“Xin? What’s troubling you?” Ebony saw their chef staring at the cow-sized dog that was in one piece, it died with a single stab through its head.
The intense look in her eyes and the tapping of her mask was pointing it out to him.
“My oven can’t reach a temperature high enough to cook the meats that we are facing nowadays. My pots, pans and even my stove might melt before this meat gets lukewarm.” She probably only saw monsters as meat.
“That’s quite a predicament.” He knew what not being able to cook meant to the chef.
“Mmm…” She didn’t really respond.
“The houses here are heat resistant, why don’t you use them as a temporary oven or maybe you could smoke some meat.” He remembered the houses retaining their shape and integrity when she accidentally used more fire than necessary.
“That’s a great idea! I don’t think the wood I have for smoking is suitable, I didn’t carry any wood of equal quality to this teratish.” She clapped and made a tiny hop before getting down to picking an oven.
He was dragged along to help with cleaning the interior because she called him a clean freak and trusted his obsessiveness with cleanliness. She also didn’t want any smell of dirt on her food and he had to scrub every inch of the house while she prepared the food.
She decided to bake it whole since the ‘oven’ was large enough. He could hear her mumbling about hunting more down so that she could try various other cooking methods. She was certain they could finish the whole thing because it had very thick bones and skin which made it look beefier than it was.
He was just glad the Teratish’s metallic fur and odd molar-like teeth and wide jaws made it look different enough compared to a dog. Those teeth looked like they would crush bars of steel with ease.
Once his work was done, he went to check in on the studious duo.
Kong Jing was yelling in frustration. “Something’s missing…”
She mumbled to herself so fast that he had to get a summary from the calmer person in the factory. The production process was very easily disrupted. They just had to remove a limb or two and the golem will never reach completion after the helper puppets carry them onto one of the thousands of tables. These helper puppets don’t stop them from removing any from the tables either. They are probably the assemblers as well.
Anyone inside was completely ignored as if they didn’t exist to the puppets. They weren’t programmed to act differently when someone was here to mess things up.
“Well, we tried to observe the assembly a few times but it was really just a simple assembly. She’s saying there are missing…vowels and verses in the language that we found so far. I don’t understand why she calls it vowels or verses but yeah, we can’t decipher a large part of the language.” Mark pinched the flesh between his brows.
“Even though you know how this works already?” Ebony knocked on the runic golem that was lacking its core.
“Yeah, we are limited to this particular runic formation and I’m also able to use parts of the formula that I know the effects of. Think of it as paragraphs or sentences, we know what they mean overall in other words, their effect but we don’t know the letters and many words so we cannot utilise it to do what we can already do with our current knowledge.”
“So you removed the sentence which uses topaz mana right? And the problem now is to translate another element or non-elemental mana into the entire formula.”
“...That’s one way of looking at it.” Mark wasn’t keen on going into details or correcting him.
Ultimately, it meant that they couldn’t use it too much other than what the golems here could do.
“Did you notice anything different with these runes?”
“Mmm.”
“According to Master Jing’s deductions, the outward difference is that it is an addition of mental or memory-based runes. In her opinion, it is someone’s fighting style.”
“I forgot, here’s a gift. I caught them live. If it’s fighting technique, the factories to the north and east have golems with different fighting styles. I’ll catch some of them tomorrow.” Ebony almost forgot about the frozen chunks of ice.
The encasement of ice weaved into tight ropes. The dim glow of yellow was a sign that they were mostly out of energy.
Kong Jing was also more interested in what the puppets who worked with topaz mana ores were doing rather than continue trying to decipher the runes. Mark was the only one who continued on deciphering them.
His gift was well received, he needed to stay to keep them from moving but they were taken apart pretty quickly.
“Was there any use for a living one?” Ebony had to pause after his question as he wondered if it was right to call a golem a living thing.
“Bring me more.” Kong Jing indirectly answered his question.
Not even her little sweetheart could pull her away from studying the puppets and the topaz mana ore facilities. Mark also wasn’t willing to step aside so he had dinner with Ning Xin for the first time in a while.
“They’re not coming out to eat?” Ning Xin didn't seem happy to have people skip meal time.
“You don’t want to eat with just me?”
“I do… I’ll bring the food to them, can you set up the table somewhere?”
“Mmm.”
He chose another random house to pull out a large round table from his bag. He brought the serving dishes over together with utensils.
Nowadays, they make it a point to keep the talk about fighting or flaws in each other's skills away from the dining table. There were days when they had conversation topics and days when they ate in silence. Since she always ate alone when they were at Arcta and she ate with her sister these days, it had been quite a long time since they ate together.
