Ebony's Fable

Anyone who evolved from Grandmaster to King, and was able to have decent Fortifications must have sufficient Potential for base stats. They were honestly extremely cheap at this stage of their evolution; it was as if Kings were supposed to be naturally stronger in all aspects. It supposedly got cheaper every evolution, making increments to them natural, even if the individual didn't have any manual evolution choice.

This was why some Grandmasters who evolved into King got much stronger the moment they woke up from evolution, even without any addition to their stat count.

The Elcrians didn't understand the phenomenon yet and why there were differences between the same Grandmaster evolution, but they already had enough data for many unproven hypotheses.

If they had more Emperors, they would see that this difference only grew even wider.

While he didn't change anything with his Wisdom balance, he did for his Constitution.

Instead of adding to the stat, he added to the specific vessel itself in the crystal monolith.

For his body to take more mana without breaking down, he needed mana tolerance.

The frost flame attunement would probably help but his gut told him his mana alone may break his body sooner or later.

With arcane mana, stronger Will and various Skills all building his mana, yet few strengthening his body. There was an imbalance that would grow.

"This will make it harder to heal. Should I add to Vitality's regeneration factor so I can heal better naturally?" As he strengthened his physical body's mana tolerance, he instinctively knew that most healing magic was only going to become more and more useless to him.

He'd rather have better healing ability than make himself as durable as possible.

There were too many odd spells that could get through his defence.

Light magic was a good example of being an element that could mostly ignore magic defences. The chance of him picking a fight with someone with greater strength wasn't low either.

There was no such thing as indestructible.

Since that was the case, being able to heal was more important for him. It was also a weak point of his that if he lost a limb, too much blood or flesh, his body would be weakened due to Vitality not being able to keep up.

He strengthened his healing and regeneration rate, not directly to his Vitality stat, but adding stats to Vitality in future will help raise this trait higher in proportion.

Most of the crystal monolith's traits were tied to multiple stats after all.

Explosive speed or top speed was related to Strength and Agility, but there was a slope when it came to perceived effect. At low stat count, Agility gave more speed, but now, Strength gives more speed.

Speed was exponentially difficult to increase past a certain point.

Xin could double her Strength and barely increase her speed. Though she could easily do more than double once her augmentations and sword art get going, more concerning was that her art directly increases speed, which makes her Art so dominating on the physical prowess scale.

Ebony followed the movement speed Fortifications he had that linked to his Priming before it linked to the crystal monolith.

By the nature of his movement skill that utilised the Shi Clan skill of muscle control, he could accelerate to top speed practically instantly at the cost of stamina and a lot of recoil to his body. He could deal with both.

But his top speed was insufficient for his needs.

Be it his wife or the opponents he could face such as Vent, Ebony was disadvantaged in speed. Not so much for movement, thanks to his Fortifications. His punches, swings and kicks simply can't land a blow even if he maximises momentum transfer from his legs during movement.

The problem was less obvious against massive creatures such as the Saint Soldier and perhaps Miss Wiggles.

"Miss Wiggles' body was also interesting. She took a direct hit from a Saint, and her flesh, although sanded down, was pitch black. Some kind of gravitational field flesh and bones? What kind of mutation made her evolve into that?" Ebony was full of praise for Miss Wiggles.

She took a direct hit from a Saint and slept it off afterwards. Although she was still injured to this day, she ate Mallory's healing spell within her gravitational stomach and harrumphed away from any healer they brought her to. Due to their magic's futility. It was too bad Yvette was too busy and they couldn't get her to give it a try.

Miss Wiggles was napping in his pool since the couple had a swimming session. Before he started evolution, Miss Wiggles was still floating in their pool.

As a creature that goes in and out of hibernation, Miss Wiggles easily hibernates for decades or longer at a time, so it was no surprise she doesn't wake up easily once asleep. She seemed to heal faster that way, so Xin didn't bother her.

Taking a direct hit was something none of them present that day could've survived.

