‘Ting’ ‘Frostblaze Physique has been altered and tempered into Dense Frostblaze Frame Physique.’
“Might as well compare it to check the differences. Frame physique, how redundant.” He rolled his shoulders and did a joint flexibility check.
‘Frostblaze Physique (Passive) - By absorbing and assimilating freezing flames into your body and having it seeped into even your very bones and organs your physique has been changed into one of the Frostblaze. Melding your mana into your body, your physical body is now partially made of Mana, being inseparable, 25% of your Mana Regeneration also regenerates your Health. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 50%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 30%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.’
“Hey, let’s do that thing you told me about. I need to see if I can move the same way and warm my body up.” Ning Xin walked out after him. Clothed but not in battle gear.
“Yoga? I only know a few poses that two people can do together but sure.” Ebony didn’t think about it. More focused on his new body and the same can be said for the swordswoman. Their stiff bodies could use some help. In fact, both of them lost a few levels in Conditioning.
‘Dense Frostblaze Frame (Passive) - By absorbing and assimilating freezing flames into your body and having it seeped into even your very bones and organs your physique has been changed into one of the Frostblaze. Purity of conjured flames of frost is increased by 100%.
Melding your mana into your body, your physical body is now partially made of Mana, being inseparable, 25% of your Mana Regeneration also regenerates your Health. High-intensity exposure to mana reworked and increased your mana and body compatibility by 100%. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 100%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 15%.
Condensing your skeletal structure while it regenerates with futility, your bones were forcefully forged 200% denser. Tearing and reweaving your musculature compactly while regrowing new flesh increases the base effect of Strength and Endurance by 20%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.
An unabating Will formed an incessant swirl of excitement within your mana chassis increasing base mana regeneration by 100% in exchange for a 50% decrease in stamina regeneration.’
‘That’s a lot to take in. So the old effect stays the same except my weakness to heat is not as bad as it used to be and my base cold resistance is further improved. I don’t know what purity of flames would do but it’s probably more beneficial than detrimental. I was able to keep myself mostly physical compared to changing myself more magical than physical. Compatibility…I’ll assume it means body enhancement magic is half as damaging to my body as before but I can be sure after some testing. It would be great if that were true after the augmentation skill evolution.
My bones are denser, matching my focus on refinement. My muscles should be denser too, almost twice as dense but no mention of that and just the effect of increased strength and endurance. The drop in stamina regeneration is not good…was it worth it?’ Ebony pondered and felt strength returning to his body.
At the moment, he was feeling the effects of reduced regeneration so he couldn’t tell but from the description he knew he was just getting further from what a human is. A 100% increase in base mana regeneration should push a human’s 10% hourly regeneration to 20%. If his understanding of Fortifications is correct, the current effect of 500% is multiplicative on top of that. However, it also meant his 10% per minute stamina regeneration has dropped to 5% per minute.
Ebony did not foresee such a detriment when he was forcing all his energy towards increasing the speed at which he regenerated mana. No matter, he felt that it was more than worthwhile to combat the increase in mana cost of most of his magic.
‘I had more stamina than I knew what to with but that was before I knew how costly high-tier active physical skills are. I still have an overwhelming advantage compared to most warriors when it comes to stamina but I’ll have to try to get rid of this detriment in future. That future seems pretty far away, how should I go about refining myself to produce more stamina while keeping my advantages?’
From the general information, he wasn’t able to see if there were any problems with his new Physique other than the drop in stamina regeneration. Keeping himself more physical than magical was his choice as he realised that damage to his mana chassis was far harder to heal and he had no way to recover that faster, unlike his body.
Ebony finally made a bit more sense at his odd stamina pool value. The effect of Endurance increasing by 20% must have meant that the maximum stamina wasn’t one point of Endurance = ten stamina points but twelve instead. It may or may not also affect his stamina regeneration which he would have to find out once his body recovered to a normal state.
‘More math…Calculated Hunch will have to do some recalculations on my perceived stat value. Maybe I should account for that within the actual stat value, just adding 20% to strength and endurance instead of having a number and equating it with other people.’
Ebony was then distracted by the fact that the base effect of stats could defer. It led him back to the line of thought that despite having the same stat value, it was very possible for a man to be stronger than a woman.
This issue is even more obvious with monsters. Perhaps, instead of having a very high stat value monsters just had an extremely efficient base body that comes with their physique or shape and size. It made some sense. Hoarfrost Glades’ monsters may not have higher stats but they might have a better physique or what Gen calls a racial trait.
He wouldn’t be surprised if a monster's stat was ten but it was as great as a human’s stat of a hundred. However, he was just confused that a normal Physique was like a hidden information panel. Much base information such as resistances wasn’t known and only after some refining that makes one different from their original race would they see an improvement or deterioration.
