“Here are your meals, try to eat as often as you can.” His gluttonous chef showed him the packed meals stacked on the dining table, kitchen counter all the way to the floor and living room.
“All of this?” He pointed at the hill of food. He would’ve rubbed the sleep out of his eyes if he hadn’t washed his face.
“I’ve already packed mine. These are what you can snack on if the fighting isn’t too bad. These boxed ones are the ones you can eat if you’re free.” She gave him a tour and got him to pack his food at easy-to-reach locations of his bag.
Gen nudged his head against the trailer and almost flipped them over.
“Ebony, your stop is here. I won’t give you too much information but I’ll tell you about why I stopped where I did to evolve.” Gen had perfect control over the volume of his voice now.
“Don’t tell me you brought us into the Glacial region?”
“That’s a good joke, no, unless you're serious about dying.” Gen brushed him off. “We’re still well in the Icy region. I’ve parked right outside the territorial regions. It’s above us now. Around these parts, are the real Glades. There are no wild monsters, only territorial ones. If you do see a wild and small group, then I wish you luck.”
Ebony pulled Ning Xin away from the kitchen to listen even though she could probably hear them.
“You parked us right outside this region. So they controlled each other, letting them fight each other worked best for us. They would also have trouble reaching us if they had to pass by each other’s territory.”
“That’s pretty much it. Your traversal speed would be quite useless for travelling in these parts. Once you invade, you’re prey. The faster you go, the more likely they’ll see you as a threat so make what you will with that information.”
Ebony finally understood why Koawe could take months just to travel to and fro their second village. Coordinated, territorial monsters answered his questions. Travelling on Arti, a Grandmaster bird, they should cover the distance with ease. The monsters here shouldn’t be too much trouble for Koawe either.
“Ebony, I’ll be dropping you off at the strongest Grandmaster race throughout the Glades.”
“Wait, what? I’m only a level 300 Master.” Ebony recalled Ful calling the Berg Mammoths the second best or third if they included Gen. The comparison was no longer possible.
“Relax,” Gen stopped talking and didn’t clarify before adeptly grabbing his gravity-repelling robe and flinging him into the ceiling.
He was swallowed up by the ceiling and spit out.
The oddity of coming out of the snow and landing on dirt soil always confused him.
“Hmm. Greetings, I come in…peace?” Ebony locked eyes with the gorillas that sat and lay lazily on large rocks.
The gorillas were just like a western lowland gorilla or a mountain gorilla. To put it simply, they looked exactly like a gorilla that he was familiar with. Black fur and skin. They didn’t look like some kind of ice gorilla either.
One of the differences was their size. The gorillas here were 3 to 4 metres tall, just like a small Troll. However, the biggest difference was their frame. These gorillas were bodybuilders. Trolls were already muscle packed but these gorillas had muscles growing on their muscles. They were wider than Trolls and the feature that stood out the most was their arms.
He estimated their forearms to be a metre in diameter. Almost disproportionately so.
[Apex Apes Lvl 300]
‘They're not Grandmasters?’
The Apex Apes saw him and continued to dig their nostrils with their pinkies.
“Who am I kidding, I’m here to train.” 3 Apex Apes were lazing around on their personal rocks less than ten metres away from him. They got bored of his sudden appearance and got back to…lazing around.
“I’m here to challenge you to see who’s stronger.” Ebony drew Icicle and stopped hiding his presence, letting his overflowing Wisdom free. He fully enhanced himself while he was at it.
That caught their attention.
The next thing he knew was that his body was caught within one of their grasps. Before he could swing at the Ape’s neck the gorilla clenched its fists.
Ebony’s flames licked the Ape’s fur and skin without piercing through. On the other hand, his ribs pierced his lungs and his spine got mangled.
‘Damn itch,’ he blamed the itch for the lag in his response.
“Ooo oo!?” The Apex Ape scratched its head with its free arm, loosened its fingers and stared at him.
“Ahh ahh?”
