Mallory looked different. She was noticeably taller after her evolution and like both of them, got better skin. It was pretty odd that evolutions included a beautifying effect. While Hector had a resemblance with Navin, Mallory didn’t have too much in common with both the King and Queen.
“Give me a grip.” Ebony wanted to check the swordswoman's strength to see if she had recovered enough to protect herself. As effective as Mallory’s healing appeared to be, he had to confirm.
“Heh!? Right here? Th-there’s people watching…” She hid behind the shorter woman. The healer might have gained some height but she was still more than half a head shorter than the swordswoman. Her smaller frame didn’t help.
‘Hot damn. I keep forgetting.’ Ebony didn’t care, he grabbed her hand and urged her to give him a good grip.
He might have been a bit aggressive about it but the crushing force within her grip was a good sign.
“Alright, I’ll keep calling you whenever the callstone link breaks so please pick up if it gets through.”
“Uh-mmm.” She didn’t want to look at him and was momentarily confused before nodding her head.
“Mallory, I’ll try to keep them alive. May your way there quickly. See you.” He turned around and blasted off from his spot without creating a large shockwave. He could hear Ning Xin shouting, asking about his speed.
‘Oh yes, I have to check out what happened. Did I finally get Treading Flash?’
‘Ting’ ‘Class Skill Treading Stride evolved into Phantom's Flicker’
Phantom’s Flicker - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Phantom Flicker allows one to travel through any terrain with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by (-500%) + 10.0% per level. Disturbance to the surroundings caused by physical movement is reduced by 50% + 5.0% per level. Weave between physical matter with a static 25% more ease.
‘Phantom’s Flicker? Wasn’t it tier 3 Treading Flash, tier 4 Phantom Flash and tier 5 Spectre’s Flicker? I know I was incorporating the other tiers' tips to blend with my own footwork better but the skill’s different…why negative 500%? That’s 50 levels worth of…wait this is a semi-tier 4 skill?’
Ebony was shocked and confused at the weird skill evolution. It was even greater in tier than his highest rank Core Skill, the first skill that surpassed his Core Skill.
‘Did I Will the evolution of the skill? Is that possible? Is that why there’s a negative percentage, my actual technique isn’t quite there yet. That must mean there are more flaws or drawbacks to it. Let’s try.’ Ebony was in such a rush that he didn’t take note of the effects and drawbacks of a skill he didn’t completely earn.
It took another 5 steps back towards Fifth Tide for him to come up with the preliminary reasons that it was not a complete tier 4 skill.
The stamina consumption was immense, so much so that at full power each step basically ate 10% of his stamina pool and that was after all the stamina he was regenerating. The stamina drain was a problem since he could take more than a single step in a second but that wasn’t the worst issue. His calves are cramped and his knees would lock up, they did not heal instantly. It was actually taking some time to recover. However, that was only if he used it at maximum output. Phantom’s Flicker would allow him to have far better control when it came to distance, as long as he mastered it. Short-distance movement was so fast that he practically teleported in his own perception. Perhaps Ning Xin can see his movement properly.
Weave between physical matter was just an extravagant description. It just made him more ‘streamlined’ as air and water resistance does not impact him as much. He was sure that if the static percentage reached 100% it just meant fluid resistance was half as effective on him and not that he was completely unaffected by air or water. ‘Although, it does say physical matter…should I try running into a wall? Not that I would be able to differentiate if it worked.’
Disturbance to the surroundings being reduced was something he expected. That was the whole focus of the higher-tier footwork in his memory. That must be why there was hardly any damage to the surroundings despite his speed. He didn’t cause much of a ripple in the water or in the air either. Ning Xin would break sound barriers and form vapour cones around her body. There was a difference compared to Earth when it came to the speed of sound due to mana densities of surroundings but she had already exceeded that too. It was ridiculous to think that people could achieve such speeds at their level.
It was harder to cause a sonic boom but many Grandmaster Trolls could do that, the Imperial soldier’s helmet and armour had ear protection that amplified each other’s voice in close proximity while cutting off explosive noises or high-impact vibrations. With Phantom’s Flicker, there was none of that. His Will naturally silenced his movements but even without that, he wouldn’t cause a commotion with this skill.
Ebony’s best guess was that he somehow Willed the evolution of the skill. Hence, the negative 500% which equates to 50 levels but didn’t really affect him much. It was just a matter of optimisation to reduce the stamina cost and remove the negative effect. He should be able to refine the skill much faster now that he actually had the skill and knew what to change since he can observe and experience the effects of the skill. There was a small chance he manipulated stamina sub-consciously or there was no way he could put so much force or energy into a single step.