Durability aside, Miss Wiggles was less than stellar in a fight, and many of them could come up with hunting plans that could deal with Miss Wiggles.

Even Captain Bodyguard, Azzolith and his team should be able to get around Miss Wiggles' abilities. Vent might be the only one who could ensure that Miss Wiggles doesn't escape should she choose to run.

Ebony called upon his Instincts for what was evolutionarily the cheapest and most expensive that were within his growth direction for his crystal monolith.

He sifted through the top thousand options for both as they were utterly nonsensical. Increasing the thickness of his skin by 0.001mm was not even within his considerations. Neither was increasing his muscle and bone density by 40 million times, not that he could afford that.

He wasn't trying to kill himself off balance either. He didn't even have that much body mass to support the density. Ebony had read about people who played too much with these evolutionary decisions; increasing density doesn't increase their body mass. So their bodies would compress till they died while evolving.

Most of the time, this was how people died during their evolution. Or so it was hypothesised because people lose a good portion, if not all of their memories, even if they could manually decide on their evolution. Ebony was already lucky that he retained a large portion of his memories.

Some theories suggest all evolutionary choices were manual; people just don't remember anything from their first few evolutions.

Evolutionary traits on his crystal monolith were not like all the skills or stats. It was not a scale.

Adding Potential to skills would make them easier to level, raise their soft cap and so on. Adding to stats would increase their base effect proportionally.

Traits were a little different. If he didn't have sufficient Potential, he wouldn't be able to unlock some traits.

Using limbs as an example, he wouldn't grow half an arm if he only had half the required Potential. He just wouldn't be able to change himself that way. Plenty of traits had this minimum fixed cost.

But once unlocked, certain parts could be upgraded.

Ebony eyed his mana chassis; he could increase the volume of his mana chassis count but reducing their individual chassis to a smaller, finer version. It essentially achieves nothing; his Unique skill would be split between more factories, but their individual output would be lower. Unless he had specific uses for them, there wasn't much point in doing so.

Simultaneously going through both lists, Ebony's soul stopped when a certain change his instincts were hoping for arrived in his thoughts.

"Instincts influence thoughts and the other way around." Ebony saw the lack of Potential he had as this appeared from the top-down list. He never actively thought about most of these weird traits, but the moment he saw them, he understood why he would want or need them.

There was no one-word explanation for this trait he stopped at. To summarize, he was looking at material intangibility, deconstruction, reconstruction and abidance to Will.

"If my instincts aren't lying or completely incorrect, this will let my physical body break down, transfer along with Will and reconstruct itself. I can move my whole body throughout my network….I could store my body with Dusk, no, I have to reconstruct myself within a time frame or risk losing my body, but I could just 'teleport' back to Dusk and within the confines of my Domain. And my soul, it'll come along. It's tempting." Ebony was able to understand the trait without anyone answering him.

He was understating how immensely useful this ability could be. As long as there is no Will interference, his survivability with this would skyrocket.

There was a lot of risk that his instincts didn't answer.

For example, in the case of Will interference, he was pretty sure he might lose his body permanently. This trait ties his physical body to his chassis, and Will was imbued with his mana stored in his chassis and chassis itself; getting damaged in this state was going to be lethal.

His body and chassis will reconstruct into the same shape as his soul, and he wouldn't risk disfigurement if he understood this trait correctly.

"It falls upon how strong my Will is or how much I can trust my Will over how much I trust my body." With this, he could copy many of the techniques his Apparitions can do.

He would have a similar ability with Xin's transmutation into flames, not taking physical damage should she wish to.

Ebony didn't have much time left in this space, but he had to come up with hypothetical situations where this would be a disadvantage and also think about how this would kill him right after getting the trait.

As far as he could tell, the benefits outweigh the small disadvantages. After all, he could simply not use the ability. He couldn't see how this would kill him the moment he starts evolving, but one thing was for sure, he didn't understand Will, soul and his physical body well enough.

What if he deconstructed himself without any certainty that he could reconstruct himself?

