Ebony's Fable

Ebony went to the playground to finally start getting used to his new body. His mana had fully recharged, compressed, coagulated and was resting for many hours.

It didn’t feel like he would take as long to get used to his body and mind as compared to Ning Xin. She hasn’t even gotten confident enough to say that she can control her own body, technique and skills to maximum efficiency yet. Only 99.7% at best. To people like them, perfection in body and skill control was of utmost importance.

Anything less than their 100% would be shameful to show. It would be embarrassing if their attacks were off by a millimetre. A huge inaccuracy that they normally wouldn’t make.

Ning Xin had to deal with The Itch after her evolution, he already dealt with that.

He gained some height, his limbs lengthened, and his overall frame bulked up slightly. But every part of himself felt right.

A casual footwork and sword dance allowed him to get a feel of his new reach. Icicle no longer felt as oversized. He could swing it even smoother. Wielding it with one or two arms didn’t feel any different. However, he did feel a lot more stable and grounded on his feet no matter what odd moves he did. Like nothing could push his stance or footing.

It was especially obvious when he tried to take a Phantom’s Flicker. His legs weren’t lunging ahead and his body could remain upright. More so than before.

He could make use of his movement’s momentum even better.

His dance, his half or full spins, his swings all flowed without pause. Openings from spinning still existed but few could make use of it to hit him. The openings were just a trap anyway.

Ebony stealthed Icicle and put it against a tree. Then he had to put it on the ground thanks to the dent in the tree’s bark.

‘Ethereal Form Arts. There’s no way to train this. There are no set moves to practise since it shouldn’t even be a ‘Form’. How should I train this before incorporating swordsmanship into it? Combat’s the only way but I don’t know anyone who can land a hit on me if they have the same speed. Aside from my Model. Right, I can try making that simulation skill again.’

Ebony wasn’t looking down on the combatants present but they did not fight in a method that would help his technique. Ning Xin had vastly improved her sword technique but it was thanks to her overwhelming speed and power that she could force him to dodge or get hit.

He could imagine the movements but his body and his Models couldn’t pull it off. It might be different now that he evolved and he had the Art but it was not a mastery or sword dance. There were technically no actions or movements to train for his martial style.

He was built…brought up to react to just about anything that came his way. Within a short time frame of 15, no, 9 to 10 years, he was only beaten up and forced to learn how not to be killed. Before that, it was just normal physical conditioning.

Even if his mother had offensive moves, she hadn’t taught him any. Probably because she gave up teaching him the spear early on.

Ebony didn’t ponder on the lack of an appropriate opponent and simply sparred with a few of his Models after imbuing Will into them and disconnecting his control over them. One of them had his fighting skills, another had Ning Xin’s, and a third partially fought like how he remembered his mother to fight but with a massive physical buff from a normal human. The fourth was a giant Troll, Gao’larg.

Each of them were independent of each other. Ebony knew practically every little habit that Ning Xin and himself had and the Glacial Models mimicked that. In the short time he battled Gao’larg, he already copied the Troll’s general frame and muscular motions almost perfectly.

His mind’s flexibility to create another sculpture and imbue completely different fighting techniques was inhuman. He imbued a completely different Will into each of them in less than 10 seconds apart.

Seeing how easy it became, he created a set of Imperial Knights in ice armour. He’d seen enough to know how they fight to about 90% confidence. Knights and soldiers were even more robotic than him in this sense. There was little individuality in their showing.

Of course, he wasn’t saying they didn’t have individuality but they trained to fight that way so that it was easy to cooperate in large numbers. The boon in numbers and making full use of its advantage was something Ebony couldn’t deny.

Unfortunately, his Glacial Models couldn’t exactly keep up with his real body and it wasn’t much of a training. But he had to say, it was quite annoying fighting his own and Ning Xin’s Model at the same time. If he didn’t destroy them outright.

His Model was capable of keeping someone busy, locking them down. It even had access to most of his actual spells, to a greatly weakened degree now that they lost connection with him and he wasn’t manually helping his Model cast.

Then Ning Xin’s Model would harass the target till her power built up. The combo was balanced.

Actually, her Model would not ‘harass’ it would straight up go full aggression. It used his flames instead but he didn’t give it any lightning magic capability. Ebony hasn’t gotten so familiar with lightning that he could translate that into Will to be imbued.

‘More compelling Will, does it just give more individuality? Ah, my imbuement is more intense depending on what I was thinking or willing into existence. That’s useful, now, that definitely benefits my domain.’ Ebony walked over to the training Frost Elves and found Christy resting under a cool shade that snowed just for her.

