Ebony woke up and found himself on the floor. He looked forward and saw a long pair of legs. Ning Xin was asleep on the sofa but why was he on the floor?
Although he was experiencing muscle pains, it was not unfamiliar to him. His Will and mana regeneration were still not fully restored, and he estimated that approximately 7 hours had elapsed. He trusted his internal clock enough that he didn't feel the need to check the time. His mana pool was full and it naturally compressed by a fair bit but not to the point where it was leaking. His gravitational and mana perception already scanned the unfamiliar building he was in. He recognised the magic tower’s signature and guessed his location.
He cocked his head, ‘Why’s there a constant ring in my head. Was I that exhausted?’
Ning Xin grumbled as she roused.
“Ugnn…Breakfast?”
“Mmm. Thank you.”
“Hey…no more skipping of conditioning.”
“Mmm. Yes, I was just testing out my current stat limits. We are close to 300, with plenty of stat points we haven’t added. It’s been months but I haven’t really made new skills or refined our skills much. I think we are too familiar with using our skills perfectly to their best that we don’t realise that we have to mess the skill up to find what’s wrong or where we can improve it.”
“Fine. But we still have to train regularly.”
Based on the intensity and comparison with both training methods they recalled they didn’t doubt that their regime was worthy of tier 4. He was a little worried about the lack of elemental resistance training, even amongst artillery mages, there wasn’t a large variety of elemental magic.
Tier 4 - Constricted Titan
That was the training method he suddenly recalled but at that time he didn’t know how to read most of the words and his mother’s handwriting wasn’t the best. To put it simply, with all the arrows pointing to the body and his gravity mana affinity he guessed that he was supposed to crush his own body with gravity in all directions. The pictures were confusing but other than crushing from external pressure he also attempted to gather gravity mana within him and push his flesh, bones, nerves and blood vessels from within. He blew up some of his veins by accident but it just strengthened his gut feeling that it was the way to go.
He also had memories of the tier 5 Neutronic Frame but even if he could survive stars where would he find stars to pressure himself? Tier 4 was supposedly the limit of a Master but Ning Xin apparently got tier 4 heat resistance when she was just a Journeyman. So the supposed limit should not be an actual fact or there are exceptions. He gave a similar treatment to Ning Xin while she trained his footwork, arm workout and evasive technique. Her movement technique wasn’t that suitable for him but he had no qualms getting tips on going faster with lesser effort.
They went to borrow a kitchen to make some grub when he noticed the stiff movements in his chef’s wrist. The mages he passed by looked at them weirdly, he gave himself a pat on the back for noticing the difference in the way he was looked at.
“What happened?” He directly grabbed her wrist and stopped her knife work.
“You’re the one who injured me. Never mind. It’s almost fully healed.”
He pressed for the details.
“A roar?” The ringing in his head returned with a bit more oomph.
“So you don’t remember, I expected that.” She yanked her hands free to continue cooking.
“What did the roar sound like?” He was curious.
“Rawrr!” She put her knife down and tried to scare him with a clawing motion. Fortunately, it was already a habit to silence their conversation even though no one else was using the kitchen.
“Mmm. Very cute.” He nodded hard.
“No! Raawr!”
“I understand. It was a loud, cute roar.”
“You don’t understand!”
She gave up shortly. A random robed Great Fire Mage came to request his assistance back on the wall as the Troll noticed that he was not attacking and neither was the Radiance Envoy. The magic tower also lowered in intensity so they gathered for another territorial push. In the past two hours, the Empire already lost a good 300 metres. There was a lack of resources in terms of ammunition such as cannons, ballista or even normal arrows.
“We’ll go after we eat.” Ning Xin did not look kindly to anyone who interrupted her cooking or meal time.
“I won’t be able to attack with the previous intensity either. I’m fresh out.”
“I understand…I will inform my captain.” The fire mage didn’t look disappointed.
“They didn’t actually expect you to stay for long. To them, you just have an extremely large mana pool. Regenerating while casting is something they would never guess. Sit, I’m almost done.” She began to plate up the relatively light breakfast with a couple of half-boiled eggs that he introduced. Meat wouldn’t be lacking on their plate but there were far fewer sausages than usual.
“So they think I need to rest for a week like Midnight Shepherd to pull off the same thing huh…” The Radiance Envoy didn’t want to regulate the times he got on duty so he wasn’t able to tell how large the man’s mana pool was. At least he made progress in being able to approximate when someone was almost empty or when they were near full.
“Mmhmm. We will use the downtime to train. The village chief will be coming soon right?”
“That’s what General Impes said. I hope Koawe’s fine.” The one who went to communicate with Arcta had been the fox lady who was also an ice mage.