It wasn't like he could find someone who could teach him. This seemed to be a partial mana being trait. There was close to no chance Mallory had already studied this when he hadn't.

"I could have Muse stand by and tell me how my soul moves. Deconstruct hair and nails as tests. There are risks, but also ways to learn and circumvent them."

His mind had already decided, but his 'wallet' failed him, and there was no bank to borrow from.

It was not a trait he could afford even if he had 100% of his Potential vat.

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By his calculations, after the refunding and the amount he received as he bathed in his potion and consumed the Willshard Ember Crystal. He had a total of 109.4% of his Vat's volume.

21.8% spent on his Fortifications, 10% on his Classes and Class Skills. 2% shared between all his Generic Skills and future Generic Skills. 2% for each of his Core Skills, including the future 4th slot that he was obviously 'unlocking'. Unlocking it was practically free after all.

And it only took 2.6% of his vat's volume to push his base stats to what he decided upon. Base stats were cheap.

Using that scale, this trait cost 133% of his vat to unlock, so even if he took every Fortification and expenditure back, he wouldn't be able to get this.

"I see it's meant to be for me as an Emperor and not a King." Ebony was confident that he had gained as much Potential as he could in the time frame that he spent as a Grandmaster.

Perhaps if he spent a few more decades before he evolved, this trait would cost less Potential to obtain. There were no ifs and buts.

"I'm left with 65%, so I'm lacking 63%."

With his remaining time, he scanned through all his existing traits on his crystal monolith. He wasn't about to reconsider his decisions on his Fortifications and all other expenditures so far.

His soul had the greatest volume of Potential within the entire crystal monolith. This was as expected. It was one of the reasons or perhaps the result of being born on Earth.

He didn't touch that.

His mind and mana were next, but he similarly didn't touch that. He wasn't looking to decrease his sentience or anything like that.

Next was his physique as a whole.

And next was his lifespan.

"What do I need this much lifespan for?"

Ebony could outlive Elves of the same evolutionary rank by multiple generations.

Lifespan was an evolutionary advantage. Even more so for a mage.

He could technically hole up somewhere, train his mana capacity and skills for thousands of years and walk out a few human generations later with mana capacity no one could hope to match unless they did the same. But a few generations of people would've passed in the meantime, even the Emperor ranked humans' lives a fraction of his total lifespan.

"Xin has a short life span. I don't need a long life span at the moment." Ebony decisively transferred Potential out of his lifespan and into his vat.

When he did so, he was able to better understand the distribution of life span.

There were inefficiencies. His soul had the greatest life span, then his mind and finally his body. There were other portions, such as spirit, but most of these unknown, untranslatable traits were linked to the 3 mentioned in some way.

However, the lifespan of the body was also the most Potential expensive to increase.

"I'm not exactly planning to separate my soul from my body to live longer. Might as well balance them out and save on some Potential from the soul's long lifespan." He'd trained his body hard; he wasn't so attached to living that he wanted to live in a different body even if he had the chance or ability to do that.

"Hmm, maybe I can technically live in a conjured body? That will still retain my skills. My magic is getting better, replicating my body is only going to get better." The sudden realisation had him pause and keep his soul's lifespan slightly ahead in terms of Potential.

With the knowledge of creatures and races that could absorb lifespan directly or target the soul, he saw it as reasonable redundancy and accepted the inefficiency of imbalance. Meditating and his simulation skill made his mind experience a lot more time than his body requires his mind to have a longer lifespan than his body.

Despite the exponential rise in Potential required for any trait, he received small amounts of Potential, and he felt his lifespan decrease at an alarming rate.

"I never added to my lifespan. This is just my natural life being long by genetics, so there is surprisingly little Potential I can get from it despite my long life. Oh, weird. I'm getting more Potential as my lifespan drops lower."

Ebony played around with a few traits and their Potential and learned something fairly interesting.

Physical size, for example. After a certain point, increased size was seen as an evolutionary disadvantage, and the same pattern was observed if size was decreased. Whenever he moved Potential in a way that was deemed disadvantageous, the amount of Potential he could draw out increased accordingly.

