“Ebonys. It’s time to leave, let’s begin.” Ebony blinked his crusty eyes and gave them a rub.
“You don’t want us to report the changes?” Twelve cocked his head.
Thinking there was no point rushing when they could communicate at high speeds, he gathered all his clones for a meeting. This was the maximum number of clones he could maintain. Any more and they would start dying because he didn’t have enough regenerated Will to feed each of them. He included all those on Elcra.
From his latest one-sided message, Dusk was still hanging on but it lost all of the usable Will. Only hanging on to the tread of Will that wouldn’t dissipate over time. They even sent him their latest research results on runic formulations and combination spells. All of the other clones learned how to take shelter within Dusk and keep almost all of their memories while going into hibernation. Except Ebony One. As far as he could tell, a lot of information was lost in transition.
Ebony One wasn’t dead but he did not return to Dusk. Unfortunately, Ebony didn’t know why or how One did not dissipate after so long if he didn’t hibernate within Dusk. Unlike Dusk, the core of a Domain they did not have the unfading Will that stacks over time and would melt away once their Will faded.
He received no news either but he would know if they died or got destroyed. Like Eleven who was supposed to be with Ning Xin, he disappeared from his mindspace years ago with a brief and fragmented piece of information transferred.
“Summarise.”
“We located a direct route to Teheil. It’s far from you, but we don’t have to go through any more channels. The chances of us clones getting into this portal are not high either. If you manage to get out of the cell, we might have a 40% chance of making it through this particularly well-guarded portal where Ezekiel is stationed.” Fifteen shared a piece of good news.
“Chances of bringing my entire cell there?” Ebony didn’t find talking to himself weird.
“Less than 10% since we can’t touch the cell as it would absorb us into nothingness instantly. Updates on your chances of breaking out by force?” The clones looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
“Nil. Forget about it, we won’t be breaking out by force even if we had a full stock of mana and another evolution on our backs.” Ebony who learnt everything about his cell was certain that it was a wall he couldn’t scale, a box he couldn’t rip out from.
“Wait, then can you tell us what you’ve been doing the past 2 years? I thought you were ready to go back then.” Twenty-Five stopped him.
“Teheil, a parasitic world or whatever absorbs mana from every living creature or dead object other than certain natural elements. I was making coagulated mana even harder to destabilise so we have some backup. And I was trying to make a friend.” Ebony made coagulated mana so stable, even his cell couldn’t rip it from him. And he now had mana in his body again. Coagulated Mana Repository was as highly refined as he could get it up.
Coagulated Mana Repository - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 900% + 10.0% before coagulating. Coagulated mana will line the walls of the mana chassis. Maximum charge of coagulated mana is static. Coagulated mana holds a static 30% more mana than completely condensed mana. Coagulated mana has a static 2000% stability and resistance to change. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
It used to be 900% stability and it wouldn’t go any higher as the cell couldn’t rip his mana apart and absorb them anymore. Base maximum compression increased by 100%. Although coagulated mana was also 2000% harder to break down and utilise for himself, it was not that much of an issue with his complete Unique Skill that took coagulated mana and processed them.
Mireloom Chassis Engine (Unique) - An original. Using the properties of your race’s traits, a functioning high-efficiency turbine engine with and within your mana chassis is set up with highly adept mental and mana manipulation. Mana and muscle memory had been ingrained and segregational mental processing prowess is used to run the engine at any time without burdening main mental facilities. Cyclic conversion of coagulated mana to mana and mana to coagulated mana strengthens the conversion rate by 100% + 10% per level. Passive activation and operation consistently consume a static 20% of your mental processing capabilities unless forcefully shut down for redistribution. Coagulated mana fuels your mireloom chassis engine and increases your mana regeneration rate by 100% + 1.0% per level. Overflowing mana’s tendency to coagulate increases by 200% and grows the mireloom. Mireloom accommodates 300% + 10% per level of your mana capacity. Constructed mireloom chassis increases the stability of your coagulated mana by 500% when the skill is in operation and under the effects of dynamic mental hold.