Arcta didn’t receive any attacks and the situation was just as per usual except that hunting trips were only done by the adults. They didn’t have any updates on Koawe, he was taking longer than expected but the General wasn’t panicking. Korben would not leave the village and neither would the other old, high-level non-combatants but they are sending the village chief, Orren and his party over. It honestly wouldn’t make a big difference but the army would take any reinforcements they can get.
The self-firing bows came back and were a force to reckon with, they were far more useful than him in terms of kills. Each arrow they shot basically confirmed a kill. They were always aiming at Shamans which warriors would jump to protect and there was no healing, freezing to death was the result more than 90% of the time.
The Trolls already gave up saving their unlucky fellows because supplying those frozen units with life force only drained their squad members to death. There was a very small chance of survival and that was to remove their allies head or torso before it was completely frozen but the gap of time was extremely small. Just touching the arrow tip would freeze a Master Troll in about half a second and these bows had a pretty high hit rate of getting the chest and even the head. Not to mention, not all of the Trolls are able to survive decapitation.
The two of them exceeded some of Orren’s party member’s levels; he guessed they didn’t lose in terms of firepower. Maybe not in a fight but spell power was their expertise. He could watch and learn from the types of spells they use as well.
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“He should be fine. I don’t think he’ll die easily.”
He agreed that Koawe was probably strong enough to traverse most of Hoarfrost Glades but there were creatures in there that could threaten the existence of the other village. He proposed their his new schedule of 8 hours of unloading magic, 10 hours of sparring with and without magic and another personal 8 hours of experimenting and improving their Skills qualitatively. The other two hours were just rest.
“I guess I have more time to play around with magic.” Ning Xin would have around 8 minutes of unloading magic so she could use the rest of the time cooking while working on her skills. Her lack of a second Core Skill was bothering her but she wasn’t going to rush and make a decision she would regret.
Despite their overwhelming numbers, the Trolls would find it challenging to make any further progress in a short period of time. They were about to reach the barrier and the city was only so big. Attempts to go further west? It would lead directly to Hoarfrost Glade’s cut-off cliff but even if there were attempts the Empire would probably ignore it.
Ebony wasn’t about to check out what made two entire continents avoid it completely. He already got the gist of it, some kind of mana or energy was stuck in place that erased anything and anyone who touched it. He just saw it as a stronger version of the corrosion cloud above him.
He was more and more certain that the Trolls were naturally bloodthirsty and wanted nothing more than to eat them. There was a rising call to bring them some cold snacks on a bone. They took him as one of the Frost Elves and had a special team of Shamans guarding against his attacks. Multiple teams actually.
Hence, not even 10 days of raining spell after spell gave him a single level. At his current level, he was slightly above the average level of Trolls. The Imperial Army had an average level of 170ish. It was brought down by the large number of younger soldiers. The stronger soldiers were all pulled to fight at other Tides. The pressure on all other Tides seemed to be increasing as well but their situation wasn’t nearly as dire.
First and Third Tide were the closest to the Capital, Tidal and were experiencing the most heat but they had the Barrier King and the Archduke of Elves. The two Tides were in a combined battle and were seen as a single battlefront. The order of Tides east from him was Fourth, Third, First and Second. They were named by the date they were built.
The front held by the Second Tide was relatively inactive, as their enemies did not exert much pressure there and focused more on holding ground. The Empire was unable to withdraw troops from the Second Tide's front as it could have allowed the Trolls of the First Tide to exploit the weaker defences of that area, even though other Tides needed the excess manpower they had.
The only good news was from the Imperial Seers who confidently reported that their enemy's numbers shouldn’t balloon drastically anymore unless they sent their children and women forward. The enemy's rear had contained a couple of strong leaders, their squad, a good couple of million average warriors and the rest of the non-combatants.
Going into a stalemate near the cliff was more beneficial for the Empire since their enemies were dozens of times more desperate on the food issue. He heard that a pretty good portion of Shamans were actually fishermen. They remained near the rear and opened their incredibly tough floor to fish from the sea. They even had a tribe known for their swimming capabilities and were absolute ‘demons’ in an underwater battle.
There were many tales and rumours amongst the artillery mages and archers who stood near the edge of the wall. One of these swimmers would leap up, catch and drag them down into the sea. None of the land-dwelling races could beat them underwater. It was a tale often used to scare the younger recruits. The barrier wasn’t completely raised to allow spells and projectiles to go down so it was the possibility was always there even with the distance of kilometres. Many Trolls could cross this distance in mere seconds if they were not impeded.
