvl 122 (Ⅰ)

Mental Mapping Lvl 98 (Ⅰ)

English Lvl 8

Elcrian Lvl 12

Calculated Hunch Lvl 188 (Ⅱ)

Housekeeping Lvl 95 (Ⅰ)

Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 222 (Ⅱ)

Tracking Lvl 62 (Ⅰ)

Game Processing Lvl 68 (Ⅰ)

Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 199 (Ⅲ)

Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (Ⅱ)

Gardening Lvl 67 (Ⅰ)

Cooking Lvl 88 (Ⅰ)

Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 105 (Ⅱ)

Korun Lvl 65

Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 82 (Ⅱ)

Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 88 (Ⅲ)

Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 154 (Ⅲ)

Lightning Resistance Lvl 82 (Ⅰ)

Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 93 (Ⅱ)

Wind Resistance Lvl 62 (Ⅰ)

Poison Resistance 20 (Ⅰ)

Preservation Bubble Lvl 155 (Ⅰ)

Sustenance Regulation Lvl 105 (Ⅱ)

Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 150

Adaptable Bow Mastery Lvl 56 (Ⅰ)

Sheer Mana Poisoning Resistance Lvl 41 (Ⅱ)

Swimming Lvl 32 (Ⅰ)

Lightning Tether Lvl 155 (Ⅰ)

Electroshock Lvl 150 (Ⅰ)

Soul Tolerance Lvl 51 (Ⅰ)

Lunar Bio Clock Lvl 1 (Ⅱ)

‘Hmm? My skills have always been ordered chronologically, why is Ethereal Form Arts first? Ah, it wants to be my core skill but I didn’t let it and ignored its attempts. Hence it was forced to kick two of my Class skills to merge instead.’

Ebony was glad he wrote his experience down. In the evolutionary space, he completely ignored the vessel representing Ethereal Form Art’s strong connection to his Core Skill shelves.

Phantom’s Flicker had no change after he refined the kinks out.

Woven Frostblaze Augmentation was refined from a constitution buff of 250% to 350%, strength and endurance from 200% to 300% and Agility from 50% to 100%. Scaling on Intelligence. Now that he had a simple Fortification for ice magic, his effective intelligence effect on all ice magic should double.

Woven Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting intricately woven mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by 350% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Strength and Endurance increase by 300% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Agility is increased by 100% + 5.0% of Intelligence.

Consumes 8800 MP/Min.

Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic

Woven Frostblaze Cladding also saw no significant improvements other than levels.

Ebony took a look at what happened to Entwined Ice Armament and Imperishable Frost Shell.

Imperishable Frost Armament - All known weapons conjured with ice are strengthened by 250% + 5.0% Intelligence. Defensive conjurations in the form of a heavy shield or spherical orb, has the effect of 450% + 5.0% Intelligence. Further change in structure reduces said effect.

Consumes MP

Classification: Ice Magic

As he imagined, the skill technically was the same. Just a general buff to all weapons or armour conjured by ice. He had refined Imperishable Frost Shell from 400% base to 450% and that carried over so he had no complaints.

However, he didn’t like the fact that he could have more redundancies in his skill slots. Had he been wasting his time by practising two different skills when they were essentially the same thing?

The fact that they could merge so easily was an insult to his efforts and he did not like it.

Fluid Blitz - Maximise exertion of the physical body. Every attack is a precursor for the next using momentum. Speed and power of fluid blitz rise with momentum. Ability to build up momentum increases by 250% + 5.0% per level. Ability to raise power and speed of flurry up to 1% + 0.05% of Strength stat.

He refined Fluid Blitz significantly when he was hunted down by the Apex Apes. When he first fought them, he had a lot of trouble with their impressive twitch musculature. The ability to build up momentum didn’t give him a direct power boost. It increased the speed at which he could get to his maximum momentum.

‘Maximum’ momentum was hard to quantify, it was based on many factors. Even the environment. But the general trend was the stronger he got, the more momentum he could generate. This skill accelerates how fast he could…accelerate.

He managed to get a base of 1% of power and speed which was technically 20 levels of the skill. He would be lying if he said he didn’t get inspiration from Ning Xin. She wasn’t the only one capable of learning from each other.

Frigid Tranquility’s Martial Grace Conditioning used to be called the Serene Blade of Blistering Frost’s Conditioning.