Ebony was slightly amazed. The gorilla had no intent or obvious muscle movements. It flicked its wrist and chucked his body into tomorrow. He should’ve been able to see such a move coming but he didn’t. The Ape didn’t let him escape despite the loosened grip and he wasn’t able to blame an itch for his lagged response anymore.
The inertia felt greater than his own Phantom’s Flicker and he struggled to resist. It didn’t even take half a second before he crashed into a hard wall that put a full stop to his ragdolling.
‘A cliff?’ His body bounced due to his repulsion membrane and landed on his back.
“Hello,” He greeted the family of Apex Apes that hung on the rocky cliffside. There were many protrusions wide enough for them to rest on but some were just climbing for sport.
Their levels were mostly above 300.
“OOO OO AAHH AHH!” The Ape that chucked him laid claim on him and dashed over. Its long arms supported its dash like a four-legged run.
It stopped before the cliff and roared at its seniors. The others already looked at him as half prey because of the delicious essence he exposed to them but they weren’t completely aggressive monsters that took a kill-on-sight approach.
They appear…slothful.
The strongest Apes didn’t even wake up from their nap to begin with.
He watched a glint of surprise in their eyes when he stood up with realigned bones just a second after the young gorilla stopped shouting.
“Let me guess, surprised? Anger’s not the only thing I’ve learnt to pick up.” Ebony noticed he had a habit of talking to monsters. Just in case they understood him.
It was written in one of Clovis’s theoretical books that a mixture of high enough Perception and Intelligence made it possible to understand intentions beyond words. Ebony saw it as body language and eye contact.
The one who crushed his body smiled, got on two and bent it's back backwards. It brought both of its thick arms and drummed its chest with an ear-bursting warcry.
Ebony unbuttoned his robes and removed them before stripping his shirt and kicking his shoes and socks off.
Having learnt from Gao’larg, he gave a warcry in the form of an unknown creature’s roar and a soul attack.
❅❅❅
“What kind of opponents did you give Ebony?” Ning Xin asked the old turtle.
“Apes.”
“Details? It’s not like you’re going to give me the same opponents.”
“There’s not much to say. The apes can’t use magic. They’re just strong. Ebony’s quick on his feet and he’s tough to crack. At the same level, only the Berg Mammoths and Apex Apes can kill him. The Berg Mammoths are…unsuitable for training against. The Apex Apes, on the other hand, might be a tad too dangerous but I trusted you and believed he could take it.”
“They can’t use magic, how dangerous can they be for a creature of the Glades.” Ning Xin stated. Gen himself already said how slippery Ebony was.
“You misunderstand. They are not original inhabitants of the Glades. They’re just Apes that found the cold weather here comfortable and made it their home. Hence, the oddity of not being wielders of ice magic. I personally believe they’re not from Elcra at all.”
“I didn’t ask about that.” Unlike Ebony, she didn’t care about where a monster came from or what their history was.
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“They once broke my shell and dug out my flesh. We were both Masters at that time and that was a one-on-one fight. They have an uncanny ability to leave the environment undamaged and concentrate all their force and power on their target and target alone. A little similar to Ebony’s movement skill and your sword thrusts.”
“You said they were a Grandmaster race of monsters.”
“They don’t absorb ambient essence. I don’t think they wield Classes yet but they’re pretty much sapient creatures.”
Gen’s words meant that the apes levelled normally and did not grow at a nonsensical pace like monsters. Other than that, the information about sapience held no meaning to her. So what if their opponents were smart and acted like people?
“So what’s my opponent?” Ning Xin asked before she could pull her question back.
The flow of the conversation pulled her into asking but she didn’t have the intention to find out in advance.
“Oh, you’ll be facing a different struggle. You’re stronger than Ebony but it doesn’t take the strongest or even the fastest to break you. I can tell you about them and it wouldn’t matter. They’re the Glades' coldest creatures. For you.” Gen smirked.