Despite the increase in complexity of his latest factory design, the mental capacity required for passive activation decreased by 10%. When he has coagulated mana, his regeneration would increase by 100%, plus 1% multiplied by his current skill level of 655. When this was one of the few skills he was training, and more than 6 years had passed, it was obvious the skill level growth was immense for a ‘new’ skill.
He no longer had to wait till he had excess coagulated mana. As long as he had a drop of coagulated mana, he could run his factory. The best thing was the shape of his factory didn’t destabilise his Coagulated Mana Repository in any form and his Constitution strengthening was not interrupted. If he had the factory running, his mana was even harder to steal or absorb as they were held in place by his mental packing.
What did the tendency to coagulate mean for him, he wasn’t sure. Not when all overflowing mana coagulated to begin with. He was just happy he had his first proper mana capacitance increase skill. Growing the mireloom was the best clue skill descriptions had ever told him about how to level a skill. Unless he worked on every portion of the skill’s effect, it would be hard to level it up. Growing the mireloom requires him to continue packing up the hyper condensed mana and not using them.
“What friend?” Some of his clones showed surprise.
“This cell of mine. It has a spirit, not a budding one like Icicle that can’t talk or even respond at times. This one knows the language, speech and is capable of thought. Made by a Saint, made to trap Saints and made to weaken Saints. Sadly, it's young and was brainwashed or birthed with the sole instructions of making things difficult for me. As all of you know, the cell’s slime-like material that can harden is directly connected to Gearhart’s estate Source Stone holding room.” Ebony told them about his prison cell’s young girl-sounding spirit that was unyielding to his attempts at asking her to free him.
Be that as it may, he managed to change her originally antagonistic attitude toward him to an amiable one. Though she still ate every bit of his mana and sent it to the Gearhart estate. At least he was allowed to walk around in his cell instead of having his feet locked up in solid metal. She even let him use water for hygiene and not just sustenance. Still, he was likely annoying Gearhart if this attempt to make a friend was reported.
“Let’s discuss this no longer. Remember to hibernate in Aegis after I leave. You will all die on Teheil without proper storage like Eleven had in Sister Jing’s test tubes for soup stock.” Ebony dismissed the meeting, his clones knew what to do better than he did. He just had to wait.
Saint Gearhart had long placed detectors for ice magic. Temperature sensors didn’t work since his clones could vibrate to the same temperatures as the surroundings.
He let his clones and Aegis gather and get ready, waiting for their signals. In the meantime, all of them sent him their experiences throughout the years. As they expected, he felt a pronounced increase in his Will capacity and regeneration. The tests on the increase could wait.
It didn’t take long after his eyes opened for him to hear the blaring alarms over the entire island. Of the 5 sons and daughters that Saint Gearhart had, two of them were Emperors who remained at home and worked on their strength and helped with internal diplomacy and management of Cinderash. The others, including Percival, were considered teenagers that are not suited for working yet and were under tighter schedules for training and education. Of course, ‘tighter schedules’ was a stretch. They barely spent 7 hours a standard day training and studying.
His clones had found out that a standard day or year was no different from an Elcrian day or year. Despite the size of Elcra being way bigger than Earth, its gravity in most places like Plainston was no different from Earth. The day and night cycle wasn’t that far off either.
It was because some mighty God decided that all new Natural Worldcores were to be adjusted to follow the same cycle. ‘New’ was after this law was set, and Elcra fell under this category for being born rather recently. He didn’t know who, but the fact that the planet’s day and night cycle was 28 hours a day was not a coincidence with a standard day. A God if not a team of them manipulated it to cycle and rotate in that period.
Cinderash did not fall under this category, so they did not have their planetary motion messed with but they still followed the standard. Hence, Ebony had been complicating things himself. Unless specified in conversation, when a Cinderashian said a day had passed, it was no different from the day that he was familiar with.
