Ebony did not forget that the biggest reason he went to Fifth Tide was that Arcta was targeted. He was not exactly happy to learn that Fifth Tide was under the Frost Elves' protection and the combatants weren’t readily reachable. The other reason was his greed for hasty levels. Ning Xin’s desire to fight didn’t pass on to him, he personally liked battles to an unhealthy degree just not as much as she does. At least in his opinion.
The recent happenings diverted him from his travels but it couldn’t be helped. He had been feeling unbearably weak. All the strength he had gained didn’t alleviate the feeling as he only saw the bigger world out there. He couldn’t travel at ease knowing there was something, someone, able to take away what was important to him.
‘We should settle in Tidal or some random city for a bit. Fighting monsters won’t give us any benefit. Most under level 500 won’t give us a decent sense of danger so they won’t put stress and expedite skill levelling. Those above…are a bit too strong. Strong Grandmasters are more limited in number and harder to find.’
“When are you going to wake up?” He asked.
Gen and Ful had been asleep the entire time. The tree spirit was in a dying state and Gen needed to go into deep meditation to keep his ancestor alive so they were both usually in a state similar to hibernation. He wasn’t talking to them.
A tremor ran through the dome and he shot up. Gen woke up from his meditation a moment later.
“We’re under attack, let me check…Oh, what are those creatures you brought, Jetfins? Only level 550, I didn’t think one would survive.”
Gen had swam after him when they descended into the underground dome, he didn’t think that the turtle had attacked back. Now, days later, the turtle was telling him the Jetfin was back. That vengeful prick touched on Gen’s sore spot by melting the entire ‘sky’ above them. The icy ground was gone and a large portion of the snow ceiling melted, allowing light to slip into the underground dome. The snow dome fixed itself almost instantly but the enraged Jetfin blasted it away. Gen saw that and shot a beam out of his own mouth.
Ebony didn’t expect to see a beam battle. All he did was grab Ning Xin and run up the giant turtle with Ful on top. It might not have been the best idea as he might be a target but he was going to rely on Ful’s coverage.
He thought Gen was fighting back seriously but he didn’t miss the yawn that came out near the end of his snow beam. The dome fixed itself again and Gen got carried by a current of snow. The underground dome was quiet again and the ceiling stayed intact.
Ebony learned something from this Jetfin. Blood for blood. Any less, and he would be getting stepped on.
In fact, not biting back only gives others a reason to push him further off the edge.
It didn’t take a minute before the turtle was back with a not-so-giant fish in his mouth. Gen was bigger in comparison. The turtle chomped on the Jetfin, swallowing the head without chewing and got to consuming it raw, bones and all.
“Haven’t had meat in a long time, the scales are a bit crunchy but the bones are too spiky for my liking. Its flesh is really sweet.”
“Another food review?” Ebony was not expecting the taste of the Jetfins to be focused on so much.
“Sit tight, we’ll be changing locations.” Gen walked beside him. He was right, the turtle sounded more energetic.
“By the way, I didn’t see your forest above ground.” Ebony didn’t expect Gen to surface and save him but he fell onto the ground and sensed Gen’s presence at the last second.
“I left it somewhere and came to get you. Ancestor guided me to her.”
“Ful did?” He wasn’t too surprised that the tree spirit heard his calls and not Gen. The tree spirit must have a far better perception. Poor Gen had to carry the gigantic progeniturtle and tree around wherever he went. That must be why the underground space was so flimsy, it should be a makeshift mobile base.
‘Would I be able to move something so large with ease when I’m a Grandmaster? I don’t think so, not with just my mind…’ He was maybe confident of moving just the gigantic turtle with the flaming tree but not an entire forest. His range of mana control couldn’t even reach the entirety of the progeniturtle.
‘Her’ Ebony didn’t miss that. Ning Xin’s intuition was right. She just went down too easily, as if she expected to get stabbed from the start. It was unlike her not to resist with more…gusto. Not to say that they had a chance to win a fight but running shouldn’t have been their only option. He wouldn’t know for sure if his new sound spell could really stun the stronger opponent and the evidence was that the tamer was dead and he was safe from the hundreds of Jetfins. Relatively safe.