“I’m going to test out a new spell, it shouldn’t be dangerous but just in case…”

“Go there, what kind of spell? Congratulations by the way.”

“Thank you. Domain spell. At least, it should be considered a proper one now.”

“Urgh, let me get that guy instead.” Christy groaned at the implications and summoned the one that shall not be named.

The one that shall not be named was busy talking to the King-ranked crafters. The crafters were the real elders in terms of age and seniority, strength aside. So it was a sight to behold that the King combatant was politely nodding while being berated for something.

Ebony greeted the elders, the one that created the bows that followed and protected them and the Death Tailor were just lazing around with a plate of frost plums while watching the children play.

He couldn’t sense death mana, probably no one else present could. Kong Jing left because she also had no way of removing the death mana. It was probably not an attack of any sort. He was more inclined to believe that she traded an item or material and was in the midst of transporting it somewhere without people. While also doing experiments or crafting.

It seemed like they were husband and wife. Maybe. It was hard to tell when the villagers were close-knit to begin with.

The bow crafter did make 50 bows with spirits that automatically followed and protected him. Sadly, their help was limited without an archer wielding them. Ebony was still grateful because it was thanks to these bows that he only had a few hundred Jetfins chasing them.

The one that shall not be named took the opportunity to slip away from the elders' berating speech when Christy called him.

“You got a skill evolution? Wow, a mana being is truly special. You’re even more attuned to mana than us now that you’re a grandmaster. You’re not a complete mana being right?”

“I don’t think so. I’m still more physical than mana.”

“Now that you mention, his mana is quite pure too.” Christy stared at him more intensely.

Ebony could feel both of their mana signatures just caressing his skin. It wasn’t uncomfortable and he allowed it without saying a thing since they helped and he also rudely Appraised them before. He was listening to what they had to say about him so that he could learn more about the nature of mana.

First of all, he was brought to attention about the purity of mana again.

Unlike density, a rise in purity didn’t increase spell power directly. Ebony was unclear on the exact specifics but the purer the mana the easier for the mage to utilise. His mana’s purity might be the entire reason why he had an easy time casting magic, and manipulating mana and the elements.

At the same time, he sort of understood how people determined if someone was more suitable to become a mage. If an individual were born with purer mana, there was a high chance they would have an easier time manipulating mana and becoming a mage. This didn’t consider elemental affinity.

Looking at mana ores, the difference between ranks is more obvious in purity compared to density. A lot of magic enchantments required a certain purity of mana to even activate. Hence, higher-quality mana ores have more value than the density or actual amount of mana an ore possesses.

Ebony’s mana sense had vastly improved but his introspection wasn’t good enough to what his own mana was like. He would take data based on different rarities of mana ores after his experiment here.

The one that shall not be named was a Domain mage.

Ebony learned some basic information about domains from the tall man.

The lowest tier domain was 3. Hence, they thought that his ‘domain’ was just a strong area of effect spell. The most important effect of a domain was a mage’s control over their own elements.

Just a tier 3 version gave him a 1000% more robust control. Other mages who could manipulate ice or any element he also wields should have ten times more difficulty ripping his spell away. He didn’t know if it was enough to stop these Frost Elves but it would surely help.

Generally, tier 3 domains were budding domains. Tier 4 is mature domains. Tier 5 are budding realms and tier 6 are mature realms. Ebony wasn’t told more because ‘knowledge was dangerous’ and he was deemed to be incapable of protecting himself from learning too much.

He secretly thought that the Frost Elf just didn’t know what the higher tiers were called.

The word ‘realm’ hinted that Ning Xin had been dragged into a mage’s spell. A much higher form of domain.

Other than just a stronger control over mana in his domain, it was supposedly harder for anyone else to even drag out mana from within their bodies. Depending on the domain, it was even possible for them to reduce the effectiveness of body enhancement magic.

Ebony was familiar with the phenomenon. Just like in the Icy regions and deeper parts of the Glades, it was harder to cast spells and manipulate mana there. It was like adding weights to his mental muscles. Perfect for his training.

However, most human mages would probably be too weighed down to cast magic properly.

That was why the Empire’s collection of mages’ Fourth Order mages was so impressive. Being able to maintain a domain that weakens all mages and even any warrior that uses mana was amazing.

According to Koawe’s knowledge, Navin wasn’t a Domain mage. But that was outdated knowledge. Few had seen Navin fight nowadays.

“Okay, there have been some changes but I should be in full control.” Ebony personally created the spell. He knew what changes he made.

He spent little liquid potential and there shouldn’t be a large deviation from what he wanted the spell to become. Every little change was manually made by him after all.