At level 400, his movement speed supposedly increases by 4000% - 500% or 3500%. That was a 36 times multiplier on his movement speed! Before the evolution, it was closer to 12.45 times the multiplier after the refinements. Of course, it was now an active movement skill that ate tons of stamina but the tremendous speed was worth it in his opinion. Agility did not directly correlate to movement speed, Strength played quite a big part perhaps even more than Agility but the skill never depended on a stat but just movement speed itself.
Agility tied with Strength and gave him the dexterity to control his speed. Ning Xin had both an Agility Fortification and an Attack Speed Fortification so her sword style could be pushed to inhumane skill.
No wonder he was so disorientated. His Perception couldn’t catch up. As for his body, it was mostly fine except for a bit of burning nothing he wasn’t able to handle other than his legs. Calculated Hunch told him that If he were to use the skill ten times in a row, even Sustained Optimum Condition might not allow his legs to work normally and they might actually take more than a few minutes to recover. It was very likely due to his neglected Endurance stat that his muscles couldn’t take so much stress. Thankfully, his recovery was relatively quick.
Ebony would be forced to learn to control the output of the skill extremely quickly as he was about to go into battle. There was absolutely no need to push the skill to maximum output unless the battles were stretched over a greater distance. The battlefield above the sea was limited due to the great numbers of Trolls and their aggressive push.
‘I can’t aim…’ He was not far from Fifth Tide and wanted to Flicker onto a Troll and Tremor Stomp them as a test but he couldn’t even aim his landing spot as his eyesight didn’t go as far as his body could go. It was a good opportunity to tune down the output and reduce stamina consumption. He wouldn’t want his legs to give up on him partway. He decided that he could just Tremor Stomp within the Troll’s territory beyond the artillery mage’s spellfire and around the area where barrages of arrows were raining on. There were no friendlies that he would hit by accident.
All his enhancements were beefed up to their limit just in case he broke his own leg or did damage worse than that. Calculated Hunch needed data to work with so he was actually going to do so without the knowledge of whether his leg would break or the ground would. At least, he didn’t feel like he could damage himself and Calculated Hunch didn’t fully disagree.
No matter what the skill was called, he wasn’t teleporting. He was actually moving at extreme speeds that would strengthen his charge.
He took a deep breath and reassured himself that Ning Xin was going to be fine before Everlasting Tranquillity was back and stabler than ever. He closed his eyes as his sight was only going to disorientate him more. His mana sense was already stronger than sight in some aspects.
Tiny ripples formed where he stood and he was flying by arrows and landing before they did. Ning Xin used wind magic to reduce wind resistance while he used gravity magic. It wasn’t as effective but it did the job, this meant that it used more mana the more resistance he faced but it ultimately didn’t matter as he couldn’t pull away or repel the wind fast enough. Either way, there wasn’t a large difference in mana consumption.
There was an unlucky Troll right beneath Ebony’s feet. The experienced warrior actually managed to bring his large bone blade up to block but he was too slow. The timing of Tremor Stomp and vibrational blast was not on point but he still forced the Troll to fall back as his feet landed on the Troll’s shoulder. His joints ached a little when he was stopped by the earth but the acceleration he had gave Tremor Stomp far more power. The shock rattled his entire body and he wasn’t able to fully redirect vibrations out of his body. A mini earthquake caught the Trolls' attention since they were busy swiping arrows aside, there weren’t any fights going on around here.
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Not that there weren’t arrows and spells to prevent his sight but he could spot the flashes of light far deeper into Troll territory. He wouldn’t be able to reach that area on the ground but he could if he was in the air. The Trolls didn’t have the best aerial defensive measures.
Ebony could guess why they managed to kill the King-ranked warriors. None of them that breached the frontlines had any support from Shamans. As for what those Shamans were doing, it seemed like not a single squad could spare time as they were embroiled in the battle with Korta. It seemed like it would be hard for the Arch Mage to kill any important Troll unless Korben and Koawe could deal with those Shamans. Ebony couldn’t be sure but Midnight Shepherd would probably be more of a support for the Benumbed and Vigiot Patriarchs. It was hard to say if Korta could fight actual elite King squads with possibly thousands or at least hundreds of Shamans making sure their warriors survived by himself.
