‘Singular Cut Style of the Domination Blade Academy, Damien Hartmon. Lure. Jaded Parasites. Double-spy. Whatever. 38,889. He--I wasn’t just a model. I fought. I struggled against insurmountable odds. I achieved my priorities. I survived when I shouldn’t have. Barely.’

It was--educational.

Ebony recognised the school name, the sword style and even the surname Hartmon. When he was learning crafts from Kong Jing and he entered a tournament for a new metal at that time, he faced someone called Zach Hartmon. They were both journeymen at that time.

His model deleted information about every other obstacle on its path back home. Only Damien was embedded as priority information, although on the low end.

The sword style was a weird one. Damien only attacked once, or 38,889 only retained the memory of one attack. Before that, the swordsman only made feints. He hemmed and hawed but never drew his blade until he was certain he would hit.

Thanks to Ebony’s evasive abilities and practically fluid body, it gave 38,889 time to put more distance away but Damien was faster. A lot faster. Ebony wasn’t able to tell why the swordsman didn’t attack when he could clearly cut 38,889 down but he could tell that the swordsman was wary of something. 38,889 didn’t know the reason.

By a stroke of luck, one of Ebony’s child-abu--training Models was walking around outside. Walking back some of his classmates who didn’t stay in the academy dorm.

38,889 couldn’t sense them but they could sense 38,889. They prioritised walking the children back home safely before taking a look at the familiar sense of mana and Will. They thought 38,889 was Ebony. But it shouldn’t have the function to search Ebony out of their own accord.

Then 38,889 did something Ebony did not imbue it to be able to do.

It or he absorbed the Will within the children's training Models. It gave him Will and a restock of mana. However, the domestic Models did not have strong capabilities. What it did was restore 38,889’s ability to perceive its surroundings and cast magic again.

That gave 38,889 the knowledge of his home and the fact that dozens of other Models were parked there.

It was then, Damien decided to attack. Obliterating 38,889’s body. Barely a fist-sized chunk of ice remained from that attack that 38,889 couldn’t even react to. Ebony didn’t know how the spy girl survived that attack. He didn’t remember if 38,889 threw her aside or protected her at a cost.

‘It’s too fragmented to tell what happened. But what happened doesn’t matter. My Will capacity expanded. Noticeably. Maybe 1-2% increase in maximum capacity.’

Ebony found a tavern bar that 38,889 was made to remember and walked in. He had to leave the Central District, the tavern was pretty far away all things considered.

A few eyes turned to glance at him but people generally minded their own business. He took a seat at an open counter seat.

“Bar keep Jim?” He probed the bartender.

“...who are you?” The bartender stealthy glanced at some of the customers who were drinking in broad daylight.

“Don’t worry, no one can hear us. Damien Hartmon told me you can contact him.” Ebony assumed that Jim was a friend of that swordsman who invited him.

“Who is Damien Hartmon? Why do you know my name?” Bartender Jim appeared genuinely confused. Ebony was impressed with the lack of change in heartbeat or any muscular twitch that indicated a lie but he was certain he didn’t get the wrong person.

A gentle flow of his mana finished probing the building.

“I didn’t notice him, so he’s here. Sorry to intrude.”

Ebony wanted to walk past the oddly placed or hidden door but that motion seemed to put the bartender and more than half of the drinkers on guard and their hostility was so clear.

‘This is not my establishment, I would be offended if someone barged into my room and it was a stranger who visited my house for the first time. Fair. But the bartender is acting ignorant even though the person in question is right here. I’ll just call him out then.’

“Damien Hartmon. You invited me, I’m here.”

‘Not coming out....yes, I can attack him. It’s not unprovoked when he tried to kill me-38,889.’ The gentle flow of mana slipped through the cracks in their walls and magically protected room and conjured a barrage of swords that propelled towards Damien within the building.

Ebony made sure that no one else was targeted or harmed, by sealing them in his healing ice.

He missed all of them, unable to conjure ice anywhere 5 metres away from the swordsman’s body. So he wrapped the entire hidden room in his mana and froze the room. Once the object or body was frozen, he could drag them out. It was one method of overriding or breaking past magic body’s resistance but it took time since it was indirect freezing.

