Ebony got knocked around the room for hours. It didn’t matter that he had all his physical stats back or managed to prevent any of his coagulated mana from being taken away by Teheil. He did have the impressive Constitution buff from the existing mana in his body. So much that they couldn’t fatally injure him.
Nothing was more compressed than coagulated mana in his body, even though it was a small percentage of the total amount of mana he could have stored it still gave him a Constitution augmentation that scaled off Intelligence. With just the coagulated mana portion filled, his Constitution was raised in 5 digits. He didn’t trust the numbers much since he didn’t know for sure how compressibility, resilience and density Fortifications played a role.
If he ever had a chance to visit the universal testing centre, he could have his stats tested out and measured in terms of Effective Stat that was standardised.
Honestly, his current effective values weren’t high. He wasn’t augmenting himself with Woven Frostblaze Augmentation. He wasn’t using any gravity and sound magic to speed up his blows or strengthen his impacts, neither did he slow his opponents down with magic.
He had, however, set up an uncompressed Domain over his skin to strengthen Tolerant Stalwart Foundation. It was enough to survive their strongest active skills that didn’t have aether backing them but he never took a hit from those skills to begin with. It was too obvious whenever the skills were coming and they couldn’t get the hang of his Flicker.
The augmentation was going haywire because Teheil seemed to be trying to rip his control over the regenerated mana the instant he regenerated them. If he didn’t have his Will and Domain wrapping around his mana, he wouldn’t even have been able to cast Tolerant Stalwart Foundation unless he directly used coagulated mana which wasn’t quite possible because he had to break that down to normal mana before they could be burned for a spell.
Right now, his stat strengthening was ebbing weaker and stronger which made it a hassle when the difference was immense. It was a hassle but if his Will could fight back against this interference then it was just a matter of time before he learned how to use magic effectively on Teheil.
‘The cushioning is measured by this grey light hue’s intensity. Too bad my clones are blind so I don’t know how strong the current hue represents but it doesn’t seem to be slowing down my Flicker much. It does act like an oobleck fluid but this is no fluid.’ Ebony blended all the arts his clones learned into his body and Conditioning while allowing himself to be fascinated by the grey light that seeped through the buildings and enveloped everyone present.
After half a standard day, Ebony tore the scraps of cloth that his shirt was left with off and tossed them on the ground to show his unharmed upper body.
“Need a breather?” He asked the Savants.
He needed them to fight back at the same intensity but they ran out of juice.
“Is ten minutes enough? I don’t want to cool down now.” Ebony was slightly irritated that they were all down at the same time. They had already taken turns to ‘hold him off’ a few times.
Half a day was far from enough for his body to incorporate all the new techniques. He reckoned he could do it very quickly since his clones learnt them by heart. His clones just never had the opportunity to fight against opponents of the Savant’s calibre.
‘Hmm, I shouldn’t try breaking the walls for now. I don’t want to take too long, but I should get my Conditioning back up and scrap off the rust in my bones from the lack of exercise before I look for Xin.’ These Savants may or may not know how to exit the empty room with a broken portal but the walls helped. The Savants would have nowhere to run.
Since he was sure they weren’t able to harm him that badly, he put on his robe. The robe came a long way with Icicle. Unlike Icicle which was tossed aside, the robe was hard to retrieve since it was sold and changed hands a few times. His clones had a hard time tracking it down. Staying in a land of volcanoes and heat, it was already drained dry of ice mana.
Unable to reinforce it with mana, he feared the Savants would tear it apart.
“Now I’m just missing the bag Sister Jing made.” Ebony didn’t bother trimming his long hair while he waited. He hydrated himself but it cost so much more mana. He had to reevaluate what the planet Teheil thought was natural because even water was hard to make before it stole his mana.
❅❅❅
It merely took three days before the Savants refused to fight him.
“Wait, don't give up. Don’t you need to capture me?” Ebony put his hands out to the 4 that backed themselves into a corner.
“Go away!” The lady raised her last spare blade in defence. As an Emberblade Dancer, she had plenty of spares since the Art caused the knives to wear out very fast.
‘This is bad, I can’t beat up unwilling participants. Hmm…actually, I can.’
“Then this will be payback for the earlier aggression.” Ebony flipped the cards and chased them around the room, sending one Stalactite Sunder after the other.
‘Fortunately, they are always prepared to be stranded and have those condensed nutrition jelly.’
❅❅❅
“You really need training from Mr Guru. How can you give up and let me beat you up? It’s barely been a week.” Ebony was disappointed that the lady Savant completely gave up in self-defence.
Even he could no longer bring himself to attack her when she went into a foetal position and guarded her neck and head. The rest of them were better off but not much better.
“Come on. Your training should be harder than this, there is no reason to give up.”
“Tra-training…we’re merely dancing on your palms and can’t even touch a hair on you. Don’t you have dignity from bullying us? Hurry up and end us.”
