“Fear not, you might not see the light anymore but I will be your company until I find out what you’ve been doing.” With his physical body, Mr Guru closed the door on the battered and chained little monster.
Ebony’s exhausted eyes opened to see the man who had been messing inside his head for a long, long time. Their ride to his new cell had been excruciatingly long for Mr Guru. He remained silent, waiting for the Guru to reenter his mind.
The Guru no longer had any reasons to attack the parts of his mind that would affect his battle capabilities. His new prison cell doors closed on him, signalling that no amount of strength on his part would matter anymore.
He knew why the Guru was so insistent on reentering his mind but had been too careful to do so before. The Telepath wanted to know if Ebony contacted anybody during his short freedom.
One of the few biggest discoveries that Seventeen had made was the existence of something similar to the internet.
It was why the moment Ebony escaped, what the great Telepath did wasn’t chase him down. It was to lock down information transfer.
Cinderash didn’t have the riches to make this ‘internet’ commonplace. It was still something a small group of people had access to. Namely, Saints, some Emperors and cities as a whole.
Although his clones couldn’t find out much about this ‘internet’ it was likely different from what he was imagining. It was more likely just a global…a universal connection like a callstone with more range than ever. Unless it truly was the internet that he knows of, that would be great.
Ebony didn’t want to get caught. It was fine if they had one or two months of preparation, he had more confidence of slipping away. However, the more time he had to be free, the more time Mr Guru could prepare his new cell. He wasn’t confident that his preparations could overcome what Mr Guru and a planet with Saints could do to keep him locked up.
He didn’t panic because he didn’t sit on his butt for 4 months straight.
After a short breather, Mr Guru invited himself into Ebony's mindspace again.
They didn’t clash immediately this time.
Mr Guru saw Ebony pouring tea for them both. Imaginary tea.
“Look at what you’ve done to my place.” Ebony gestured to their background. It was no longer transparent and colourless, the contents of his mind were displayed and had tears and collapses everywhere. Of course, the contents of his mind had a lot of numbers and visions overlapped because of his multitasking but the Guru could look at them without hurting his mind.
“I left no permanent injuries, not for you. We need you to produce mana. Don’t worry, after finding out you can produce so much mana, we will feed you well.”
“Oh why thank you for your consideration, some books might help pass the time better.”
“I will think about it. Look, your new prison even has a toilet.”
“Is that supposed to make me go wow.”
Their banter went on for some time. No matter what, the Guru was indeed the person that Ebony had known for the longest time. It didn’t help that the Guru had a mental offence that made him think or talk out loud in his mindspace.
“Why didn’t you run? With your speed, it would not be hard to find someone to catch you but I know you can last far longer if you focus on running.”
“I would go hungry before getting far.” Ebony casually answered. It was not a lie but he wasn’t giving the Guru the answer he was looking for.
“Why don’t you show me what you’ve been up to during your freedom? We have no reason to fight anymore, you can’t escape anymore.”
“Mr Guru. What do you think my forte is? Ice magic? Martial arts? Mana capacity?”
“Mana regeneration. Bragging is unlike you, what are you trying to say?
“Regeneration? No. Mr Guru, my forte is endurance. Both physical and mental.”
“...so you’re going to make it difficult for me even now, how tiresome.”
“No, no I won’t make it difficult for you. Come, let’s see what I’ve been up to.”
“An invite? This is new.”
“One of the life lessons I learnt from a fish is an eye for an eye. I won’t be able to leave for a long time, you can watch as long as that takes. It was not nice meeting you Mr Guru, see you in…I don’t know. Fulfilling your wish, you can keep me company. Enjoy the view.”
Ebony teleported himself to the core of his mindspace after leaving a shocked Telepath sealed in ice in front of the recent memories he made. His soul attack coming in full force caught Mr Guru off-guard.
‘What a tough opponent. It took imprisoning myself to exhaust him out and catch him off-guard.’ Ebony rested his mind but he couldn’t sleep immediately, he had to check on his clones and Aegis before he rested. His nearly seemingly eternal battle with Mr Guru made even him mentally tired. Not nearly as exhausting as his Unique skill creation but it was more intense over a shorter period.
“Great, you’re all here. Looks like our new cell has nothing on Will blocking. That’s for the best.” Ebony nodded to Twelve, Fourteen, Fifteen, Seventeen and Twenty-Three to Thirty. A total of 12 clones of his roamed free.
“Wasted all the preparation of our plans if Will's connection was blocked.” Aegis sounded out.
“It’s no waste, merely precautions. I would still go into sleep mode. Did you manage to follow and see where I’m locked up?” Ebony stretched. His plan to lock Mr Guru up had a lot of variables but it ultimately succeeded just like his simulations confirmed.