When he came to his senses, his pursuers were pretty far behind him. It was likely because he squeezed out so much mana that they were stunned longer than the accidental roar he used to buy himself that extra second. If he had the skill from the start he could just stun them all and their combined efforts would be enough to damage the tamer enough. It seemed like he could cast the roar somewhat repeatedly so the Jetfins wouldn’t matter as the two of them could just slaughter the fishes one by one.
Those fishes were really impressive, be it speed or defence. Even in the air without water and earth surrounding them, they were hardy. They didn’t even have much mana from the get-go and he wasn’t really able to injure them. Although he was also low on these resources that was no excuse. The tamer’s cautious personality ruined her chances of killing them and he was thankful for that. The Jetfins' lack of mana must be due to getting past the Frost Elves. There must have been more monsters or tamed creatures under her control that didn’t make it to chase them as well.
‘Is there a way for me to remember what I did in my trance, it would be nice to know how I managed to kill her.’
He could guess through the skill level-ups but that wasn’t enough info for him.
Now that he was underground, he could observe how Gen moved. It was a bit underwhelming visually. The gigantic turtle just started to slide while the underground dome would shift around them but it was dark and there was nothing to see.
There was no need to hold onto anything as the ride was stable and relatively slow, only at the speeds of a race car. He put Ning Xin against the trunk and rested there himself.
‘Ah, I know how to wake her up. Food. Let’s see what ingredients I have. Hmm, mostly tubers and grains that last longer…’ He took everything out of his bag and hoped to find some meat that he hadn't shared with Gao’larg. Although he had enough rations for a year, it was mostly foods with long shelf life. Preservation magic might go a long way but there was a limit to those too.
His bag was also filled with raw materials, books, clothes and tons of mana ores. He didn’t have enough space or he would’ve stuffed it with more food. Ning Xin’s bag contained mostly food. Their trailer home had some cabinets that could safely store food but the space within wasn’t enlarged. She used those cabinets to store pots, pans and all sorts of kitchenware together with jars of sauces and oils that she regularly uses. The trailer’s interior did lack decorations but there weren't many places for decorations since the walls would collapse and fold.
Ning Xin’s bag was frozen together with her so he couldn’t search it for ingredients.
“Gen, let a monster through. Something delicious, and with meat.” He thought about how there were plenty of monsters in this region that liked hibernating in the ground. With how they were moving, the only reason he hadn’t come upon monsters popping through the dome was that the turtle was shifting them aside. There were some variants of monsters here with bodies partially or even completely made of ice so he clarified.
“...You’ll have to wait. I scared them off, it’ll be some time before we encounter anything.”
Without any choice on the matter, he continued his attempts to prod at his left arm’s mana chassis. Nothing seemed to be working and he didn’t get a response. They had to heal naturally.
He got bored and gave up trying to heal it quicker. Now he had the time to go back to the foundations of his ice magic. He couldn’t believe it took watching Korta sleep and breathe to notice that he diverted from simplicity. Korta’s misty breath that he exhales naturally flows onto his skin and condenses itself into some kind of armour. His breath didn’t just collect and condense, it followed some pattern under the Frost Elf’s skin. He guessed that it was Korta’s physique or a passive skill.
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When the Frost Elves cast ice magic they all had their own method of strengthening their ice magic outside of compression. Korta would coil his ice mana before taking that to form his spell. Enya would constantly grind the layer of ice on her daggers with a secondary layer making a similar sharpened edge like a vibration blade. Koawe…he wasn’t able to tell.
Ebony followed Roya’s method but he never applied it to all his spells. Weaving ice mana into threads. It didn’t do as much as simply forcing mana to compress and he kept trying to copy turtle scales, sword and shield anatomy that he left that out. It was hard to say if he could apply it to his freezing flames but it wouldn’t hurt to try and see if there was a difference.