The fact that the Trolls had control over the ground also meant that they usually sealed the ground. The death rate was practically 100% for even most Commander-ranked Imperials. He witnessed Commander Wil breaking the several kilometres thick ground with the landing of his jump but the ground repaired itself so fast that anyone who fell would have a really hard time coming back up.
“Where’s Icicle?”
“Here.” The red-haired chef released her bunned hair before she took out a glowing greatsword.
The moment Icicle’s handle was peaking out it flew right out and into his arms.
“What’s wrong? You’re glowing through your sheath.” He was surprised that the greatsword moved by itself.
Glowing was the most it could achieve, manipulating gravity to bring itself to him was new.
Icicle unsheathed itself a tiny bit and puffed out ice mana towards Ning Xin before sheathing itself.
“Haha…oh?” The swordswoman laughed before her hips shifted and both her swords did the same but blew out flames instead.
“Since when can they do that?” Ebony asked.
“Seems like we have some talking to do don’t we?” She pulled her blades up to eye level.
Neither of them got a reply or response from their weapons so they left for target practice.
“Remember, Skill improvement, not level.”
“Mmm.”
❅❅❅
Third Tide.
“Pett, this invasion feels odd.” A small-statured grey-haired man whispered to himself.
“No surprise, some strings were probably pulled. Doesn’t matter, it’s only beneficial for us. Tuff, how’s our magic body going?”
“I can recover my old tier 4 version in two months. I’m not sure if it’s because they are skills we used to have but I think it might be possible for this body to get my tier 5 version even though we aren’t Grandmaster yet. It might take too long and not be worthwhile though.” Tuffock doesn’t stutter as much when talking to others sharing the same body.
“Hmm…silver lining huh?” Pettock the petrification mage dipped his head beneath a Troll’s statue.
“Bah! Silver lining my ass! There’s nothing good about being trapped in this.” Hardock took back control and smashed the statue in rock dust with his fist.
“Tuffock take back control, people are coming,” Pettock ordered.
“Okay…” The scrawny man pulled his hood down.
“Tch!” Hardock was clearly irked.
“Good job as always!” A fat Dwarf patted his back. More and more people from the Militia arrived but they ignored the stone mage.
“Ye..yeah.”
“Anyway, we need to get stronger opponents. Many of our skills are reaching 500 already and these suckers aren’t enough.” Hardock whined.
“Let’s join the army. 50% of the militias at Fourth and about 20% at Third are our men. We managed to gather quite a large number of - not trash people.”
“HAHAHA! Gather? We just killed their bosses and took over. Those above are darn good at hiding.” Hardock laughed and interrupted Pettock.
“The army monopolises the big battles, we’ll take a piece. As for rising up in Lure, it’s only a matter of time. They dared to toss us here and this all-out invasion is definitely related. Elcra is within their sights, the Empire is in the way because of this Barrier King and the Emperor dude who’s hiding somewhere.”
“We…we still don’t know which Duke’s the one wh-who…” Tuffock murmured.
“I know, at least we know that it’s a human noble. We’ll be able to contact whoever is in charge of Elcra once we kill enough of their higher-ups. They like to use luring tactics, don’t they? We’ll lure that bitch out sooner or later.” Pettock silently released the petrification over all the dead Trolls so that they just look like corpses with a layer of stone.
“Our opponent’s a Saint, we have to get back to all our peaks before we even stand a chance of surviving. Who knows how much stronger that shrew has gotten.”
“Seriously though, who’s this Barrier King? I don’t think I can break this Tide’s barrier even if I was back at my peak.” Hardock looked back at Third Tide.
“How do you think he’s stopping other worlds’ invasion?” Pettock put on a serious look in their internal talk as well.
“Nonsense, it’s Oplot the indestructible’s backing.” Hardock didn’t believe the Barrier King could stop greedy eyes from looking over at this planet by himself.
“Ev-even without backing, I-I think the three in charge of Elva is…more talented than all of us before.” Tuffock meekly added on.
“Hmph, don’t lump me with the two of you.” Pettock scoffed.
“I don’t care about that shit, we were all Emperors! I don’t want to join that silly army!”
Pettock chuckled at Hardock’s outrage. “Of course, we’ll just be war criminals. Let’s put on a mask and join whatever battle we like.”
“Wh-what about the Imperials?” Tuffock questioned.
“With our current strength only a scant few commanders can even stop us. We just have to watch out for Generals. If this was the First Tide there might be a few Captains that can fight us.” Pettock knew that Tuffock usually went ‘asleep’ to train his skills, meditate during battles or take over to chat with people.
“Great, let’s get on with it!” Hardock was tired of staying low profile.