“Unless you were transported spatially, you were brought back to Gearhart’s estate. Still the same prison but probably somewhere else inside.” Fourteen worked hard.
“How lazy.” Twenty-five yawned for Ebony. He had the greatest connection with Ebony at the moment as they were transmitting information with each other faster through feeling than conversation.
“It’s the best place for them. Easiest to monitor, control and prevent another escape. With the Saint home, it would be maximum security.”
“Hey I was out of range earlier what happened? The Guru is down? How did we do it?” Fifteen put his tea down.
“Welcome Fifteen, oh it’s pretty easy. Ebony kept dragging him deeper into our mind where the natural defence of a creature is stronger. It can’t harm the Guru but it is great at tiring him out. His endurance is not bad but that’s all, he always needs to rest after a moment and turtle up after a mental century or so. We could seal him in ice long ago but we just let him escape a few million times so that he thought we couldn’t seal him for good. Until he trapped us in their new cell. The trick to mental fighting is to find a gap and moment of defenselessness, no different from fighting in the real world. And we confirmed it with a lot of simulations over the long fight.” Twenty-Eight replied.
Ebony’s mental battle with the Guru lasted a very long time, the ride back to prison was not easy for the two bodyguards. There was plenty of data for him to obtain. There was no one who understood how the Guru fought better than him and vice versa. Not even Ning Xin was as familiar compared to how well the Guru knew Ebony.
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“In any case, we are finally back here. That makes it easier, when we regenerate enough to pay for it we’ll leave.”
“We can just take it once the Saint goes away again, why play the good? An eye for an eye doesn’t need to be so…practical does it?”
“I am law-abiding. Let’s just take this as my sentence for threatening to kill his family when I didn’t mean to. That was indeed unlike me.”
Ebony didn’t converse on the topic anymore. With how many scouts he had and Aegis, lo-and-behold, was still in range. His clones' activity range would only increase thanks to their one of their new discoveries and creations. As for mana, Aegis is not the only battery source for them.
This was a world of untapped natural aether but mana wasn’t missing from the natural atmosphere.
If this was a settlement on Elva, the ambient mana would have been drained dry by Navin or the Lord family’s barrier or used to charge their magic towers.
Be that as it may, ambient mana was not as thick as Tidal and was roughly the same as Plainston. It was interesting to observe mana convert into something else in real time. Into aether.
There was another thing that produced more mana than Ebony. It was the planet itself or the Worldcore to be specific. Cinderash’s Worldcore was the same rank as Elcra, Ancient but it had a far longer history.
Ebony didn’t go into a trance to start refining his Unique Skill immediately. He waited for someone to find the Guru’s fainted body outside his new cell. He couldn’t tell what the new cell looked like now since no light was allowed entry but he had a peek before he was stuffed in. It was a similar solid metal cube, 3 metres squared with glowing orange-blue veins outside.
His new chains were directly connected to the cell. His legs were tightly locked up in liquid metal up to his thighs but his hands surprisingly only had a pair of bangles on the wrists and they were separate so he had freedom of motion with his arms. If you considered being hung by two arms and splayed out to be freedom of motion then yes. His legs were cocooned into the floor.
But the cell was nice, it put his arms down and didn’t hang him up once the leg restraints solidified. It did not leave him any slack of chains though, they must have recalled him using their chains as a shield and also to whip their turrets.
And he was clothed this time.
The Guru wasn’t that bad as a person and they had mutual respect for each other.
The temperatures were no different from a sunny day on Elcra, the air was clean and there was a nozzle jammed into his mouth which should have water if he tried sucking on it but he didn’t trust it too much yet. He engraved conversion runes on some of his chassis, it was not permanent but it took mental effort to keep them maintained, just like keeping his unique skill running. It would turn coagulated mana into water so he was not afraid of dehydrating anymore.
Sadly, this new prison was truly made to keep him locked up forever. Not even coagulated mana was spared and it was drained out very fast.
Ebony had gotten the chains he had stolen to work on him during his short freedom but he only managed to refine coagulated mana’s stability once more. It wasn’t enough for this cell.
This was one reason he came back to be imprisoned. To train his ability to keep mana in his body.
Stamina was another thing, he was drained into an exhausted state and had his stats lowered not even ten minutes later. But the advanced prison slowed its stamina drain. A constant force to make his stamina regenerate is also a constant drain of energy. Sustenance.
Cinderash was poor, especially in terms of food storage.
They did not want to feed him more than he fed them mana.
After an hour, Ebony realised how amazing the cell was. It could maintain his stat reduction at 95% and know when to stop or slow down it’s absorption.
There was no better chance of evolving his exhaustion resistance. Only physical.
He had methods of exhausting himself mentally with his new Unique Skill, Domain and if he wanted to manually take control of his many clones.