Gearhart had 3 wives, none of which were proper combatants although one of them could fight. He had Grandchildren and a Great-grandson all living on the same estate as well but most were Journeymen or unclassed. The baby that Ebony sensed when he first arrived was now a child running around like the classmates he had taught in Tidal.
It was curious how people wanted to have children before they evolved into a Saint. Unless they were very sure they weren’t capable of evolving into a Saint. But that's none of his concerns right now.
There were a few Bellicose Savants stationed around the perimeters of the volcano but not anywhere near the Gearhart estate. The estate’s bodyguards were a different group they called Boiler Knights. Ebony thought the name was funny.
These Boiler Knights were not like some of the Bellicose Savants who had a mechanical body and were something like a golem, these Boiler Knights were proper humans who had lava flowing in their veins. They boiled their targets and their weapon of choice was a large sword made of igneous rocks, when they ran their aether through, it would produce lava or perhaps magma might be more accurate since it came from within the rocks.
It was not pretty when something organic was stabbed by them as the aether lava was also filled with sulphuric or ash content. Ebony wasn’t afraid of the poison or ash intrusion since he could freeze and remove it but the magma itself was concerning to a weakened version of him and deadly to all his clones.
To begin with, his clones could barely match many of the Kings on Cinderash.
When one thought about Cinderash, they thought about the Boiler Knights. They had a legendary status on Cinderash. It was something almost every Cinderashian child aspired to be. For there were only 6 Boiler Knights in this generation. It was rumoured that the current Boiler Knights were all masters of an Ascendant Art, Tier 6 Mastery. That wasn’t enough for them to be a Boiler Knight.
To be a Boiler Knight, one had to fight all existing Boiler Knights and survive for an hour. That was the only criteria other than being a Cinderashian and loyal to Saint Gearhart. Each new Boiler Knight would have to face greater risks because failure meant death. However, if they succeeded they would gain baptism of a new Physique that Boiler Knights were known for through very expensive means. A custom set of Legendary armour and a main weapon of choice which was Saint-quality materials, made by a Saint-ranked crafter would be bestowed upon them as well.
That’s why his clones never came close to the estate after the Saint took Mr Guru’s body away. He didn’t think Gearhart or Mr Guru would not prepare the Boiler Knights against ice magic in general. The estate itself would definitely have sensors installed.
Although the perimeters and the mansion had sensors for ice magic, they didn’t do a good scan of the island so there were still a few of him doing preparatory work on the island. Namely Fourteen, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven.
He had to thank how lowly the Saint thought of him as it allowed his clones to run free and even walk around the cities, learn, trade and gather information.
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They were so prepared for his ice magic, that they seemed to forget that he was a gravity mage or was too confident in their physical strength. His clones gathered and ripped away the turrets with Gravity Quelling Vortex while gravity was flipped. These flightless people could do nothing in the air. Without the ability to manipulate and conjure aether physically, they were helpless.
The Bellicose Savants, heavy artillery specialists and a few other team leaders managed to find a way to fight the pulling force into the skies. Mostly through equipment and items or a few that used wires to grab ahold of their comrades.
The clones' combined vortex wasn’t strong enough to tear the buildings and walls that were carved out of the volcano itself, so the people floating within had the chance to grab a hold of themselves and pull their allies down. They reacted fast, too fast. But more than half of the helpless warriors were already flailing about too far from the ground for the human eye.
How big was the volcano that Saint Gearhart resided in?
It was big enough for a small island with a few thousand people and floated around like a boat on a small lake. Not humongous and well within reason and the island was not even 3 kilometres in diameter, more importantly, it wasn’t very thick or deep. Near the bottom of the island was the underground room holding the Pyrothernite Source Stone that was extracting the volcano’s heat and aether. It was also the place that his mana was sent to. An entire facility was held down there. Not just Ebony’s mana but every prisoner on the island had their mana or in their case, aether, being sent there for purification and crystallisation to be sold or used as currency.