“I’ve gotten better at withdrawing and sending my overflowing essence straight to the ground.” The fire swordswoman stated.
“I noticed. The villagers don’t keep as big of a distance away and Kiva is more comfortable around you.”
She was humming, it was clear to him that she liked Arcta for whatever reason.
“Do you like the village?”
“Mmhmm. They are nice people, they can’t stand my presence but still welcome me. I can sense it, more than Xienor welcomes me.”
“...”
“Xienor, the fisher uncle near my house is nice but the others usually just ignore me and my grandma.”
Ebony already heard about how she wasn’t outright shunned back in her hometown but most people don’t register her presence there either. As for the fisher uncle that was a Fisher King, since he wasn’t a combat class and married a non-xeng, he didn’t discriminate. Or so she once told him.
Teratish meat was tough and dry which she managed to overcome with a savoury and a little watery sauce. She didn’t bake it long enough but it was decent overall. She should’ve tried cooking it in small amounts first but she didn’t have a pot or pan that could handle enough heat to cook this heat-resistant monster meat.
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The topic shifted to Kiva again and how the baby girl was starting to be mischievous. Ebony wasn’t about to say that he was the one who put a piece of ice down her back because she liked it and how Kiva started doing that to everyone in the house. To the Frost Elves, it was not more than a droplet of water but Ning Xin was caught off guard when the wet chill slithered down her spine.
Kiva would always do it sneakily after someone picks her up into a hug and Ning Xin was the only one who couldn’t sense the baby hiding a piece of ice in her hand or mouth. The baby girl had the talent to catch her off guard and sneak in an attack.
Ebony talked about how adorable Willlow the baby bear was, he had a soft spot for the chubby white ball of soft fluffiness. He didn’t know how obvious he showed that he liked bears and their cubs.
They washed the dishes together and the plan was to go to the inner ring to empty out the factories there. The numbers there hadn’t been reduced by sending them into the city so it would be a fruitful hunt.
“The buildings here are made of extremely compressed earth and that runic thing, let’s just throw a few bombs around tomorrow. There are plenty of factories anyway.” She justified her plans.
“Are you angry or bored?” Ebony wanted to make sure he heard things right.
“A little bored but I also want to train and test out our combined spells more. We can continue testing different variations and how we can cast it better and faster.”
“Sure.” There was little he could say against spell experimentations.
They could do what they want, test the strength of the buildings and their spell, one or two factories less wouldn’t hurt and they were reducing the population like Democlus wanted. Ebony couldn’t think of a reason not to test it. He personally wanted to test the only spell which he named himself, Icicle Drop. He never did manage to get the spell into a skill yet. There were kinks that he needed to work out.
They sparred with each other after a walk to digest. It was interesting to weave between buildings to kick her tempo off. She still wasn’t that good at turning sharp corners, she was using blood magic to pull her body aside but it wasn’t going so well as it interrupted her Core Skill.
On that topic, she was still undecided on her second Core Skill. No wonder she was frustrated.
“I’m thinking of picking my sword style as my core skill…” She mentioned after their spar ended.
“But you’re worried it doesn’t help and it would waste your core skill slot since mastery-type skills are hard to improve.” There was no guarantee that she would be able to see an improvement but there wasn’t really a ‘waste’ since improvement is confirmed, just that the degree of improvement is extremely questionable.
“Yes…”
“I think it’s not a bad idea, you’re heavily reliant on sword technique and it matches with your current Core Skill. It might not get refined or an evolution immediately but it won’t ever be a ‘waste’.”
From her magic to her active physical skills, all of them mainly powered her close combat style. It was lacklustre but a choice that fits her to a tee in his opinion. If one couldn't break her tempo, she was unstoppable. Further improving her technique even by just a tiny bit by increasing its Natural Potential would bring her further along her path.
She would make the final decision when they got somewhere safe.
Ebony wiped his body down instead of washing up since there was a chance that something would pop up from the ground now that the tomb city’s barriers weren’t working.
The hours passed peacefully.
Hundreds of 80-level gap kills only gave him 3 levels for each of his classes. The past few days gave him another level to reach level 217. It was far slower than he had initially assumed. He looked forward to the hunt for those True Topaz Golems that were level 310.
He got his stock of Glacial Models back to 8 through the night, they stood still with instructions not to attack people. They would wake him up if anything came close which was nice.
Now that they cleared the factories, people had been found around their area too so he was being cautious. Mark had told him that those people were not welcoming their actions of taking every prey. There was one or two particular parties that just picked up all their hunted prey since Ebony and Ning Xin didn’t need it.