Furthermore, physical size was weird. If he pushed his size to the extremes, there was a point where it would suddenly drain Potential instead of returning. Ebony felt that it was also relevant to the individual, their skills and abilities as to what was deemed disadvantage and what wasn't.

"So if I induce some kind of evolutionary weakness, I can get Potential to spend elsewhere? How dangerous." Ebony quickly put the Potential he was playing with back to their original spot. He didn't want to fall into evolution just because he was experimenting.

Ebony then removed his lungs completely and expanded his stomach slightly.

Lungs were overrated anyway.

A conjured version would do, but Ebony didn't even need that.

There was a trait that allowed his cells to directly intake air and skip the necessity of blood transferring oxygen.

What's more, he already had that trait unlocked, and so did all humans. It was unlocked but extremely weak. This remained nearly Potentialless as well.

That brought to mind what his heart would even be good for, but Ebony kept the organ.

The heart didn't just pump oxygen. Blood was the main carrier for life force. He was even considering strengthening his heart so that he could better take some of his wife's enhancement spells. Be it blood or direct life force.

It would do him good, but he already raised his baseline Vitality enough that he didn't have to.

He could also unlock the trait to remove the necessity of oxygen altogether, but he wasn't here to spend, he was trying to receive Potential.

Ebony didn't know how many years of life he had.

The value he could sense here was in terms of Potential, and nothing about it gave him a number for his years of life.

He also knew this included years that he was already alive. So if he removed lifespan far back enough, he could technically kill himself before he finished evolving. How much volume of Potential equalled his current age?

He had no idea.

It was a gamble to drop it down to a single per cent of how much Potential he had in lifespan.

Due to the price curve, he probably dropped his life span more than a hundred times.

Ebony didn't think it was an issue.

He hadn't seen any generation of Xeng die of old age, despite what Kong Jing said about their relatively shorter lifespan. Kong Jing herself probably didn't know the answer, but knew something was odd.

With just knowledge of natural ingredients around the universe, Ebony could name thousands of plants, creatures and materials that could increase lifespan. This wasn't even including magical means.

It still wasn't enough Potential. There was a steep dive in Potential volume life span gave compared to his soul or mind.

But he was only missing 6% now.

Ebony thought about his strengths and weaknesses compared to a normal human and figured he could use a bit more sleep.

The need for sleep was a weakness he didn't mind inducing a little more of.

In this regard, his wife was the same. Grandmasters like Hector needed to sleep every day.

But he and his wife didn't need to sleep for weeks, months if they never trained or for some reason couldn't exert any physical and mental energy.

They slept once or twice a week. This number could increase depending on how deep into exhaustion their Conditioning and Priming could get. Yet the deeper they went into exhaustion, the higher their exhaustion resistance got.

Unwilling to completely throw away this advantage, unlike his lifespan. Ebony got 1% of his needs from increasing need for sleep and stopped. There was initially far less Potential here compared to lifespan.

"This won't do. Only fatal weaknesses give more Potential. What would be a fatal weakness I can deal with?"

His Instincts answered his question once again,

"That is indeed an evolutionary weakness." Ebony saw the vessel presented to him. Emotional attachment.

This trait wasn't 'unlocked', but Ebony could feel emotionally attached already.

This made him wonder…was his emotional attachment so far faked by himself in his act on understanding human norms? Did he brainwash himself into thinking he cared about things, about people?

"This…is certainly unpleasant to find out." Ebony's instincts brought up memories, very old ones. For once, it wasn't about fighting or his mother.

It was his father.

Looking back, he finally noticed that his father had been planting psychological cues in him since he had become aware.

"From what little I know about the Rime, I know they are a tribe of mana-beings. 0% human. But Dad got a human body, did a human mind change him? Probably. And what would that mean for me? A human body is just one part of my genetics, at least, genetics past biology. Dad had been planting cues in my mind, so that I'm…capable of feeling attached? Faking so well that it becomes real. Is that why he says some ridiculous things sometimes? Did seeing or fighting mom unlock or loosen his emotional attachment trait…hence he told me something similar will happen to me?"