He worked on Imperishable Frost Scales first. It was the skill that depended on the solid properties of ice the most. It was fun to rebuild the skill. He manually formed threads of ice mana and twisted them together. There were many types of coils and even braids for threads and ropes. He made a simple twisted ‘rope’ with 3 strands and kept conjuring them before trying to form a scale with them.
It didn’t work. There were loose ends and most importantly knots that took up space. It weakened the integrity of the final product. His solution was simple. He treated the scale as a flat cloth and made it extra thick. Without bending the threads, there would be no knots. Loose ends could be frozen together with the rest of the scale or shaved off to become sharp. It didn’t matter since the material wasn’t cloth, it was ice.
‘ah…I don’t have sister Jing’s testing equipment…’ He was a bit disappointed at the lack of equipment so he could test the toughness or other properties of the new scale with high accuracy. He conjured another scale with his old method and placed it beside his new one. He went on to make a few copies of the new scale before he changed the thread thickness by coiling 4 strands together. Then 5.
After he had 10 copies of each, he went back to making 3-stranded threads but instead of twisting them, he braided them. Making 10 copies for 3-stranded to 5-stranded for a single braid and a double braid. He also made plaited versions.
He found it relaxing and then he went on and made a scale with a mixture of different types of threads. He could fit quite a few layers before they were at the thickness of a single scale. He took out a pen and notebook and drew a table and wrote down the types that he made along with empty boxes for durability, impact resistance, shear resistance, flexibility, mana loss and left a few blanks in case he thought of other important properties to take note of.
Because of how thin he could make his strands of ice mana, every scale of equal thickness took hundreds of layers of these 'cloths’. He made rigid versions and soft versions but the soft versions were mostly for fun. It might fit his robe more and won’t reduce his flexibility as much so it wasn’t completely useless. It was just that ice would naturally stiffen so it required constant control over them.
He tested a few by punching them to check if making thin layers made them brittle. For some of them, it did. Making it as threads meant that the scales no longer had compact layers and the structure was completely different. He still packed up all his experimental scales.
Next, he experimented with Frost Edge but there were not many results he could get. Frost Edge was a very flexible skill and its applications were only limited by his experiment and imagination.
After that was his Frostblaze. Korta could coil his breath, it wasn’t much of a stretch to thread his flames. It was far more difficult and he was stuck at this stage until Gen spoke out. “Heads up, two should be enough right?”
“Oh. Slap seals. They are in the icy region too?” Ebony lit up, these seals were a pretty good choice when it came to prey that could be found in the Glades. Two objects popped in above them, he caught them but they were much bigger than the ones he hunted in the past. They should be an evolution higher.
They were already dead so he got to processing them. Bleeding them out was a bit troublesome without the blood mage. He was not that good with butchering so he left one seal alone, in case he wasted too much meat.
He had a pot and skillet but no stove.
‘I can make a heating plate but there won’t be an actual flame…I have some planks, once they are set on fire they will produce a flame.’ Ebony worked around the problem by conjuring an ice plate with heating runes that he used for his old makeshift oven. It was not easy to overheat the rune to make the planks he had catch fire. His natural mana was also slightly cold so he used a Blue ore to burn out the weak rune. The ice plate countered it a bit but he took it away after the planks caught fire.
He put some iron under so that he didn’t scorch the progeniturtle, despite the impossibility of such a weak flame harming the corpse. He made a simple stir fry with some greens, steaks and deep-fried cutlets. He was well aware that she couldn’t smell anything within the seal so he didn’t cook too much.
He felt that he did pretty well. Gen did not like hot food but he appreciated it after they cooled. He was not completely new to cooked food, he just didn’t like heavily salted dishes.
Ebony purposely ate in front of Ning Xin but there was no observable reaction from her. He couldn’t sense through the frozen seal so his perception was limited.
‘Oh…damn, I had a kitchen with me.’ He remembered their trailer that had a small but functional kitchen. He didn’t feel bad about forgetting it, the illusion function wasn’t all that amazing compared to the loss in speed if he were to drive it in their escape. The shamanic mark on them made hiding implausible anyway.