The empty factories were being raided for the mana ores as well so it hasn’t got to the point when the strangers were going to confront them for taking the experience. They decided it was a good choice to leave most of the loot since the yellow stuff wasn’t amazing but it was exactly what the others were here for.
Pancakes for breakfast and demolition for a workout.
“That’s more overcrowded than I thought.” Ebony got close enough to see that the True Topaz Golems were surrounding the factories so tightly that they might not have space to walk.
A ‘ring’ of them was pretty accurate. It was bright enough to make his eyes uncomfortable from their combined glow.
“Alright, let’s fly high enough that they won’t notice us.”
Beyond the inner ring of factories, the buildings also took on a different colour of glow.
They already understood their range so it wasn’t hard to gauge how far away they needed to be. Taking their own sweet time to prepare a makeshift fragmentation bomb. Since they were so far up, he strengthened the pull of gravity on the orb of ice so that it would drop faster. Then he poured his mana into the surroundings so that he could prevent the bomb from causing a loud commotion. He wouldn’t be able to silence it out completely but it shouldn’t sound off louder than a gunshot.
“I’m going to try something new.” Ebony informed his partner in explosive making.
2 of his Glacial Models sacrificed themselves to be the frame. He made the whirlpool of gravity mana within and got Ning Xin to begin throwing flames inside. Since she didn’t have Mana Compression to the degree that he had, he thought gravity to be the perfect method.
It was shockingly effective as the whirlpool sucked up her flames and lightning with glee. She nudged him to inform him that her flames weren’t disappearing and were within the whirlpool. It might have been too effective and she got too into jamming more flames that another Model had to join the sacrificial orb.
‘…I’m getting a headache?’ Ebony was a little surprised at how much mental effort it was taking to hold the spells in place. He was actually having difficulty with the output required.
“Heheh, so this is how compressing so much of your magic feels like.” She was more relaxed as most of the work was done by him, all she was doing was supplying the gunpowder.
They flew higher and higher, he prepared the other Models as Imperishable Frost Scales and sensed around for people. He managed to see a figure near the middle defensive tower, it was Democlus. As far away as he was, Ebony was able to determine that the man was sleeping out in the open.
‘He was sleeping there the whole time?’
He couldn’t afford to get distracted anymore, they could see the ominous dark light within his orb. Ning Xin actually only stopped because she ran out of mana. The bomb was sealed as fast as possible and it tore itself away from him. The dark red light easily seeped through his blueish ice to form a dark purple that swallowed the glow from the topaz in the tomb city.
It fell like a meteor but only managed to dig a crater into the roof of the factory before Ebony released his hold on it completely.
He already had all his enhancements and defences ready but his body instinctively put him in front of Ning Xin.
Their ears rang painfully. His veil of mana was blown away so hard he couldn’t contain the sound it would create. The incessant ringing due to the unbelievable numbers of True Topaz Golems and a couple of Homunculi that might have been inside the buildings was sounding off in their heads.
He couldn’t even hold himself afloat stably and they were blown further away but was lucky enough that no fragments of his orb hit them.
They stared at each other when the blast ended.
“Fi-five for me.”
“Six.”
They reported how many levels each of them had gained.
“Let’s do that again!” Ning Xin pumped her fists.
“...Look below.”
Tough buildings? They turned into molten soil and a lava crater, almost a pond of dark red fluids. The surrounding buildings that survived were torn down by steaming chunks of ice that were melting off quickly. They were lucky the ground here was so durable and heat resistant or the effects would go much further than a single kilometre.
“A masterpiece! Our masterpiece. We haven’t even made it into a skill yet, let’s keep going!”
“You need to recover mana don’t you?”
“Yeah…”
It wasn’t practical since she dumped every point of her mana but they got a strong card to play should they require something with more kick. They also took about ten minutes to get it ready which in retrospect was pretty fast for such a powerful spell.
Democlus woke up and peeked at him but went back to sleep or at least acted like he did by closing his eyes.
‘So he doesn’t care if we blow up the place either.’ Ebony was expecting to get more of a reaction from the Dwarf.
Kong Jing was still holding onto Icicle so he had to practise Icicle Drop without it.
Sadly, setting off a bomb was enough to get thousands of eyes on them.
They can’t fly but he didn’t expect them to throw each other into the air just to try to get them. Their jumping abilities weren’t that strong.
“Cover me okay?” She probably didn’t even recover any mana yet and was standing on two of his Imperishable Frost Scales but it didn’t stop her from leaping down to meet their aggressive opponents. He didn’t see her drink any blood either.
The Golems needed more cover than her but he joined her regardless.