He gave them the heads up and the one that shall not be named set up a small area for him. The mage cast a hollowed-out domain so that his mana didn’t interfere with Ebony’s. It only had a wall of mana or Will to prevent anything from slipping out without the real domain mage’s permission.

A second passed. Then ten whole seconds of silence passed.

The Frost Elves waited patiently but Ebony was not expecting an endless pool of Will that the spell was taking up. He was getting mentally drained!

It took a whole twenty seconds of furiously feeding the spell his Will before it sprung into existence. A five-metre radius sphere of his mana spread out. It would take 355,000 mana per minute if he had every element at his disposal operating at full speed but all he was doing was setting his mana up in place. Since the mana was just sitting around, he wasn’t wasting even a fraction of that mana cost.

However, this mana had to come from somewhere. His tiny mana pool didn’t hold that much. He had to decompress his mana to his natural mana density for it to form. Decompressing it that much was also another safety precaution.

The Will that he pulled out went back into his mind, confusing him.

The two King Classed fighters just widened their eyes in response to being bathed in his mana.

‘I increased their mana regeneration. Cool effect, I’m like a walking calming pearl now.’ Ebony pinpointed their reason for surprise relatively quickly since he could sense a faster flow of mana overflowing from them.

He wasn’t able to quantify other’s regeneration at the moment but he felt like he just needed practice and a couple thousand more people as reference.

Noticing that effect, he released even more of his mana to compress his domain to check if it increased their regeneration even more.

It did, but not directly proportionally. Just two of them didn’t give him enough data.

‘Alright, soother mana makes people calmer under the influence of my mana. The effect of increasing their mana regeneration should be related but it's not a direct relation. Let’s see what an increase in Will compulsion does. Hmm…freeze.’

Just when Ebony thought that, the temperature dropped drastically. He went easy but quickly inputted that he wanted the area to be even colder. The response from his domain was to convert his mana into ice mana. When it reached the limit that his ice could produce, they burst into flames to bring the temperature down further.

All of this was done without much mental effort. It was as easy as counting from one to three.

The twenty-second cast time was unreasonable but the effects seemed worthwhile.

However, he could tell he was already mostly drained of Will. He didn’t even have enough to conjure and imbue a single Glacial Model.

‘I need a higher Wisdom stat. That seems to increase my Will. Maybe this isn’t even all the Will the spell requires but just the minimum required to bring it into existence. I’ll try the gravity and other elements on monsters or some other target. Now I’m just curious as to what this ‘separate arsenal’ is.’

With a little testing, the domain suddenly summoned a Model for him.

It seemed like the huge amount of Will he imbued didn’t disappear or get consumed immediately. It was still in him but it had been reserved to hold the domain in place. Since he was thinking of creating a separate model, the spell spawned one with the Will he already used up.

Ebony felt Will was consumed this time.

The model could not be a separate arsenal.

He didn’t know why, but he instinctively knew that a sculpture of ice with his Will imbue was not his arsenal.

Ebony didn’t even know what an arsenal referred to.

‘Let’s use logic, an arsenal is a collection of weapons, equipment or just an array of resources. The Will I gathered just flowed back into me. That must be what the skill meant by turning myself into the central core of my domain. Since that’s the case, if the Will I gathered was cast or attached to something else that would turn into my separate arsenal. so…I can essentially cast my domain away from me. Maybe placing a domain permanently?’

He tried to gather the Will spent on his domain and put it into his Model despite instinctively knowing it wouldn’t work.

He was right, it wouldn’t work and he wasn’t sure why but he didn’t regret trying.

At least he found out he couldn’t recover the Will that’s spent on his domain completely. So if he was determined to cast it, he had to be sure he wasn’t going to use Will on some other Model or spell that required Will.

“Domains can be cast onto something, or a location and be set up permanently.” He immediately asked the more experienced domain mage. They didn’t seem to care about tone and understood he was asking a question.

“That’s why we Elves still live in forests. Our village, Tuctra, is our matriarch's domain. Each of us who are domain mages has our own territory too. That’s the best home and safe haven any domain mage can have at the end of the day.” The experienced Frost Elf were speaking words of gold that Ebony probably would have a hard time finding out from books.

“Cool. I assume it’s possible to continue strengthening one. If I had to guess, that might be the best method of training and levelling a domain spell.” Ebony already knew how the gist of all things skills worked, he could make a guess. Just practise and improve.

“...Right again. But do you think you can support it for long?” The experienced domain mage hit the head of the nail.