Ebony was a tiny target that slipped within their ranks and he caused havoc with emphasis on perfecting the output of his new movement skill. He dialled it all the way down to use a similar amount of stamina as before and found that he was still around twice as fast as he used to. If the skill was a normal tier 4 he should have the same speed even if he wanted to cross a shorter distance with just a smaller energy output but it seems that he didn’t fully know how the skill actually works.
His abrupt entrance caused some panic as he went blasting Blazing Deep Freeze Petals without care. There was a low chance it would be blown towards allies here. Frozen targets got shattered by the mostly ineffective arrows which slowed them down a bunch. He wasn’t here to pick a fight by himself and ran around while making his way towards the spellfire and making sure he froze or added weight to the Trolls while evading artillery mages’ fireballs and water jets.
Attacking the Trolls from behind, only making casual attacks on as many of them as he can to confuse the Trolls. Over time, quite a few attacking Trolls turned around and he was surrounded. Just as he intended. Few Grandmaster Trolls could really harm him. He had the feeling that those that were really powerful were all around the Shamans' back rear and he confirmed earlier just based on hunch from the auras. A quick look didn’t really give him much information.
The Trolls didn’t really have the ability to ‘surround’ him. Every time one of them looked away and wanted to pursue the attack on the Imperial Army, he would be there to poke at them. He reached the range to get his Models to copy him but they were slower and could be grabbed or smashed. Well, unless they were within 600 metres he wasn’t able to give them strong buffs but he could still control them to some degree.
It would take either a ton of effort or mana to kill them fast and he was trying to buy time. Although a few petals were enough, each compressed version took plenty of mana. There were already around ten thousand or so Grandmaster Trolls launching their offensive army near the edge of the barrier. They didn’t really target the barrier, probably understanding the futility with their strength. Perhaps they received orders to focus on killing soldiers first. It aligned with their bloodthirsty nature and was a better idea as the barrier would be easier to take down when the number of soldiers and citizens decreased.
He was not privy to the information on the army’s forces but a rough estimate was that around 10% of Fifth Tide’s forces were Grandmasters. That included the mages and archers who were on the wall and other support Classes. There were some of those that were on the ground as well but not as many. They had more than ten thousand Grand Warriors along with Grand Knights combined as their current numbers were easily over a million. But the Empire’s warriors honestly weren't a good direct match against these giants. Not all of them could fit at the base of the cliff with the Trolls' giant size.
Not to blame the Imperial Army, they were strong but the current aggressors had an average level of 400 or higher while the Grandmasters in the army were low to mid 300s. There were far fewer Grand Knights than Grand Warriors and only the Grand Knights could stand their ground one on one with the level and stat gap.
Ebony’s best bet to buy time for soldiers to retreat or lighten their pressure was to disturb as many Trolls as he could while the soldiers reorganised and reformed. The giants were using their physical strength and size to break apart formations with brute force and it worked. He copied them and used his relatively small size to go into the squads and drag them apart from each other. Forcing them to chase him was an add-on. They weren’t exactly friendly with each other from different squads and getting them to ram into each other was a bonus if they got angry at each other.
Their large bodies meant only a few could attack him and he would stop to redirect their attacks onto each other if possible. It was not easy to have them hit each other since they were highly experienced warriors that could easily overpower his comparatively weak gravity magic but it gave him a chance to get a light Stalactite Drop in from time to time. Against these guys, a little bit of freezing flames across their entire body would be more than sufficient. Soldiers wouldn’t have a hard time against these foes even if they survived. Their flesh and bones would rupture from the internal repulsion of sonic waves and the flames would be too deep for them to remove with Vitality in a short time.
He could give these Trolls another kick to end them but that was a waste of time if he had to repeat it a few thousand times. Once again, he strayed from squads that were capable of giving Cap Dwarf and the Generals trouble. Cap Dwarf was pretty good at hiding his skills. He was the star of the show on the battlefield. Looking down on the Trolls was a 30-metre tall earthen giant with a snake’s face as the head and both limbs were snakeheads. Cap Dwarf embedded himself in the chest of the earthen giant. 3 snake heads were flexible and could extend more than a hundred metres and chomped up multiple Trolls with each bite.
The Trolls were very excited about trying to hunt the giant beast. It was clearly more suited for the Troll’s style of fighting but Cap Dwarf dominated in all aspects. No one could get close to him. The ground ‘rippled’ when the normal feet of the earthen giant stomped down. Sadly, Cap Dwarf had mentioned that he wasn’t able to manipulate the earth that this battlefield was made of otherwise, he would be in more control. Dozens of Trolls leapt at the earthen giant but Cap Dwarf’s snakeheads could extend and shorten as he wish. For some reason, no one attacked Cap Dwarf himself whose limbs were stuck into the earthen giant though.