Ebony never even considered that what he felt all the time was fake. Why would he think that?

He could enjoy delicious food. He could feel pity looking at orphaned children picking up food on the streets of Tidal. He could feel happy with his friends Hector and Apa. He could feel anger when Xin had been teleported away, though she jumped in on her own.

Yet his crystal monolith was showing him that he genetically never had any emotional attachment to anything. To anyone.

"How unreal. My core development has been due to emotional growth." Ebony saw this as a win, he unlocked the trait and got a surprising amount of Potential.

Then again, he understood that this wasn't a trait for emotions but for attachment. Hence, he was saddened to find out that he genetically wouldn't care if he lost the things he grew emotions for.

He thought he would, but this crystal monolith was telling him otherwise.

Strengthening his attachment gave him more Potential.

For the ability to move his fleshy body through Will, it was a cheap price to pay.

The cuisine set buff might be getting to him, as he was a little more hard-headed about this Material-Will-Reconstruction trait. It also stopped him from reducing his lifespan any further than he already had.

With the trait 'bought', Ebony had leftover Potential. He didn't strengthen the trait he chose for moving his breaking and reassembling his body through Will.

The additional 5.5%, a surprising amount, was added to mana purity. It was extremely cheap because he was supposed to be genetically growing in this direction to begin with.

He was about to disappear from this evolutionary space, having taken too much time with the Willshard Ember Crystal.

Ebony meddled with his crystal monolith a little more. His Status should show a Will resource value the next time he opens it up. It should also show his stat value relative to his original.

These changes didn't take Potential. Thanks to the existing calculation skill, he could have done this by himself. The knowledge was already in his mind, but he hadn't visualised it in his Status.

"Well, off to dreamland." Ebony's disappearing hands and feet didn't alarm him.

But what came next did.

'Ting' 'Evolution of a King is beginning. Evaluating calling….combat. Evaluating forte…endurance. Evaluating path thus far…repetitive training, formless and murder.'

'Ting' 'Combat Ascendancy Trial determined.'

"Ah, so this is why people die during evolutions and not the evolution itself. No mentions or written knowledge about this. That means…the Ubiquitous Providence hides these memories with extra certainty. From King ranked onwards, the Ubiquitous Providence requires us to prove that we as a specimen are truly a 'King' of something. Interesting." Ebony knew that even on Elcra, there was a death rate for Grandmasters who tried to evolve.

From unclassed to Grandmaster, the evolution death rate only comes from external reasons. There is no risk from evolution itself.

However, even the Xengs had a couple of deaths from evolution itself. Though he only heard of those who died, evolving from the ranks of a King to an Emperor.

Ebony had assumed it was due to the vast energies he was absorbing from a Mythical quality material and various other high-ranked natural materials, but that didn't seem to be the case now.

The titles for each evolutionary rank didn't mean nothing, just as the titles for Classes.

Now it seemed like the Ubiquitous Providence was more hands-on for any creature trying to be a 'King' of something.

"A trial, huh? Since it's for combat, I would be fighting something or someone. I'm intrigued." Ebony's mind and body were back in one piece in a different place.

It looked exactly like his home, but there was no one here other than him. Past his fence and walls was nothing but black space that was slowly extending into a meadow plain.

Dusk was here, in full force and not with merely Unfading Will. However, no staff body. Only the tree form of Dusk and no internal power source of mana.

Icicle was also on his back, and so was his heavy cube sitting within Dusk.

'Ting' 'Combat Ascendancy Trial will begin. Generating scripts of all creatures you have murdered on your path to power thus far. Exceeding the norms, stand above the rest as a true King of combat.'

A loud screeching of bones grinding against each other sounded at the start of this trial.

Ebony barely had time to look up to see Saint Soldier sandblasting his entire house into the ground.

"Sheesh, point blank?"