Ebony didn’t need as much energy as he assumed.

He got to hitting his frame into place with his exhausted mental muscles and allowed the sap to coat a new framework. Not quite freezing it in place but forcing his mana chassis into submission. He had repeated the process many times on his Glacial Models that got more and more realistic so he didn’t slow down despite his body being at risk of permanent destruction. Weaving his muscles tissues anew felt interesting but almost unbearably ticklish.

Ironically, he didn’t need much sap. At least, not as much as he drew out. As if the sap was strongly affected by inertia, they bathed him and killed him faster than he could recover. Gen wasn’t funneling it for him as he did in the past with sap that aired and lost energy for years on end. Perhaps he no longer could. Not with Ebony’s personal resistance to magic having exponentially increased compared to his normal human self.

Unable to spare any of his remaining mental endurance to push the excess sap away, he had no choice but to continue his deadly experiment. Embracing the fact that the sword or sap seemed to do the exact opposite and let him absorb the energy as he wished.

‘I can’t reweave these muscles, my body won’t move like it used to do. My bones…are too tough, I can’t hammer them as much as I’d like. I’ll excite my mana chassis by creating individual whirlpools within every single inch of my body and brain…I’ll have to forget about expanding them then. Too much sap! I’ll die in about twelve seconds or so. Oh, that’s cool. Calculated Hunch is more impressive than I imagined.’

Within his mental space, Ebony sat at a desk and looked at paper documents. Everywhere around him was just white blankness. He was not so much in a trance as one would assume. Arranging the documents and files, he speedily wrote, edited and signed them and pushed them back into the shelves that surrounded him.

The shelves were on fire and so were the documents. His desk and chair were in the midst of collapsing. The mental image of himself was similarly freezing. But his hands never stopped.

They might even have slowed down but it was not due to the stiff chill. He picked up the book he was writing on and looked at it with a free hand on his chin. Pondering for a moment before putting it back down and rewriting parts of it. Words that he didn’t want were erased without any instrument. The book caught on fire as he was placing it back on the shelves but nothing affected him as he continued to work.

The left side of the table leg collapsed but he crossed his leg and propped the table up to write on another document without pause. His chair shattered into pieces but his body remained in the same seated position without the chair. The air chair was his daily regime when he used to go to school.

He got to the last thing on his schedule and finished up without haste but he was working as fast as he could. The very last word was written and he slowly closed the book. The moment the book was shut, the encroaching flames slowed down to a stop. Everything was still on fire but it no longer shattered or froze his workplace with the same intensity.

Ebony’s mental self stood up and the destruction that the flames caused was reversed. The furniture restored themselves against the flames wishes. Excluding the shelves and his body.

The table and chair vanished. Left with the books and documents, he started taking them out one by one and looked through every letter. When he finished reading something, it would turn to ice dust ceasing further alterations.

Up till the very last letter was read, he stood there unflinching. Next, his body started to turn to ice dust.

Ebony woke up from his mental space and trance-like state.

“I’m full, you can have the rest back.” With the same calm, every morsel of mental endurance and strength was re-delegated to pushing the excess sap and energy back.

His stomach grumbled in response to his words.

“Uhm, I wasn’t lying. How long has it been since I ate? At least half a month. Oh but I've had enough of you. For now. Please go back.” Ebony’s request was silently declined. However, he didn’t panic. With his senses and faculties back, he knew he was dying far slower than moments ago. As for how many moments, he wasn’t sure.

❅❅❅

Gen was watching the greedy humans trying to absorb energy that would kill them in real time. The woman was far more troublesome.

His mana was evaporating at incredible speeds and he had to get serious to keep the seal in place. He could help Scarlet suppress the abundant energy better than he could help Ebony since his mana body robustly rejected foreign mana.

He nodded his head when he saw Ebony starting to reject the energy.

It was a bit surprising that the man simply bypassed him and directly grabbed the weapon. He didn’t stop Ebony despite being fully capable of doing so. The man wasn’t as fragile as the previous human and he would be able to save him in time.

Personally, he was curious how Ebony’s Physique would protect him against his ancestors flames as well.