Frigid Tranquility’s Martial Grace Conditioning - Developing yourself as the Frigid Tranquility’s Martial Grace increases your stats by 10% + 0.1% per level.

One of the least descriptive skills with the most underlying information or side effects. At level 300, he had a 30% buff to all his stats. Adding on the 10% base stat buff, it was a total of 40% to all his stats. From his maximum stamina and mana capacity, he could see them in effect. Endurance gave him 120% thanks to his Physique and Conditioning was multiplicative. Not withstanding his stamina regeneration's dropping.

Conditioning truly was a hidden gem. It was no wonder people joined the army. Just a good Conditioning method would give them quite an advantage. Furthermore, it was the most stable buff anyone can have. It was practically a Physique kind of buff. Ebony knew that was an apt statement as he saw an extremely strong link between the conditioning skill slate and cup to the crystal monolith.

Outside of stats, it also increased his general magic and elemental resistances but to an extremely minuscule degree. He wouldn’t have found out if it wasn’t for his high perception.

If he had to put a number to it, it felt like his general resistance increased by 0.001% per level of the skill. At level 300, it equated to a 0.3% increase. Small but it wasn’t completely useless or unnoticeable. The value of 0.3% was just an estimation on his part since he couldn’t quantify his own resistances.

Other than resistance, Ning Xin who was quite knowledgeable about conditionings told him that tier 4 conditionings lose level at a much slower rate. It was not surprising when they both felt what ‘one day’ should be has changed. Especially himself.

One day felt more like the amount of time that he was awake to the time he started getting sleepy. That was closer to eight real days rather than one.

Glacial Model had him stumped. He used them against the Apex Apes but mostly as distractions or to help him buy time to rest or escape. They didn’t get many chances to retain his focus so the skill didn’t get any refinements.

Blossom of Shimmering Chill was one of his main weapons. He tried to push his woven effect onto them but nothing happened. It didn’t matter if he weaved his petals as that did nothing to strengthen the spell. The spell worked by penetrating flesh and physical defence before attacking the target’s internals. Weaving his spells was to make his ice or flames more compact and also to give it structure.

Hence, he stepped in the wrong direction for improving the spell and it remained in the experimental phase.

Stalactite Sunder - Ice and physical attacks have 250% + 5.0% falling momentum when used in conjunction with gravity magic. Ice spell landings’ ability to slow down the release of momentum on impact increases by 200% + 5.0% per level.

Stalactite Sunder was one of the skills that he had to increase his Natural Potential before it was even capable of reaching 450 in a reasonable time frame. He was not suited for the skill and didn’t understand as well as Gao’larg might have been capable of.

Frigid Refraction evolved in his attempts to hide from the relentless hunting.

Frigid Distorted Refraction - Adjusting ice and its cold temperatures to refract light, accuracy depends on Intelligence and Perception. Creating mirages and displacing what you wish to. Precision and accuracy of refract and reflected light increases by 200% + 5.0% of Intelligence.

Consumes 5500MP/Min

Classification: Ice Magic

Not only does it take almost ten times as much mana as the tier 2 version, but it also takes a lot more mental effort. Ebony had to scan his surroundings and change the angle of light refraction depending on how many pairs of eyes were on his target, where they were looking at him from, and the direction of the sun or moonlight.

It wasn’t hard for him until movement was taken into account. His speed and his opponent’s speed. He had to match his spell from any sudden acceleration from who he was hiding from. When it came to the Apex Apes who had insane twitch muscles and movements that even he couldn’t fully predict, he was forced to improve the skill if he wanted to rest.

Frostweave Vital Constriction used to be Frozen Lull but he got the hang of sealing magic much faster than he had hoped. It was mainly a sealing spell instead of an ice spell, a change from Frozen Lull. There was an addition of blocking out not just overflowing vitality but also mana.

His Sub-Class skills gained a refinement or two but nothing groundbreaking. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane was the only one that showed obvious change.

Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane - Adeptly remove all gravity mana out of matter and envelope around the target as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. Has the effect of 350% + 5.0% Intelligence. Order in disorder, tame the entropic nature of gravity mana to your bidding by 150% + 5.0% Intelligence.