“What do you mean bullying you? I can’t hurt you guys.” Ebony stated the fact that all he could do was give them light bruises that they could heal from in a minute or two. Unless he started using vibrations for instantaneous impact or piercing damage. Their armour might not be full plate but it was extremely durable and tough. A lot better than his robe.
But they weren’t even willing to reply to him anymore.
“Fine. So how do I get out of this room.” Ebony didn’t care any more. He got the skill mutations that led to evolutions two days ago and his Conditioning levels were coming back nicely. His rusty moves are gone and he adapted to Teheil’s mana absorption and spell suppression.
“Just kill us. We’re not going to open the doors for you before you kill us.”
“I wasn’t planning to kill you? You had no killing intent towards me the entire time.” Ebony wasn’t worried that they returned to Cinderash to report him. He already let a far more dangerous foe go, Mr Guru and Saint Gearhart would know about his escape much faster.
He was half sure that Saint Gearhart wouldn’t come for him immediately. They are too sure of themselves for obvious reasons. Power.
Although his effective use of mana was down the drain right now, it was still a fact that he had a hard time against 4 Bellicose Savants who weren’t even Emperors or maxed out Kings preparing for evolution.
If Mr Guru was so confident after learning all of his tricks and skills, it was clear that they didn’t think much of him.
In that case, they were probably letting him roam free. Evolve to King, increase his base stats, increase his Fortification. His value would only grow.
He wouldn’t even be surprised if someone was sent to protect him. If he had to guess, that person would be people like Ezekiel or Ezekiel himself. Because Ebony wouldn’t know if Ezekiel was following him.
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Unless he was on Teheil where aether and mana were both impractical. With pure physical perception and no mana sensing, Cinderashians had nothing and few who could effectively follow and keep an eye on him.
“Just open the door. It's not like Gearhart wouldn’t know that his island was suddenly taken away from his volcano or that I went missing. Your life and death doesn’t matter to me and I’m not fond of killing.”
“That’s Lord or Saint Gearhart for you!” The Infernal Cleaver user didn’t even have a weapon other than his aether blade which wasn't’ even sharp due to the lack of aether.
“I can continue forcing you to open the door if you want.”
They trembled at the sight of him raising Icicle above his head.
It took some muttering but they decided to let him out. Ebony watched them touch a wall that summoned a stone keypad. Surprised, he memorised the keys and the order they were pressed.
‘They have keypads. Keyboards probably exist too. I should try to get on the internet, the Eidolon Nexus. I wonder if this was one of the things Navin was trying to get access to for Elva, he should be.’ The Eidolon Nexus was named that way because the ‘internet’ was connected through the Spirit Realm and personified by what he understood as an artificial intelligence that manages the net. The Spirit Realm was used since it was one of the vastest Realms that connected close to every populated world.
Of course, they didn’t have so many spirits working as employees. The Spirit Realm was used as a medium but the technology to transmit information was more mind magic and normal, advanced technology.
Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art - Employing the arts obscures the line between tangible and illusory. The advent of your greatsword is the advent of an arctic tide, each one greater than the last. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 800% + 10.0% per level. Strength and speed wielding a greatsword increases by 600% + 10.0% per level. Momentous tides power the next tide with 5% of the preceding strike’s Strength.
‘I thought it would combine with Ethereal Form Arts, now it’s similar but the base strength and speed increment are low compared to the Savants. Still, greatsword base increment is higher than Ethereal Form Arts.’
Ethereal Form Arts - The Ethereal Form Arts are elusive and challenging to perceive. A spectre in the midst of battle, distinguished by adapting to your opponents with uncanny precision. Employing the arts obscures the line between tangible and illusory. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 1800% + 10.0% per level. Strength and Agility while brawling with the Ethereal Form arts increases by 500% + 10.0% per level. The Ethereal Form Arts reduces the burden on your body from its own power by a static 90%.
While Rivertide gave him a direct speed increase, Form Arts gave him an Agility increment. In a short span of a week, he refined the previous 800% to 1800% for fluidity after incorporating his clones’ learnings. To evolve it, he had a feeling all that Sovereign Arts that his clones learnt wasn’t enough. There was a very good reason for using a sword now that both masteries were at the same tier, weapon mastery gave more power boost compared to unarmed combat. While unarmed gave him far more flexibility to pull off his usual moves and less likely for others to predict his moves.
Phantom’s Flicker - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Phantom Flicker allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 800% + 10.0% per level. Disturbance to the surroundings caused by physical movement is reduced by 80% + 10.0% per level. Weave through physical matter with a static 25% more ease.
As one of his first few Tier 4 skills, he managed to remove the negative percentage completely and had minor improvements altogether. He didn’t have much of an opportunity to refine it against the Savants and he was pretty sure a base of 1200 to 1500% should be achievable rather easily.
Ebony waved his hand back and forth in the grey light called the cushioning force. It was a lot weaker than compared to how strained the Savants looked like they were under.