Ebony could exert a lot of physical force, but all of the buff that comes from magic exhausted his mind more than his body. His physical type skills were too few and not stacked up enough to allow him to physically exhaust his muscles unless he fought for weeks or months straight. It was not easy to find someone to fight him for so long and be able to maintain their peak state with him for that long. And even if he could find them like a large number of Apex Apes, it would still take months if not years to push his resistance.
This method was much faster.
The biggest factor was that there was simply nothing of worth on this planet. Under Saint Gearhart’s reign, all natural treasures of the planet could be obtained by him. The planet was mostly mined out of its resources. There were few plants and even if there were, wild ones wouldn’t be all that high quality. Worse of all, they were fire or lava elemental.
He could get a present for Xin or maybe use a heat-based energy source to strengthen himself instead of an ice or cold resource.
But it all boiled down to the Saint who kept the best things.
As for natural dungeons, this planet wasn’t plagued by them. They had the power of technology beyond his imagination. They could make it such that dungeons only spawn or birthed in a certain region. It was why, past a certain range from the capital, the rest of the continent was barren and was the land of a scant few races of monsters.
It was also thanks to this unnatural ‘technology’ that the barren or wildlands probably didn’t have any good mines or natural treasures. Because the entire planet’s energy was siphoned to this region of dungeons or so his clones understood from the locals. A few of them were tasked to appear occasionally as random strangers or information gathering would have been too difficult. It helped that this was supposedly common knowledge and not some secret information. All his clones had to do was show up as children and he hasn’t gotten any suspicious looks about the curious questions.
Since all the greatest objects of value were sent to Gearhart’s estate, he might as well return here. Not only were riches found here, it was also the best place for an opportunity to train. If they weren’t going to let him die, they would feed him when he fell into his trance to complete his Unique Skill.
Food was hard to obtain. Even monsters were scarce and they didn’t trade in mana ores here. Not that he had any on hand after his spatial bag was left behind. It wasn’t a bad idea to trade mana for a good training spot, feeding, and renting a shelter over his head. When he fully paid for whatever resource his clones found out to be worthwhile, he could leave.
A cell couldn’t keep him contained forever. Not this one.
Patience was another one of his strong suits but Ebony didn’t expect he had to wait over an Eclrian month before someone came to check on the Guru. This operation of keeping him contained was more secretive than he thought because the person who came over was Saint Gearhart himself.
He could feel the Saint’s eyes on him despite an opaque wall blocking them. The Saint didn’t say anything, trying to decipher what happened to the Guru whose body was still breathing. The Guru might be an Emperor but he wasn’t Ebony, any longer and the man would die unless Ebony released him to get food.
Unexpectedly, the Saint didn’t bother saying anything. And the pair of eyes Ebony felt went away moments after it landed on him.
Ebony no longer delayed and went into his mindspace to complete the overhaul to his mana factory.
Throughout his period of freedom and this month of waiting, he was busy designing his network with his clones. Another new skill that they have been developing. It wasn’t just a skill, it was also crafting.
The skill Will Relay Buffer was his take on advancement in technology. It was actually quite an easy skill to develop because they found out that a clone’s range of Will can overlap and when they came into contact with each other, they could transfer information. So they figured they just needed plenty of relays to vastly increase their transmission range.
What all of his clones were now capable of doing was to craft a node for this buffer. The material is the hardened lava that could be found everywhere on Cinderash. Fashioning a sphere out of them to be the best container for runes, they would imbue mana range of absorption and capacity. A very simple construct that didn’t even require any of his elements. The runic formula made it self-sufficient and his clones just had to dig a hole or stab it deep enough so that wind or monsters didn’t move his relay points.
His clones would imbue enough Will to activate their skill. When the node was connected to their network, Ebony could charge up the rest of the required Will to keep it alive for a longer period. This node couldn’t fight and didn’t have that kind of Will, its sole purpose was to act as a relay. Thanks to the extremely limited functions and inability to act, the upkeep was very low. He just needed to level and refine the skill so that he didn’t need to place as many buffers after their range increased.
Now, Ebony’s Will network is spread throughout more than half of Cinderash’s populated cities. Even the barren lands that were Mental Mapped were connected to his network. Wherever his clones go, they would be connected to him by Will Relay Buffer as long as his clones make one of the buffers when they go out of range.
The delay in transmission was there but with the current distance or amount of buffers, it was an insignificant delay. At the moment, relaying information to the furthest clone had a minute delay after hopping through all the buffers.
Although he tried to tell Dusk in his mindspace and updated it on his new skill, he didn’t know how long it would take before the message was sent. He never received any messages from Dusk at all and only had a vague sense that Eleven with Xin was asleep.
Teheil should be nearer to Cinderash than Elcra.