Consumes 2200 MP/Min

Classification: Gravity Magic

The mana cost of tier 3 spells had quite a jump from its tier 2 counterparts, it went from 150MP/Min to 2200MP/min. Ebony wasn’t fooled by the description of an additional Intelligence scaling. Making gravity mana do his bidding better did not strengthen the spell directly. All it did was calm the chaotic nature of gravity after it was compressed so that it flowed in the general direction that he wanted it to.

It did make the repulsion stronger but not nearly as much as the numbers implied. However, there was one main advantage. It made his repulsion as strong against sharp attacks as it was strong against blunt ones. He never found out why it had that weakness but at least he solved it. Gravity Vortex was surprisingly hard to level.

**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar was censored even in his evolutionary space.

Coagulated Mana Repository was not what he expected when the skill evolved. He assumed he would get a ‘woven’ type of skill but it just treated his weaving as an active motion. The repository or mana pool itself wasn't woven.

Coagulated Mana Repository - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 500% + 10.0% before coagulating. Coagulated mana will line the walls of the mana chassis. Maximum charge of coagulated mana is static. Coagulated mana holds a static 10% more mana than completely condensed mana. Coagulated mana has a static 500% stability and resistance to change. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.

The skill gave him a field day of hypothesizing.

He did not know what coagulated mana was and the skill doesn’t even mention a percentage for its static maximum charge. He could feel it in his mana chassis. A very thin layer of grimy and viscous mana lined up his chassis as if clogging his veins up. He evolved the skill pretty late in his training with the Apex Apes and was not able to go heavy into experimentation but he got the gist of it.

After his mana pool filled up with his maximally compressed mana, a small portion would be able to compress a further 10%. That was what the skill considered as coagulated mana. The maximum charge was static because he only had a static mana chassis size.

He had no idea if increasing Wisdom would increase the maximum charge but from what he understood of his own body, it probably would. The higher his Wisdom stat, the more his mana chassis would split up. Like bubbles or tiny cells, he would get more of them but with a smaller size. The surface area would expand and hence, the area for ‘lining’ along the walls would increase ever so slightly.

This coagulated mana was 5 times harder to utilise. They would not move out of his mana chassis during normal spell casting. He assumed the ‘resistance to change’ was how hard it was for him to decompress and use the mana.

He couldn’t use coagulated mana as it was. It wasn’t just liquefied mana that was 10% denser than what he could usually pull off. It had slightly different properties altogether and he hasn’t pinpointed them. At the moment, he treated it as an emergency mana supply.

He wasn’t sure how much mana max charge equated to but he had an estimate. It was likely 5% of his maximum mana capacity or less.

Even Mana Chassis Implosion wouldn’t ease up the coagulated mana enough for him to use it casually. He didn’t use the skill at full power often. Not even he was crazy enough to hurt himself so critically during training with the Apex Apes.

It was tough to level a tier 3 skill by only using it at the intensity of the tier 2 version, Potent Mana Overdraft.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure what use coagulated mana had if it was so hard to cast magic with. Sure, for him 5 times harder wasn’t an immovable rock. But if he was ever forced into a situation where he used up all his mana, he would be hard-pressed to pull out 5 times more mental effort for the same power of spells.

He hadn’t been able to sense a difference in spell power by using decompressed coagulated mana.

For his Generic skills, Slumber Survival Instinct and Exhaustion Resistance benefitted the most from his time with some gorilla sized monkeys.

He has not done the math for his stats after his Conditioning evolved since he hadn’t looked at his status much. Now that his Fortifications have been enhanced with new additions, he’ll have to reorganise how he counted his stats.

‘Should I even bother with stats…it’ll be practice for Calculated Hunch I guess.’ Ebony didn’t look down on stats but his base values haven’t changed for years.

Thinking about that, he thought he would gain more than he assumed from levelling. Now that his skills were in the level five to six hundred, their multipliers would also be stagnant or plateau. Stats might be more worthwhile than he assumed.

Levelling up his skills was harder than levelling his Classes up. That was the whole reason why they were stuck at Master for an extended period. They might not be the best reference for levelling speed.

Lightning Tether and Electroshock were two of his lightning spells. They had to reach 150 to be viable to be added to one of Classes but he had chosen not to bring them up. They had utility and strengthened his slowing effect but he ultimately decided to put it on hold and branched towards sealing and Will instead. He was spreading himself quite thin.