Unsurprisingly, the standard currency was in the form of mana ores. But not in the crystalline shape that was used on Elcra. It was still traded in the same units of volume but each rarity was made into multiple sizes, unlike Elcra which used the same size for every rarity. It was not unlike a dollar note, two dollar note, five dollar note etcetera.
The reason it was underground wasn’t because it was an illegal facility, it was just convenient to keep the facility together with its power generation source. Prisons that took mana and stamina were as common as a marketplace.
Currently at level 482 for all three of his classes, he had thousands more points in stats compared to when he was still testing sealing magic and gathering data on some Divine Ants.
Strength: 1050 ➡ 1200
Vitality: 1100 ➡ 1300
Constitution: 1500
Endurance: 900 ➡ 1100
Agility: 1200 ➡ 1400
Intelligence: 2326 ➡ 2976
Wisdom: 3460 ➡ 4260
Perception: 600 ➡ 800
A lot of them were added when he was still on Elcra but the stat points he gained since he came onto Cinderash were all split between Perception, Intelligence and Wisdom. For once, Constitution was laid back. After his Physique refinement, his body could withstand his intense mana augmentation better and frost flames hurt him less.
His Conditioning only dropped to level 350, despite the lack of exercise. Tier 4 Conditioning lasted quite long but he was aching to move his body. From his birth, this was the longest time he went without physical exercise. That made his stat buff from conditioning decrease slightly. His amazing prison cell had managed to make it such that his Wisdom stat did not drop after the exhaustion, and stamina drain. He was also well fed with a variety of 4 types of meals for over 6 years so he didn’t have a hunger debuff.
His base Wisdom effect sat at 6,177 or 12,354 mana regenerated per hour.
The extended fight with the Guru was a drug for Perpetual Tranquillity Spring. He constantly feared the man finding out all his recent plans of escape and his fight to clear his mind back to transparency to wipe the colours and explosions away was a massive help. This allowed Ebony to learn that without a better mental exercise, he needed to find mind mages, monsters with mental attacks, telepaths and the like to push his Meditation better.
Throughout the mindspace ages, the Guru didn’t give up on escaping for thousands upon thousands of perceived years. Sadly, that was a small fraction of the time that had passed. The Guru quickly set his mind to self-protection, he was ageing, getting hurt by the passage of time. So he made use of the physical ice seal and sealed his mind off so that he didn’t forget himself or lose his mind. It was what the other Telepaths called ‘anchoring’ themselves.
Thanks to Mr Guru's early attempts, Ebony had refined Perpetual Tranquillity Spring many times. The skill’s base effect for mana regeneration had gone from 800% to 1700% while the Perception base boost went from 500% to 750%. It was still a tier 4 skill at level 948 and wouldn’t evolve. Ebony currently thought that a 2000% base increment was as high as a tier 4 skill could go up to. If these were the values that Gen and the Elves were talking about, then they were very right and he was using very unrefined skills. It was no wonder why their spells hit so hard despite the levels he had over some of them.
It was a pity the Guru had insufficient endurance.
The realisation also let him see the widening power gap between tiers of skills. It was scaling incredibly.
However, the Guru was not the biggest contributor to the Core Skill refinement. That honour goes to his decision to stay put when Eleven passed away. It took immense patience to hold himself back from escaping back then. Even worse, the situation was well aligned for escape with Gearhart away from the residence.
With an 8.5 times multiplier from his Fortification and 112.8 times from Perpetual Tranquillity Spring, he had a regeneration of 11,845,015 mana regenerated per hour. Then came the Mireloom Chassis Engine that just edged over his Fortification with an 8.55 times multiplier. None of their working principles overlapped, making them all operate independently and stacking upon each other. Leading him to be a literal spring of mana, with 101,274,880 mana generated per hour.