‘I see, just maybe, but being birthed by higher level parents might affect this. So even if stat values are averaged, it doesn’t mean one is stronger or weaker than another being of the same race.’ He did not think it was too far-fetched of an idea.
He pushed Ning Xin who had her legs split and swapped places. As expected, both of them were a bit stiff and that affected the range of motion.
“How’s your Physique?”
“Less and less human.”
“Haha, same here.”
“Wanna share some details?”
“Sure.”
Unlike his massive change, the fire swordswoman didn’t have odd changes. Simplifying tempering and no alterations were done. After all, she only capitalised on what she already had not rebuilt her entire physical body like he did. However, as her Physique had long been mutated by some kind of blood elemental ingredient the only improvement she got was towards the original Phoenix’s capabilities.
Vampiric Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix Physique (Passive) - Consuming a portion of the Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. Every drop of your blood has been boiled over together with your life essence many times over. Conjured flames absorb and purify energy from combusted matter. Gluttonous desire to eat increased by 300%. Metabolism and digestive efficiency increased by 200%. Natural Resistance to heat increased by 200%. Blood’s capacity for heat and energy increased by 100%. Base Health Regeneration increased by 400%. Able to digest and absorb 25% of essence from blood. Body can store up to 50% excess foreign energy for a short duration. Exceedingly miniscule chance of absorbing a miniscule percentage of stats from creature’s blood. Base Blood production is increased by 50%
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According to her, it was strengthened quite a lot. Gluttonous desire was new to him. He simply thought she liked to eat and she never mentioned this particular information. It went from 50% to 300% which seemed pretty bad. Her metabolism and digestive efficiency went from 50% to 200%. Heat resistance from 25% to 200%. Base health regeneration from 50% to 400%.
It was a bit odd that heat resistance hadn’t been that strong originally but that might have been due to the small fragment she utilised. The remaining effects that came with her blood refinements didn’t strengthen. The health regeneration seemed overwhelmingly strong when he took into account her Core Skills that depended on vitality and stamina.
Finally, the biggest change for her was the additional capability to absorb energy through her conjured flames or at least, from what she burned. She also needed to test that to be sure how much energy and what type of energy it referred to.
‘It seems like more sap or Heartblood Essence won’t help much more. Perhaps one more refinement or two and the increase won’t be much.’ Ebony realised that they were saturated to some extent. Finding other ingredients with vast amounts of energy might be difficult especially when they have to match his current one unless they plan to alter themselves even further.
“Let’s spar.”
“Mmm.”
They got their weapons out but neither enhanced themselves. Ning Xin did not get a direct strengthening as he did so he expected he would be able to get an upper hand. But he was wrong, while his body was still recovering she was already more than halfway back to a perfect state. Not to mention, she always had the upper hand when mana wasn’t involved, at least when it came to physical prowess and not the actual battle.
Ebony was a bit devastated to find out that the lack of increment in Agility meant that he was off balance in his movements. It was subtle but he even believed that the lack of refinements to his neural network made him sluggish compared to his old body. His reflex did not match the strength that he was used to. The degree of sluggishness was miniscule at best but not to him. It was a detriment so big that it might mess up his combat abilities.
The swordswoman felt it.
If someone else could sense it, then it wasn’t subtle at all.
‘At least I know that Agility does something to speed up reaction and reflex. Does it affect the neural transmission speed? Regardless, I have no choice but to work around it until I can increase my Agility stat to balance myself again.’
He spent two days rehabilitating before his mana started to recover normally and his body lost its sluggishness. He was very satisfied.
10% per hour which his Fortification increased by 500% meant that he regenerated 60% of his base maximum mana per hour and could fill up a normal sized mana pool in over an hour not including compression. Doubling that to 20% and increasing it by 500% gave him 120% instead and he could get a full pool in under an hour.
Of course, that was before he had a mana capacity-increasing skill. His natural recovery is about 27,324 mana in an hour. With his Core Skill running at its limit, it gives him a 32.4 times multiplier or roughly 885,297. Regenerating 245 mana per second made him feel like he was constantly bubbling with energy.
Due to how much he could compress mana and store it, it would take quite some time to have a fully compressed capped-out mana pool. If he didn’t meditate it would take more than a day.
The increase in speed let him cover up the loss of time that he was supposed to be saving mana for Ful.
Fortunately, he didn’t feel like it was a waste of time to let his mana build up. He could train Preservation Bubble to further increase the size of his mana pool. He had to regain some sort of body balance with his reflexes feeling as if they lagged behind.