He realised that Ebony wasn’t keen on letting go despite burning and cast a regenerative seal on him to increase his chances. His ancestor wasn’t keen on doing anything as well. Gen just hoped that he wouldn’t die and risk his chance at evolving without allowing his ancestor to dry up and pass away.

Unlike Ebony’s gentle and quiet fight, Scarlet’s was far more intense.

At first, the Heartblood Essence that his ancestor gifted her was flowing towards the girl by its own accord but a big fight within her broke out. The hot essence started to consume Scarlet when it sensed that the girl didn’t regenerate faster than it burned her. At that time, Ebony was busy refining his mana manipulation and other skills.

Gen questioned his ancestor since the situation turned out different from what he expected based on the little he was told but the tree spirit didn’t manage to finish its sentence before he felt another drastic change. He had not sensed such intense hunger before.

Instead of rejecting or slowing down the consumption of the Heartblood Essence, Scarlet devoured it at a quicker pace. The small body had absorbed an unbelievable amount of energy but her body was dissolving. That hurt Gen’s mind but he managed to keep his spell going.

An odd pulse shook within and parts of her body regenerated but the dark red flames consumed her with greater glee in response. The heated battle of hunger raged on as they consumed each other. Scarlet’s puny body could only handle so much and she reached her limit soon after. He had assumed she would give in but the fires only got hotter as she exploded out of his seal as if to expend the energy within. Along with the explosion was a pulse, a heart beat.

Under her white cloth were simply skeletons, pieces of flesh and strings of tissue that connected some of her limbs. Her hair was surprisingly unharmed despite every part of her alight. Scorching hot black fluid splattered around. Ebony completely ignored the burns he got or the holes that appeared in his overflowing string area. Sitting there without giving even a glance to his partner. The black fluid evaporated quickly and he recast his spell on her.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He did not know how the human was alive with just a heart and a head that was mostly in one piece. The rest of her body had simply dissolved. His spell was not capable of keeping someone…something like that alive.

Obviously, he had judged that she was simply in the midst of dying.

With enough vitality, if one’s vital organs were working and the other organs regenerated fast enough to keep them alive it was possible to survive for some time without many parts of the body. Her body burned and dissolved but each organ continued to struggle and regenerate. Every muscle tissue regrew immediately, challenging the Heartblood Essence to consume her at a greater pace.

He was able to feel the pulse better the second time it occurred. Her heartbeat caused his seal to ripple and a gush of vitality rushed throughout her steaming blood. Her blood flowed unhindered even to areas without veins or arteries. The masterful blood manipulation impressed Gen slightly.

In that cycle, the energy that tried to gobble her up was reused to rebuild her body after she dragged it into her functional heart. It might be the only organ that remained in one piece no matter how badly her body broke down. Even her skull had melted off and rebuilt itself. As for her brain, that was clearly a sensitive organ but she seemed to treat it as callous as the rest of her body. The only difference was that she only allowed half her brain to melt off and rebuild itself at a time.

Gen was shocked at the monstrous proceedings. He was not confident to say that he would be able to do the same. As a defence focused turtle, physical pain was mostly a stranger to him. However, funnily enough he was familiar with it and was a user of pain himself. The creatures in the Glades were put to shame as she was repeating the process without pause.

Watching her, Gen learned what he was missing. Hunger.

He lacked hunger.

Hunger for growth.

The more her body rebuilt, the longer it took for the Heartblood Essence to break her down again.

Ebony moved when he achieved what he wanted to. He didn’t spare a glance to the woman, making food while humming. After he was done eating, Gen got busy maintaining two spells. A waste of his mental effort and mana, he was lucky the ambient mana and the amount that the trees above could convert had increased.

They took a long time.

Scarlet whose proceedings quietened down for some time was the first to have another development. Unexpectedly for the tree spirit, she consumed more than three quarters of the orb.

Assuming that she reached her physical and mental limits from the extreme conditions and exertions, he was ready to see her stop dragging more energy from the solidified essence. After all, even the Heartblood Essence’s greedy consumption of her had weakened.

Gen only saw the gluttonous girl who regained her body move her arm and put the orb into her mouth as if it finally got to the size that she could barely swallow. He swore he felt another explosion within her body but this time, his seal sensed the rush of vitality escaping her vessel.