He did not use Battle Hymn. At the moment, his cell’s spirit doesn’t even know that he was hiding coagulated mana from it. It had the confidence that it was absorbing every drop that he had to spare. There was no point letting the spirit know either, if he were to cast the spell, it would immediately absorb the mana that the spell was made up from since he would have to break down the coagulated mana to use it in a spell.
Twenty-Nine was a travelling bard, so to speak. The warriors here were very impressed by something that could enhance their battle strength. There weren’t a lot of mages here because the natural environment of Cinderash was too harsh for most humans, much less physically weaker humans. Although rare, there were mages from other worlds and those with special skills were always welcomed when it improved a party's earning capabilities. Battle Hymn never stopped improving, even evolving into Resonant Battle Hymn.
Since it was true that Twenty-Nine was far weaker in physical strength, his party protected him quite well and all Twenty-Nine did was enhance his teammates, weaken targets with the same skill of a different hymn, give utility in stamina recovery and support battle with gravity magic. It didn’t take long for him to find a permanent party that he had been with for years.
Twenty-Nine didn’t stop there, he was mutating the skill further. Producing explosive shockwaves within the skill so that debuffed targets were also under an offensive attack. It was being mixed with magnified gravity but was still a work in progress. The problem was that once spells go into his opponents, a mage’s control over the mana would be drastically weakened by the target’s resistence to magic.
If he took Resonant Battle Hymn’s current refinement and level, his mana regeneration would peak at 136,013,019 per hour or 37,781 mana per second. Running a 5-metre radius Domain as long as his mental stamina and Will lasted wasn’t a problem. He couldn’t run a fully compressed version since he could compress his mana up to 99.6 times his natural limit, almost a hundred times compression but he could stably run a third and almost half compressed Domain without worrying about his mana.
Unlike metals and other materials, his mana structure wouldn’t collapse even at those levels of compression. Although it would warm his body up to crazy temperatures if he allowed it to build up once he was free from his prison cell. It wasn’t a problem for an ice mage like him and his internal factory would break down portions of the heat down too. Mana was more than a little different when it comes to physical properties anyway so the increase in pressure didn’t directly translate to a rise in temperature.
Ebony thought there would be a limit to compression and how it correlates to the amount of power it can give him but he found out that he didn’t have to worry about that anytime soon because he hasn’t faced any sort of indication that says the power he was building up through mana compression was reaching a limit.
Receiving all clone’s senses relays at the same time, he watched 8 of them activating 288 load-bearing rods placed in the 288 mana ley congregations of a load-bearing runic formula under the floating island. A technique often used in enchantment, often called the brute force of layering. The load-bearing formula was too complicated to layer further but if the formula only had 2 or 3 ley congregations, he could stack them many times. The load-bearing effect probably didn’t improve more than 10% by stacking them once but that was great considering the size of the object he wanted to lift.
He didn't know how much Mr Guru believed, but he only showed many possibilities and plans so that it mattered less if he managed to escape.
Unlike enchantments, runic formulas designed to fit in a circle or a 3 dimensional sphere do not have ley mana points or congregations that serve as activation of various tiny functions. Runes used the entire pathways as a mana circuit. Thanks to some of his clone studies back on Elcra who began their studies on other magical opportunities, they found both studies to be very similar and they found many ways to use them concurrently.
Since the island liked to float, his clones helped to lift it. The volcano perimeter guards could detect the invisible clones, some of them had skills or equipment that worked like a jetpack to chase after them but a constant gravitational repulsion pushed every object, projectile and people from getting close.
Allowing the clones to lift the island without too much issue other than a stray rail or beam grazing his clones. It disintegrated a few limbs and torsos. These people had no hesitation in killing the clones. His clones mass-produced light refractions of themselves to fill the entire sky with ice mana. The sensors only sensed and located ice mana.
Covering the sky over a volcano with ice mana that didn’t melt easily wasn’t all that difficult and solved the sensor detection easily. The beams and steam-powered cannons and rails swept all over the sky but his clones dangerously made themselves the same density as the ice mist. However, weapons were operated by people and his clones could easily see where the people were aiming. Staying high up, they had the distance to react and dodge the volcano's defences while avoiding those capable of flight or attacking them with their weird steam-powered guns and handheld cannons.