Damien Hartmon was strong, so Ebony did not hold back on the flames. Setting the entire inner room on light cyan flames in one go. He had no choice but to make it friendly, the flames would only seal and not do any damage so he wouldn’t get bystanders hurt.

‘The room is great, it’s not as cold as it should be. Now it's just like a freezer, it would take too long to freeze him out oh, and his armour has cold resistance…I can spare time for a drink.’

“1 house blend.”

Money talks. To a certain extent, Ebony understood this, so he just slid a Grey over and patronised the establishment.

The hostile men and women sat down when he didn’t force his way through. And the bartender brought him his drink quickly enough.

Ebony didn’t like it but it wasn’t bad, its sourness was refreshing but the aftertaste of spice didn’t quite match.

“Could I have another?”

‘He’s not quite coming out.’

By the time he was on his third drink, he admitted that maybe the house blend was more addictive than he originally gave credit for. He was a little curious as to why the bartender got more fidgety as time passed.

On his fourth drink, he finally noticed that he was getting poisoned but honestly, he had more dangerous dishes at home. This ‘poison’ didn’t even require him to magically freeze his bloodstream or remove the poison.

Poisons don’t work well on him or Ning Xin. He could freeze his blood and pinpoint most poisons. Any infected part that could be cut off and regrown. But that was only necessary if the poison could even hurt him. As for Ning Xin, she could boil it off directly or manipulate her blood out. Similarly, only if the poisons got past their natural immune system. She could melt metals with her body temperature, it was hard to find a poison that could survive that.

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It was also why their natural resistance to poison simply stopped levelling. They couldn’t find a better poison. Despite their poison resistance skill being both low in level and tier. It was a racial trait at this point.

Ebony had patience but it’s almost been 30 minutes, he had dinner to attend.

Fortunately, Damien wasn’t that patient. He walked down from the second floor, through a hidden door trap. He should’ve been on the first floor but that was the odd design of the tavern.

“What do you want?”

The swordsman that appeared tried to pat the blue flames off him but it wasn’t coming off and it already got past his armour.

Ebony tilted his head, “you invited me here but you weren’t quite coming out.”

He shut the flames off and unfroze the rest of the hidden room and its inhabitants before Damien showed up in the bar.

“...so you’re here for a little revenge.”

“Revenge? Revenge…yes, I think that’s the word. Where is your home?”

“Home? Don’t have one.”

“Two attacks, I’ll return them.”

Ebony tossed a bag of Blues to the bartender and kicked up at Damien’s chin fully augmented, minus the Domain. He noticed some of Damien’s belongings or mana-attached items and just took this as the man’s residence but he felt bad for the owner.

The swordsman had his sheathed weapon block the impact but his body was raised and shot through both ceilings.

‘Ooo, that’s a good sword. It didn’t break and it didn’t catch on fire.’

When he Flickered after the figure that shot through the sky and prepared the greatest Stalactite Sunder he could muster, Damien’s shaky arms got onto the hilt of his sword.

But the swordsman wasn’t used to the lack of footing and wasn’t capable of flight.

Stalactite Sunder didn’t require a downward motion. Not to a gravity mage like he was. Wherever he wanted to be ‘downwards’ was downwards.

Damien flew out of sight.

Ebony followed and saw him embedded into the city walls and made sure he wasn’t dead before going home. The swordsman must have known that 38,889 wasn’t dead and left him alone or he wouldn’t have sent the invitation. That for one, was something Ebony was thankful for.

‘The sword still didn’t break. He is not that flimsy either, less flimsy than the unactivated city wall. His armour is beyond what I see people wearing.’

Now that the distractions were out of the way, Ebony got back to deciding on his schedule for the coming days.

He was slightly late for dinner but he knew there was no need to worry. If he was late, it just meant Ning Xin would make another dish or two.

The spy girl didn’t require his sealing anymore, she was just asleep. On the floor. Wearing some training clothes that he’d never seen.

“She woke up and ate earlier.”

“How’s the wok?”

“I love it.”

There wasn’t a need for too many words between them but the topic gave the chef things to say over dinner, it was cute to see her struggle to swallow her food and say something after.

“Uhm.” The spy girl spoke out when she woke up in the middle of their meal. “Thank you for getting me out.”

“Mmm.” Ebony wasn’t going to say it was for the experience and she was not top priority.