‘I can work on creating another Sub-Class skill slot in the meantime. I don’t know what level it takes to bring a generic skill into a class as a grandmaster to king but I don’t think that’ll be a big issue. The more I work on them, the cheaper it’ll be. Generic skills aren’t useless either.’

Lightning Tether - Gather and draw lightning mana to strike a target with a sustained chain of lightning. Lightning Tether has the effect of 200% + 1.0% Intelligence per level.

Consumes 300 MP/Min

Classification: Lightning Magic

It was quite refined for a tier 1 skill, having a lightning mage teach him step by step helped. The casting method he was forced to use was not convenient.

Ebony would have to toss a lightning mana ore behind his target, and then draw the lightning mana towards himself. Zapping the target in between him and the lightning mana ore.

The amount of lightning mana in the atmosphere was too little to cast anything that could be considered an attack, even with his range of control over a kilometre. The mana cost was quite high for a tier 1 skill and it didn’t even consider the amount of mana that was being extracted from the lightning mana ore. It just referred to how much mana it took for him to manipulate and maintain the spell.

He would usually have one of his mental holds sustain the chain of lightning. The interesting part about lightning magic was that was it hit a target and connected with it, it took extremely little effort to aim. Lightning mana would aim itself for him. Flesh was a conductor of electricity and it certainly helped mages like him.

This meant that once he placed the lightning mana ore down, he just had to keep his mana supply up and Lightning Tether would connect him, the target and the ore even if the target was moving.

It was very convenient. The range that he could extract lightning mana was quite short but it was easily solved when he stuffed one of his Models with a couple of lightning mana ores. A few of them could surround him and he would have a field of moving electrical power rods that chained Lightning Tether to whatever he wanted.

He could manipulate lightning not to touch his skin and just come towards him or even towards any point in space within his mental range of control but he could train his lightning resistance so why not?

Ebony ignored the fact that Lightning Tether did absolutely nothing to the Apex Apes. They barely twitched no matter how long or intense he zapped them.

Electroshock - Gather lightning mana in your body over the surface of your skin or objects in contact with you. Lightning mana charged with your mana reacts violently in contact with what you deem foe with an effect of 150% + 1.0% Intelligence per level.

Consumes 250 MP/Min

Classification: Lightning Magic

This was a simple but dangerous spell. Dangerous for the caster but not so much for him.

Ebony knew about electrical currents in the body. They were what the people of this world called lightning mana. A lightning mage could essentially kill themselves if they were not careful with the lightning mana in their body.

Of course, it wasn’t instantly fatal for these mages if they had a high Vitality stat but they could easily give themselves permanent brain damage.

As for Ebony, he already tested on himself. Even his electrical currents were made of mana chassis. Since he couldn’t sense blood or flesh mana, he didn’t know how his mana chassis worked. With lightning, he was able to guess that his entire body, be it bone, blood or flesh mana was also made up of his mana chassis.

It meant he could regenerate electrical currents but that didn’t help. However, he wouldn’t die and he could control his body with magic even if he couldn’t physically move or had electrical currents transmit signals through his nervous system.

That was too weak. Like gravity mana, his body didn’t exactly have an abundance of lightning mana. Hence, the Lightning Tether that was connected to him would gather around his skin and weapon. It was quite basic for a spell but it worked.

Will probably affect the spell, it gave the spell some autonomous capability of zapping only foes or hostiles.

Soul Tolerance - Your soul’s tolerance is increased by 100% + 1.0% per level.

Even for vague and brief skill descriptions, this was one of those that explained the least. He got it after receiving too many of his essence roar. It was the only 'tolerance' skill he had and unlike resistances, the description doesn't talk about extended periods of exposure to a certain element. To this day, he didn't know what it did. He would still hurt himself when he used the roar so he tried not to use it. He didn't know how badly he was affected.

‘Skill wise, am I gaining less from my evolution because I already improved them all by myself or is it because I improved myself so much that I was basically a Grandmaster in a Master’s body hence there was nothing for me to gain from this evolution?’ Ebony felt like he got the short end of the stick despite the achievement of having pretty much what’s considered the maximum amount of Fortifications all at their strongest states together with two great skills.