The four clones on the island directly scaled down the upside-down pyramid and launched their ambush on the production facility at the bottom of the island. It was pulled off so smoothly that Ebony thought the Boiler Knights were sleeping on the job but it made sense that things were going smoothly. Mr Guru and Gearhart kept Ebony’s presence on the estates a secret.
Any of the Boiler Knights could wipe all his clones out as long as they were within sight. And if he were present at peak conditions, the result wouldn't change.
The island itself had defences too but none of them activated against the cloud of ice mist that covered their volcano and estate. The Boiler Knights were bodyguards within the Gearhart mansion. Although the production facility was guarded, security was far weaker compared to the bodyguards for the Saint’s family members.
It did say something about the Saint’s personality of caring more for his family than money but they probably thought their volcano and estate was already extremely well protected against external threat. Something so deep under their protected lands shouldn’t be in danger right?
Fourteen found the glowing orange veined chains and charged onwards with Twenty-Four. Twenty-Six and Seven rummaged through the facility like ghosts. It was a blessing in disguise that the workers here didn’t even have good self-defence capabilities, much less capabilities to beat his clones. The alarms did ring but with no one to stand up to the threat, the alarms only made the workers panic.
The inattentive guards took a couple of seconds before they jumped into action and listened to the directional beeps that told them where the clones were.
“It’s funny how they tried to hide our existence from these people and made them think that an ice elemental monster found its way onto Cinderash. And impressive that they make it unsuspecting, even with Mr Guru.” Twenty-Six commented through their link as if they had free time to chat.
“Hurry up, just get the Source Stone and rejoin us so we can leave. Aegis already pathed half the way to our destination.”
“And then we just go to sleep and wait for Ebony to return huh?” Twenty-Seven muttered.
“No need to be pessimistic. It’s just a long-term sleep like we had been imprisoned.” Fourteen reminded them that they could do what Ebony had been through with the same ease if not more.
“True,”
Thanks to the existence of so many clones and connection nodes, the rest of Ebony’s regenerated Will had been sent to Aegis. Although it had been more than 6 years, Aegis did not have any more Will injected into it compared to Dusk who had all of Ebony’s attention. However, if he were to be absent now his clones shouldn’t dissipate for a long time.
Fourteen and Twenty-Four arrived outside his cell after partially turning themselves into liquid and growing through the dirt. They immediately exploded with ice mana and shattered the frozen dirt with a pulse of vibration. Revealing three long chains. It seemed like they were wrong.
Other than the absorption chain itself linked to the facility, the cell was held in place by four pillars as if the cell was slotted into them.
The plan didn’t change, if they made the island float they could dig around and bring the entire cell away.
“Ya ya can you please hurry up. We’re draining all the mana Aegis has collected and stored before Ebony was imprisoned. The mass runic formula we carved over the entire island is helpful but it's too large and heavy, our storage isn’t so deep without Dusk’s power source battery pack.” Fifteen complained after his face was melted off by a laser beam of lava outside the prison facility.
“Phew, finally succeeded. This might be our best shield yet.” Seventeen wiped the water that melted off his face. They had finally lifted the island up into the air.
“STOP FIRING!!!”
After two shots blasted large portions of the island, someone took charge and stopped the volcano’s defences from firing at the object of their protection.
The herculean waste of mana paid off as his clone succeeded in lifting the island without Ebony.
Unwilling to fire their weapons of mass destruction on the Saint’s island, they watched the island whisk away on a gravitational track that Aegis prepared. The ice mist leaving with the island.
Angry shouts and squadrons of mounted soldiers chased after the moving island but no one dared to take a single pot shot.
“The view sure is nice up here isn’t it, Mr Guru?” Sealed Mr Guru watched the skies of his mindspace that projected a few of his clones’ perceptions.