Ful’s outburst made it fall unconscious or a similar state and needed more time before she recovered. The wasteful blast of mana was intense but only damaged the spirit. Gen stayed awake to drive them back to their original spot. He took the chance to ask him about sealing magic.
“So how did you learn sealing magic?”
“It was passed down to me. I seal myself to extend my lifespan, or I would’ve been dead long ago.”
Gen was roughly 12 thousand years old if he recalled correctly. Even for a turtle or long-lived species, it was not an age a Grandmaster could reach easily.
“Is it some secret or racial skill?”
“No, I can teach you. It’s arcane in nature, anyone should be able to learn it with decent mana manipulation and understanding of the properties of sealing magic.”
Ebony nodded and listened in silence. It was rare for Gen to be awake and talkative.
“There are countless types but I’m clearly only familiar with freezing-type seals. I can freeze my metabolism so that I don’t have to eat but I would lose weight over time and it weakens physical strength the longer I seal it. This here, freezes the state of the physical body. All injuries can be stopped but it is not possible for the person inside to be healed as well, it only heightens natural recovery. If a person’s natural recovery isn’t strong enough, it is possible to die within the seal despite my claims of sealing damage. You remember being able to manipulate mana inside but mana movement is actually sealed within the body so breaking out with magic is…difficult.”
“You can cast this with a single breath and almost no cast time…what are the disadvantages?” Ebony thought that the spell was a bit ridiculous. Couldn’t Gen kill almost anyone or anything just by sealing them and destroying them?
“I can pretty much guess what you’re thinking. It’s dozens of times harder to destroy externally than to break free from within. I mutated the skill from a defence spell, we use it to seal ourselves and heal while waiting for danger to pass. You can try breaking it, I’ll be impressed if you can break my Core Skill from the outside. Actually, I’ll be impressed if you can break out from within.”
“I won’t try that now.” He wasn’t going to attack Ning Xin to try to break something Gen was so confident in.
“I’ll find a weak prey for you to test on.” Gen stopped the drive and left the dome.
‘He hasn’t taught me how to use it….’
It took an hour before Gen was back with a football-sized toad that was alive. It was the poisonous creature that Clovis made his cold poison with. The poor thing was barely level 50. Gen spared the effort to go far enough to find it. On his back was a transparent ice box with dozens of small critters.
“Freeze it without hurting it. Mix in pure mana instead of just ice mana. You’ll get the hang of it and find the perfect ratio for you. For me, it’s 30% snow, 20% ice and 50% pure mana. Just for reference.”
‘so…I’m creating the spell myself again. These seniors don’t like teaching complete spells. For good reason, our mana is vastly different in properties. I can’t use snow either.’
“So it’s possible without snow mana?”
“It’s arcane, it's possible without any element. Once you manage to keep them alive, I’ll teach you the formation of mana layers.”
“You’re okay with teaching me your core skill?”
“This spell is compounded with other skills so you wouldn’t be able to get the same effect without snow magic and my mana’s properties. You tried to teach me yours. Why don’t we try to exchange it?”
“Okay.”
Ebony didn’t feel bad about the live experiments. He had more than enough control that he wouldn’t harm the poor creatures. They just wouldn’t like it.
He went with more ice mana than pure mana first. The toad ate his ice and burped. As expected from the Glades’ creatures not all were outright hostile towards him because he had no hostility towards them.
‘Gen said freeze them but I’m pretty sure he meant to seal them and make sure they don’t move to break free. I’ll slowly increase mana to ice mana ratios.’
“Do you exert constant control over the spell?” He could keep them frozen with ease so he clarified the goal of this experiment.
“No.”
He received an obvious answer. Gen left and the seal was still in place. However, once he removed his control over the ice the toad would just break free. It obviously wasn’t perturbed by the coating. The toad was annoyed after a hundred attempts. He fed them the seal meat he got and promised to let them go once he was done. Gen already released the other critters to hop and slither around. He got to drive the underground dome with its inhabitants again.
The little critters probably weren't smart enough to understand him but they understood that their lives were not under their control anymore.