Even if he didn’t put her in a seal and sensed the ongoing physique refinement, he was able to tell what happened. The crazy human absorbed and consumed the remaining bulk and dragged everything into her untouched heart in one go. The last ripple in his seal wasn’t due to her heartbeat but her heart bursting.

Her body went limp and sunk within his semi liquid seal.

His opinion of the female human had only increased as she rebuilt herself for days on end. He was surprised that he started to care if the woman was dead or not. Was hunger the right way? Would he end up dead if he truly learned to hunger as she does?

Gen was captivated. He had to know where hunger leads to.

The female human went still. Laying on the ground for moments that felt like the ages he had spent hiding in his shell. Loud silence echoed within his mana sense.

Then, the weakest vibrations that he could perceive came from within her seal.

Blood was flowing.

There weren’t any left after the hot explosion but there it was. First a trickle. Then a stream.

Her heart muscles and tissues regrew.

It was only possible thanks to the Heartblood Essence itself and his seal but the mere possibility of such regeneration meant that she was capable of almost full body restoration as long as she had the energy for it. That didn’t seem to be the case when she just started.

Gen’s eyelids got too heavy and he fell asleep soon after learning what hunger led to.

❅❅❅

Scarlet climbed out of the liquid that wrapped her up. She had to cook a feast for the turtle that kept her alive.

The beginning had been life threatening as she almost got eaten up. However, she knew that there was no aggression towards her. Just a gluttonous desire to consume her when it noticed her weakness so she retaliated against the cheeky dead phoenix by showing them who the predator was.

The excruciating pain was far worse than her previous experience but how dare a fragment of a dead bird try to eat her. She didn’t have to fight so hard the previous time with the tiny shard. Using the energy within the orb to heal herself had been difficult since she didn’t know how to utilise it but once she got used to it, it was just a matter of repeating the process in a controlled manner.

It got boring and she couldn’t stay awake for much longer. It was the first time she stayed up for more than a week and had her mental activities running all time high for so long. If she hadn’t invested as much mental stats as she did she might have failed midway.

Drained and annoyed that Ebony simply walked and made food for himself, she couldn’t resist the actual hunger much longer. With her exhausted mind, she couldn’t absorb the rest and her body was receiving diminishing returns. Looking at the size of the Heartblood Essence remaining, she thought it would hard to swallow but her stomach and impulse got the better of her.

Having protected her heart religiously because the energy wasn’t potent enough as a slow trickle, she decided to use the rest at once and get it over with so her numb mind could rest. She just didn’t expect her heart to blow up, knocking her out.

She didn’t know how long she fainted but her mind managed to collect itself. Honestly, she didn’t know how and didn’t care how. With the remaining vestiges of mental strength, blood was conjured and vitality from the Heartblood Essence was forced to regenerate her heart.

In hindsight, she chalked it up to luck and her mask that woke her up. Incensed Meditation might have been the greatest helping hand after Gen.

She couldn’t even make it back to the trailer and fell asleep on the cold snow right after slipping out of Gen’s special seal.

❅❅❅

Ebony successfully rejected the excess sap at death’s door but he was no longer able to fly without any strength to carry himself. Falling out of the sky, he rammed hard onto the titan turtle’s shell and bounced to the side without any strength to stop his fall. His mind didn’t give his body commands and his body wasn’t capable of moving itself either.

‘Did I actually mess up?’ He wasn’t worried even though he no longer had the strength and his mind was dead tired with mana perception knocked out as well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he managed to glance at where Ning Xin was but his hazy mind couldn’t assess her situation. He was lucky enough to bounce to the edge of the titan turtle to look down. There wasn’t a need to shift his head as his body was slowly sliding off the edge, head down.

‘Uh oh, I’m not going to die like this right? Can my neck survive a drop from over a hundred metres tall? Crap.’ His body slid off the titan turtle.

The expressionless man planted his head and body deep into the snow.

‘Whew. I forgot about that.’

One crisis after the other, he realised that he couldn’t breathe and his lungs didn’t have any of his magical reserves left.

‘At least I can still control my breathing.’ He held his breath and hoped for the best. With neither body or magic being able to move, there was nothing he could do.

Unexpectedly, he managed to fall asleep while holding his breath.