“What do you need from me?” She put on her receptionist stance with a slight bow. Her metal now covered her clothes as a simple breastplate. If she learnt runic formulation, metal magic would be fantastic and her molten liquid metal armour would be a lot stronger.

“Jaded Parasites. You’re part of this organisation?” Ebony didn’t want his chef to scowl so he made sure to swallow before speaking.

“Ye-yes, aren’t you also?” Spy girl stayed defensive but her body language told him she wasn’t about to run or sneak an attack.

“No, you misunderstood. Are you going to be okay, going out into public?”

“I will be.”

“From what I understand, you people do odd jobs. And you have very, very good kidnappers. You seem capable of collecting information.”

“O-odd jobs?”

“Help me find out about a person. Mr kidnapper- I mean, unnamed…fire magic, halberd-wielding grandmaster.”

“That’s all?”

Ebony nodded. It was an afterthought to begin with. He didn’t know why the metal mage was so shifty and nervous around him. Most people would’ve calmed down after so much exposure to his mana with the intention to calm them down.

“Ma-may I leave now?”

“You may.”

“How can I contact you?”

“This is my house. Do you remember those ice sculptures, I’ll always leave some around. The next ones won’t break so easily.” He saw the lady off without learning her name or getting her callstone link.

‘I don’t have the resources to create a second Dusk and Dusk is busy downstairs. I’ll make more and better bodyguards for the time being.’

“So who attacked our house?”

“A swordsman. Another double spy. He chased her down as part of Lure. Putting that act on, he decided that he needed to destroy or kill me…my Model. But he’s also part of the Jaded Parasites and he took the job to rescue her to prevent her from spilling the beans. I don’t know what beans. But I struggled a bit too much, surviving the attack. He had to keep the act up and chase me down. The real members of Lure were close by, someone as strong as the swordsman Damien. But he didn’t move or attack me, only watching Damien. So he continued the chase all the way to our house. And once I was underground while the frozen spy girl whose vitality was sealed up by me, they decided we were both dead enough.”

“Tuffock?”

“I don’t know. No memories of that.”

The pests, Tetramyths were a troublesome foe for the Empire and the Imperials. But Ebony and Ning Xin treated them as what they were called. Pests. They dropped in for a two to three-day hunt and returned home to sleep and have their meals whenever Ning Xin tired herself out and emptied both her stomach and her mana pool.

Dusk was permanently on the battlefield, creating Models and training all the skills Ebony wanted to train in the exact method he wanted to train and experiment.

They shouldn’t have the access to move about but they had arguably one of the most competent space mages on the planet as their driver. They came and went as they pleased.

It was a job.

They always had targets for their conditioning.

Ebony put aside his organic brain idea but he never forgot about it.

He was enlightened by the individuals the Empire had to offer. People that should’ve been fighting the Trolls. Ebony and Ning Xin were still a little off the mark to be ‘free’. They did not come and go as they pleased. They were simply ‘allowed’ to do so.

Contact between the Xeng and the Empire was lukewarm or so he noticed.

But for reasons no one knew, the Tetramyths seem to consider their death rate paltry and they appeared to like Elva a lot. Too much, as people coming to Ning Xin’s half-time eateries have been saying that the seers of multiple noble houses have been saying that the numbers of the race of ants have only been increasing by the day.

All this time, the titled Emperor of the Empire had eluded Ebony and Ning Xin despite being on the same battlefield. They didn’t see the man appear anywhere but Hector insisted that the man had just talked to him moments before they met up for a meal.

Ebony had watched the Prince, a Master at work. The man’s destructive powers were through the roof. The defensive ice mage’s Calculated Hunch didn’t know how the black beam from a punch would affect him if it hit. Elements made it hard to estimate what would happen to his body, much less more than 6 elements compounded into one simple attack. He counted 9 elements, 3 more than Hector’s class name implies.

They’ve been a bit distant recently but only because of how busy the Prince and Princess were.

Conversations between Ebony and Ning Xin had thinned out gradually, they were never at work together and coming back home to check on their house was also Ning Xin’s sleeping time.

He was less and less aware of her growth and the same could be said for her.

Ebony was a little too distracted to think about how exciting their next duel would be at the moment.