Ning Xin felt what the turtle was emoting. Mirthful.
She wasn’t angered or ashamed by the disrespect.
‘Okay. That's a lie…’ she ignored the level-up notice of her meditation skill. It had mutated in a manner beyond numbers and percentages. Most of her anger or negative emotions could just feed her meditation in a smooth transition.
If the skill was active, most emotional agitation would simply feed the skill to calm her further. The skill would not work if she were to use any amount of mana but it was close to passive as long as she stopped casting magic or wielding mana for a few minutes. Staying beside Ebony for so long had its perks.
“We’re here,” Gen didn’t even wait for ten minutes after pushing Ebony out before he reached her destination. “Before you go, I just have one question to ask you.”
“...Ask away.” Ning Xin's Intuition suddenly alarmed her but it caught no hint and she wasn't able to find out what the alarm was about.
“Are two fangs all you have?”
“What?”
She was swallowed in a pillar of snow before her confusion fully escaped her throat.
With her reflexes, her response and panic reached as fast as lightning.
On her waist, was nothing but an empty belt.
On her hands were just her gloves.
Throughout her life, she had never strayed more than ten metres away from a pair of swords.
That wasn’t even a figure of speech. She hugged a pair of blades not long after she was born and had always carried them on her. The only change was the size and material of her swords as she grew up.
Be it sleeping, showering or getting tossed into another realm her swords gave her confidence and comfort.
Her rising panic fed her meditation and forced her into bullet time. Within the pillar of snow, she was almost certain Gen slowed down and left her sight alone on purpose as both her dear swords were between his teeth.
Then he crunched.
The sound of metal snapping washed over her and flooded her mind.
She rolled across the damp floor.
She overestimated her meditation as it wasn’t able to calm her fully.
However, the lesson of her twin swords turning rubbery wasn’t forgotten. Now wasn’t the time to panic.
Even though she told herself that, she wasted precious time getting a hold of herself.
The first point to note was her surroundings. It was dark.
There shouldn’t have been any clouds and the sun should be up but it was almost as dim as a Spring night. A Spring moon was relatively dim as Winter’s pitch black moon had just passed but she could still see.
She conjured a small flame for light but it would take a moment before she could cast it as her mind raced too fast.
Eyes.
Numerous pairs of eyes laid on her.
‘Bats. Coldest opponents…to combat my heat and fire? And he took Scorchy and Scorchie away. Don’t tell me I’m in a cave again.’ She did her best to remain calm.
The slow-moving bats were already flapping their wings and her bullet time was about to end in about 2 perceived seconds.
[Tadarida Heat Sink Lvl 351]
‘What’s a heat sink?’ Ning Xin had never Appraised such a weird name or title for a monster. The word ‘heat’ made her think that the bats used some form of heat but she was smart enough to believe it was the other way around.
With another second on her clock, she gave up on counting her opponents because there were more pairs of eyes than grains of rice that she eats in a meal.
That’s a crazy number.
She had proper Grandmasters as opponents and all of them were around level 340 to 360.
She had a pair of old training swords in her bag but she didn’t even consider wasting the time to take it out. They would melt and break with ease with her current strength.
The mana she tried to gather finally came and they bubbled into existence on top of her palms.
The world sped up.
Ning Xin desperately danced with a pair of fiery swords but they were just gusts of hot gas that slapped across the bat’s bodies. They didn’t even blink and clawed at her mantle, pants, hair and mask.
Hundreds of them flooded her without so much as a burn on them.
She continued to gather her life force instead of panicking and ran forward to throw the ones on her mantle and hair off. Violently crashing into a wall was not part of the plan but it got some bats off her anyway.
A confined space limited the use of her speed.
Her fire hasn’t burned a single bat.
Her swords of flames were not a proper substitute.
The blood splatters she sprayed around her body exploded with a burst of burning lightning but they were severely lacking in power compared to her fire magic.
Even worse, the bats seemed to shrug off the spasms within a tenth of a second.