Ebony’s efforts only proved helpful after some time. He actually had control over the largest area as he didn’t stay in one spot like the Generals and Cap Dwarf did.
One of the Generals not locked in combat roared at the chance and had a unit of a hundred or so Grand Knights rush out from their formation to crush all the frozen and half-dead Trolls. He then personally taunted the Trolls that his unit was handling.
‘I hope they have the strength and stamina to run back into formation quickly.’ Ebony knew that killing off these near-frozen guys would just allow those that were breaking through spell bombardment to charge forward. Hopefully, the General noticed that. His own mana pool was more than half empty by now and he only got around a thousand or so Trolls. However, the congregation and the freezing temperatures he spread slowed and even halted far more enemies.
“Don’t go overboard, their presence stops more from charging in.” Ebony transmitted to the soldiers but from the way they were going all out it was obvious no one was listening.
With all the confidence the Knights displayed, he went in Cap Dwarf’s direction as the Trolls were ganging up on him. It was about 10 km to his right which was closer to Hoarfrost Glade than it was to Fourth Tide.
“Lad! Are the others fine!?” Cap Dwarf panted from within the earth giant’s chest.
“Mmm. They got to the healers. The Crown Princess is on the way and she’s more reliable.” Ebony effortlessly linked them with a thread of mana and buffed his captain.
“Great! Now let’s get this over with! The skirmish shouldn’t last for more than a few hours!”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s just how it always is. The bigshots go and test each other out for half a day or so to check if they have a chance at victory.” Cap Dwarf didn’t need a strength buff but an Intelligence buff.
“I see. Maybe not this time.” Ebony noticed 2 flashes of light going past them. His eyes couldn’t catch up or make out the figures. Enya was tossed from above and landed on the wall. She probably ran back to Arcta and got her seniors to come out.
“I really hope so.” It didn’t slip Cap Dwarf’s notice.
With Ebony around, ganging up didn’t give them much of an advantage. Sadly, like how he couldn’t target Korta with gravity magic he also had a hard time casting a repulsion layer for the earthen giant or even just the snake limbs.
“Hey! What happened to the line you were holding back!?”
Ebony got onto the shoulder of the giant to see past the wall of flesh. The Grand Knights were in a poor position as they were pincered.
“They seemed so confident earlier…” He quickly leapt back, trusting that Cap Dwarf could handle himself. He told Mallory he would do his best to keep as many soldiers alive as he could.
Unfortunately, he arrived and noticed 7 unmoving Grand Knights within his mana sense and saw another 4 scattered around. Their armour and muscular bodies left their bodies mostly in one piece.
‘I can’t protect all of them at the same time, not even if I overdraft my mana and cast a domain large enough to cover them… alright, I’ll have to toss them back and hope they can make a safe landing.’ Calculated Hunch got his body to act with haste. If he had Ning Xin’s mental speed he could decide who to take out first or how strong Firm Path had to be to safely send them back to the army’s defensive line but all he had were rough estimates and it didn’t even register to him. His automation simply sent the instructions to his body before he could ponder about it.
A ten-metre long tunnel of Firm Path was cast and he Flickered around to toss the soldiers to his spell. It sent them speeding back. A few of them knocked his hands away when he was about to grab onto the ridge or gap in their collar area of the metal armour. He accidentally froze their contacting hands or weapon and swung them the same way. It was just a reflex and his body was ablaze with freezing flames from his enhancement.
Their armour enchantments didn’t really have a robust cold resistance effect on them. Ebony met some enchanters, practically all of them were also a mage of some kind. They didn’t let him see their work as it was their trade secret. The Empire treats these enchanters very well. To be fair, he was about the only person who put a forge out in the open. He didn’t worry about heat loss or people watching but he no longer did that since an indoor forge was more conducive.
A few Grand Knights resisted and dodged him in advance so he skipped them and got anyone else he was closest to. Taking care to conjure petals and deep freeze the next wave of Trolls that appeared. After the resisting Grand Knights got knocked around by a dozen or so Trolls, they were much easier to toss back.
Just as he was about to empty out on mana and began to overdraft his mana while making safety precautions to pull himself out, he saw the blue streaks speeding towards Fifth Tide. Korta was supported by both Korben and Koawe. Drips of blue blood sprinkled over both armies.
A roaring horn shook the skies, earth and sea alike.
The Trolls gave their all and pulled back but this was not a chance the army would let go and neither would he.