“Not yet. The Will I gathered to cast is being consumed as we speak.” Ebony estimated that his Will would run out in about half an hour. Then, he wouldn’t be able to have his domain sustained even if he had the mana for it.

“Here’s a tip for creating your territory. We don’t fully understand Will but we know it leaves residues. I’m not aware of your domain’s specifics and no, don’t share that information. That’s like sharing a key to your vault. But the more you cast it on the same area or target, the more these residues will stick. It's not too different from casting a spell over and over again and increasing their level. You’ll figure it out when you use it for some time.”

Once again, Ebony soaked up the knowledge. He was about to share his ‘key’ so that he could have input from the experienced domain mage but the Frost Elves were kind enough to stop him. However, it was obvious from his words ‘area or target’ that there were at least two types.

‘Maybe some domain mages can cast their domain on a specific location. Mine on the other hand requires a core central, or what he called a target. Hmm, maybe it can’t be mobile. That’s why my Model cannot receive my Will. Or is my Model just too weak of a vessel to store it? This is fun, more experiments. I need to go to school.’

“About Will, how do we know how much of it we have.” He decided to be a little shameless and asked despite knowing how rude he already appeared to be.

“It’s heavily tied to Wisdom but we noticed its capacity increases after exertion even without a skill. From our excerpts, I’d say it increases by 10% after a hundred years of daily use. If stats remain constant. The final tip is that daily use does not refer to casting spells with Will. It’s experiencing life.”

“I see. Thanks for the information. I’ll share what I know when I figure something out in exchange.”

No matter, Ebony was going to repay the favour one day. This information alone already helped him get on the track. It might not be the right track but there was no ‘right’ track, only different paths. As for a destination, he had never been one to care.

He would reach where he would reach, no need to ponder on it. He just had to keep moving. If he didn’t like his destination, he could go elsewhere. If he got lost, even more reason to keep moving.

‘10% after a hundred years. That’s likely using Frost Elves as an example. I have a feeling due to racial traits, Will is where my advantages lie. There’s no other reason why I can use Will as early as a measly Master and these expert mages barely touch on it as Kings.

However, I only have early access while they have a far stronger version once they get access. After all, as a King or higher their stats would be higher. Experiencing life sounds vague but I think I get what he means. Will is not a traditional resource. I don’t know if there are any skills related to Will but it doesn’t sound like he knows about such a skill.’

Ebony made use of their presence and tried out some of his spells in a weakened form. Allowing his domain to bring them to life without mental effort from him. The mana drain started soon enough and the high expenditure forced him to stop his conditioning quickly.

He saw Korta, Korben and even Vent just watching him along with the two Kings already present.

‘Vent is quite intimidating. He hid Korta and Korben’s presence so that I wasn’t distracted. He can catch me off guard with ease. Strongest indeed. Gen probably couldn’t beat him if what Ning Xin said is true.’ They were within his domain.

Yet he didn’t even know they were just standing there until he looked over. It wasn’t an invisibility trick. It was just basic skills of hiding one’s mana and essence. Although he knew the technique was used to hide from other mages, these were the only mages that could hide their essence from him even in his domain. He just didn’t know how they hid the disruptions their body would do to gravity mana in the surroundings.

Korben was the only one who was…drunk from the effects of his mana. The rest were bona fide Kings who were not affected by the sheer density of his liquid mana.

‘I don’t believe it's just because they’re Kings…I have to take note that races highly attuned to mana are less affected by dense mana. Hmm…oh, that’s how. Fascinating trick, I doubt I would have to learn it but it’s nice to know how they're doing this.’ Before his domain faded out of existence, he managed to sense a thin layer of mana around the Frost Elves.

They were protecting themselves with their mana. It was quite different from what he saw Imperial mages do. These Frost Elves mixed something else in their mana skin like manipulation. He could only sense Korta’s and Christy’s and only because they were dissipating it while his domain was running out.

They chuckled when he tilted his head at their stares.

“Haha, don’t worry. I believe you owe us less than you think.” The one that shall not be named brushed their stares off.

“This is rather insightful,” Christy added.

“It’s so different from my family’s. Did you watch carefully, Ben?” Korta mumbled and smacked Korben’s shoulders.

Korben was lagging mentally from the effects of his mana and took a second to get back to speed.

‘Family huh…I just thought of something. Are domains something only an individual can add to? Since they run villages but still have family territories. Haha interesting, maybe they work their way around not having enough Will by having an entire family with similar skills imbue Will into an area. With multiple people at work, building a safe home would be a lot easier than a one-man job. If my idea is even possible. That would make lineages or domains grow over time since they said Will has residues.’

Ebony’s drive to study kept rising.