He had assumed the increase in mass would be easily countered with how often he changed his weight but it was different when it wasn’t a force dragging him down but his internals feeling heavier. The increase in strength did not match with the greater increase in his mass and density which further messed with his balance and made him feel like he was a toddler learning how to rock climb again.
It didn’t get bad enough to make him regret his alterations but it was quite embarrassing during spars. The increase in mana regeneration speed had been purely impulse. He had that idea during his skill refinement and the additional energy would’ve killed him if he didn’t do anything with it. The trance did not help. Or it did, in this case.
Unlike him, Ning Xin was extremely comfortable with her new body. If they had a chance to duel at full power again, he might find that her sustainability has skyrocketed but that would have to wait till he got back complete control over himself and he had mana to spare. He wanted to see if he could catch her off guard with his skill improvements as well but that could stay a surprise.
Sadly for Ebony, another month passed. Day after day, he watched as she had explosive improvements to her skills. She was able to incorporate wind and lightning into her close combat regime far better. There were definitely some skill evolutions with them as she got blindingly fast. He might have a better movement skill, a great body enhancement and a supporting skill for all magic however, she had a fire, blood, wind and lightning buff on top of her ridiculous core skills all buffing her speed and stats to unreasonable heights.
Simply put, without his movement speed Fortification he could forget about being anywhere near her speed. As for her swordsmanship, it got to the point where his eyes and senses could catch up but not his body. Not even his predictions helped to dodge every attack.
She got a new active sword skill. A quick slash or quick draw but she didn’t require a sheath so it wasn’t so stiff. It reminded him of the tournament with the swordsman who acted cool and only attacked once. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he was the only one improving and getting stronger. Hopefully, the battle they promised would still be up if they ever met again.
As if to copy him, her offensive capabilities were rising so fast he wasn’t sure he could defend against her attacks.
“Ready?” Today wasn’t the day to test out their limits.
“Naturally. I trust you to protect us…” Gen replied solemnly. It must be quite a hurdle to trust some weird humans who stole their energy to protect him and to keep his ancestor alive.
“Just like you protected us.”
“Fight me again afterwards.” Ning Xin said saltily. He watched her getting beat down so pathetically numerous times over the past month. Gen challenged her and asked her to warn his old bones up before he evolved and she obviously accepted.
The result was painfully devastating for her. He was forced to watch her carelessly approach Gen’s snow the first time around and she bowled over in shock. It was a crippling effect but she managed to melt the effects off. That ended the first duel as she melted it off too late and Gen’s large foot was right above her. It was large enough to crush her entire body.
The second time round went slightly worse for her pride. Gen stood there and warmed himself up by taking her attacks. Ebony wasn’t able to see how tough Gen’s defences were because he didn’t even hide in his shell. He just allowed Ning Xin to poke at his head but it did absolutely nothing.
It was honestly terrifying because when Gen fought back, the turtle could actually react to her speed. Maybe not always physically since he didn’t care about taking hits but magically? She could only get close because Gen allowed her to do so.
Ebony was enlightened. The dome was only the size it was because Gen was a true Domain user, not a rip-off like him. The turtle could sleep there undefended and nothing either of them could do can hurt the creature.
A weird chuckle reverberated from Gen, “After evolution? I would reign supreme in the Glades again, you would have to grow a little more before another challenge.”
‘Wow, he really is excited about this evolution. I’ve never heard him so confident, so full of energy. I wonder how long ago was it that he reigned supreme as a grandmaster?’ Ebony’s image of the turtle was of a tired old senior who was lazy and needed a lot of sleep. It wasn’t all that surprising that Gen was excited though. It had been long overdue for his evolution because he didn’t trust anyone to keep Ful alive.
“The dome won’t collapse but the blizzard spell outside will stop. All my spells will be inactive. Do you want me to hide the forest underground? It will stop their mana conversion.”
“I have enough to support Ful for over two months.” Ebony was glad that his flame purity increase only made it more efficient for the tree. He hasn’t tested the difference in battle.
“...I'll leave it out but they are a delicious snack for some.”
“I will snack on them.” Ning Xin added.
“I hope you won’t burn it down. Right, I moved us to a relatively secluded area and the nearby territories should not have any creatures you won’t be able to handle. Don’t leave our forest’s edge, there are about 4 or 5 species nearby that could kill you with ease. Those should remember not to enter but the dumber, younger ones don’t know what they shouldn’t touch. Ton and Sei can ferry you in and out.” The old turtle gave his grandson and granddaughter orders.
The region was a bit dangerous for the young turtles but they had to fetch food every day from the forest above anyway.
“Alright, if there’s nothing else you can get right to it,” Ebony told the worrywart.
“So it is.” Gen skidded one round around the progeniturtle before coming face to face with the mountain of a turtle and holing up in his shell a hundred metres away.