Her winds could barely affect the path of their flight. With thousands of them surrounding her and hundreds of them on her tail, their wing flaps were enough to blow her wing magic away.
Flames did not register as swords and her attack speed Fortification was rendered moot.
Gen’s words echoed within her mind, “Are two fangs all you have?”
Ning Xin closed her eyes to shake the words off. She grabbed the edges of her mantle and stuffed her hair under before dashing towards the only open path.
She had no idea where she was or where she was going but she just wanted to be on the move. Whenever there were branching paths, she would take the closest one without any thought.
While her Vitality gathered, so did her mana.
With another swipe of her hands, streaks of blood materialised within her grasp. Her arms moved swiftly, but the blood proved to be more fluid than she had anticipated, transforming into a whip. Her physical strength was formidable, causing her spell to stretch under the strain, resulting in splatters resembling water droplets scattered around her.
She clenched her fists and the blood around her burst into sparks of lightning.
Utilising physical motions and cues significantly aided in the manipulation and activation of mana, a practice commonly employed by mages. In the past, she had taken pride in her ability to minimise reliance on such techniques. However, her confidence in her mage skills crumbled when she witnessed Ebony's magical prowess. Thankfully, that pride had been rather negligible from the start.
The Tadarida bats weren’t badly affected even when directly hit and continued to hunt her down for trespassing.
The bites at her clothes and skin were a source of irritation, causing pain and making it seem as though her bodysuit might rip apart at any moment. Her skin and flesh were on the verge of tearing until she allowed her heart to beat just once.
“Finally woke up huh?” The bats scattered and were briefly pushed back by the light shockwave that emanated from her. All of them halted their attacks for a fleeting moment, with sheer instinct guiding their decision on whether to continue fighting or flee.
Their puny brains only registered one opponent and many allies.
The bat and swordless swordswoman tore at each other.
❅❅❅
Gen extended his senses to their limits.
It was coincidental that the territory of both opponents suited to push the little humans to their limits was within his reach.
He focused on Ebony’s fight a lot more closely.
Emptying his mind and intent, he had to make sure both of them didn’t feel or depend on a safety net that was him. It would render the exercise moot if they didn’t feel an existential threat.
Despite how troublesome it was to deal with Ebony’s skillset, it was both the simplest and hardest method. His opponent just had to have overwhelming power. Nothing more, nothing less.
The Apex Apes were befitting of their names, Ebony’s great battle instincts, sense of timing and positioning would be pushed to their limits as the apes moved without intent. Their muscles moved and twitched explosively and flexibly without any mental command. Trying to predict their movements would be a challenge.
The speed and power advantage the apes had surpassed what Scarlet could dish out at the moment but not necessarily so once that beast in human skin reached her peak state. But in terms of destructive capabilities, the apes stood on top.
Gen decided that Ebony required a style of training that was as primal as it could get. He had to be extremely careful since the Apex Ape could kill Ebony with just a single good punch.
As for Scarlet’s battle, he didn’t fear for her as much. Her physical prowess was so high she almost gave the Apex Apes a run for their money. The heat sinks ranged from 350 to 480. Their territory was weirdly cold but had the same ice mana density as its surroundings. If she didn’t stray far from where he left her, she should be able to survive.
Letting her fight tooth and nail without her best weapons could easily push her to the edge.
The small mountain range she was in was made into the Tadarida’s home both under and above ground with the strongest ones above ground. He would be surprised if she made it out in the first month.
A constraint space easily limited the use of her speed and a huge number of small opponents would trouble her even if he left her swords with her.
Taking away her swords had actually been Ebony’s idea and he accepted the suggestion.
‘Erasing my presence and intent is more difficult than I imagined.’ Gen was troubled since he had to focus so hard on every single moment of their fights to step in.
He did his best to use words to convey that he wouldn't assist them, ensuring they didn't have a mental safety net of relying on him for rescue.
All that remained was for them to walk the tightrope between life and death.