‘Is this due to Phantom’s Flicker? Physical movement doesn’t just apply to walking or running, but all my movements…so my movement disturbs the surroundings 94 times less than it should. Does it work on the cushioning too? Need to check how affected other people are.’ Since he wasn’t able to be distracted earlier, he wasn’t sure why the Savants got tired so quickly despite their lower endurance.
It would make a lot of sense if Phantom’s Flicker was what helped him reduce the suppression on his body.
“Goodbye.” Ebony waved them off when the last door opened. It was a cylindrical building with multiple layers of doors all with different passcodes. As for the passcode, it was quite simple. All of them were different ways to praise Gearhart with numerical mnemonics.
His mana senses were allowed to reign freely without Miss Spirit’s interruption for the first time in years. Real-time gravitational wave information spreading 422 km in every direction was registered in his mind.
‘Okay, I can see why mages don’t have this kept up at all times. It already takes 4% of my mental capacity just running passively without anyone within range and I’m not moving at high speeds yet. Worth it.’ His Core Skill Perpetual Tranquillity Spring passively increases his mental capacity and he had an unnaturally high capacity to begin with. Either from his father’s training or just a natural trait. Within this radius, Ebony would be able to sense every blade of grass but there wasn't any.
“This place is more barren than Cinderash isn’t it,” Ebony spoke out loud before the Savants tried to sneak away. They clearly knew their way around, which wasn’t surprising because many of the Savants were posted to come to Teheil for a regular training cycle.
The patch of land everywhere he saw and sensed was dry, dead and empty and not even weeds thrived.
They jumped and backed into the building when he spoke out but he wasn’t asking for directions and Flickered away immediately.
The cushioning served and bent ahead of him.
‘This is not what Seventeen found out, isn’t the cushioning supposed to crack under stress? Why is it curving away instead?’
Regardless, Ebony did a quick survey of the lands. Needless to say, he had a rough gauge of the immense strength of gravity. The cushioning was far weaker than his clones had him ready for. Since that was the case, traversal was easy and he mapped a sizable portion of the land he stood on within the next three days.
‘This jelly tastes bad but at least it’s much better than those bricks that prisoners are fed.’ Ebony swallowed the food that Twenty-Three prepared for him.
Teheil was needlessly humongous. Neither Elcra nor Cinderash came close.
But the wilds were also the most barren. No life could be found other than the occasional camp of invaders that Ebony had managed to stay out of sight from.
“The Golden Fields in the north are currently under Cinderashian rule. I haven’t been to the West but that’s where the natives and aboriginals are and the Cinderashians never kicked them out fully. Then the Ferruquads took control of the south and a portion of the central and east where they were clashing. In the east are two more invaders, both base and sub-human races that are working together. The Mirellans are weak fighters in comparison since they are very close to base humans but they have the numbers and the money, they have the equipment and technological advantage. While the Veilarans have diverged quite a bit from humans just like the Cinderashians thanks to their native planet conditions but they look more different to humans compared to the Cinderashians.”
Ebony didn’t find the Golden Fields and just headed eastwards after scanning the area he came out from. The east and central were where almost every race could be found once in a while and where clashes were happening most often.
Glad that he wasn’t seeing battlefields and war everywhere, Ebony heard that he had to go east if he wanted to get a pass to central but he didn’t know how far he had to go until he overheard small camps of humans together with people that had very dark skin, flat noses and small beady eyes. He guessed they were the Veilarans, famed for their shadow and darkness affinity, their assassins and covert operations experts.
It didn’t seem like people could float in the air with the cushioning, strong gravity and mana suppression so he was Flickering through the air unnoticed.
In less than a day, he saw the lack of grey light and the presence of golden light shining through the skies. The days in the Golden Fields never ended. Crops such as wheat and lustregrass that were supposed to reduce the effects of the cushioning were growing in abundance as far as the eye could see.
When he escaped the grey light and went under the golden light he smashed into something hard and massaged his face.
‘The grey light isn’t a physical manifestation of the cushioning, the warm light is too. The cushioning exists in the Golden Fields and is even stronger. Mana absorption is still here, just as strong. Anti-mage planet, that means I’m very likely safe from most magic?’ Ebony figured he was protected by the planet's conditions and not suppressed. As long as his opponent doesn’t have magic, there is nothing freaky or unknown that he has to fear.
On his way there, he was very interested in what the farmers were clad in. Large beefy power armour or exoskeletal suits allowed them to move fast and carry a lot of weight. The massive vehicles were made for agriculture but had weapons attached to the top and it was fascinating to see them harvest and load.
Everything and everyone was moving at slow speeds not unlike unclassed humans due to the cushioning that is harder to push through when you move fast.
Landing, he walked through the front fields and Flickered to the front gate of the familiar battlement walls. Barriers didn’t exist here after all. He was now certain, Phantom’s Flicker worked to let him slip through the cushioning with nearly a hundred times ease and that the cushioning wasn’t a fluid.
“I’ve never seen you. That bracelet stinks of sulphur. Cinderashian spy?”
Ebony shook his head once in denial.