Ebony was not a skilled linguist but felt like he knew the gist of what they were screaming at each other after he found that he couldn’t even see one of them move.
At least the warriors were decisive.
His body barely shifted before a clawed arm pierced through the torso right under his right rib and another from the back through his left lung. Neither of his attackers were the two strongest warriors who had statues of them outside. They were just guards nearby.
It was as if he could sense emotions when he felt the instant relief expressed by Xin’s possessor. Until she noticed Ebony’s grip around her neck tighten. The scream from her disturbed him slightly considering whose voice it was but her guards doubled down to make sure he died faster.
The element of surprise and time for reaction allowed him to get the sleeping figure closer to his body, preventing the guards from clawing his arm off.
“Unhand the high priestess!” The people with their claws and arms through his body yanked but didn’t immediately realise they were stuck inside him. Their Gia was heavily accented but Ebony understood them.
With close to zero magical resistance and Teheil somewhat reducing the effect of magic body, Ebony was halfway through freezing these people. They noticed that their superior physical abilities were useless too late as he reached their bones. He was gaining more confidence as the seconds passed. ‘It works too well, if all of them have zero magical abilities even their strongest warriors shouldn’t be a problem to outlast.’
Their confusion at what was happening to their bodies was interesting to watch. They didn’t know what ice was even though their cold resistance seemed pretty high. The temperatures outside the Golden Fields were generally low but not freezing so their high cold resistance or lack of sensation towards the chill was surprising.
Tightening his grip he was in a staring contest with a mask.
He won and it didn’t even take a minute before Xin’s body fell forward. He tossed the ‘priestess’s’ body out of the broken walls and dislodged the frozen bodies out of him before catching Xin. A dislocated and fractured neck shouldn’t be fatal to an Emperor of any class or race.
‘What do I say?’
“I’m here, didn’t mean to take that long.” Ebony decided on something before silence took over.
“...” She had her face buried in his chest and didn’t say a word.
“Are you acting unconscious?” Feeling the fingers clutch into him, he voiced out.
“Keep quiet and let me hug you.”
“Okay.” He tried to actively heal his wounds faster but her hug was raising his awareness of pain. The guards were more concerned with catching their priestess but they also stopped any hostility with an glare from Xin, with her vitality and intent blanketing the area.
After a solid few minutes, she unhanded him and dragged him by hand to her residence. It was a nice house all things considered but unbelievably, no kitchen. That must have driven her mad.
“Do you want to start?” He put on a new shirt and had his robe returned.
“Nnhmm” She fell onto the large flat and round cushion that was present in every home. He assumed it was a sofa
“No? Okay, I’ll start.” Ebony recounted what had happened so far.
He tried sounding descriptive as he could with all the teachers he had. All his new experiences. The dungeon parties he joined, the friends he made. The monsters he hunted, the friendly Lava-scaled Pangolins that he practically became friends with and they chilled around Aegis daily. He didn’t talk about food at all because he had very limited experience with tasting their food.
He wanted to give her another surprise by cooking up Cinderashian cuisine that his clones took the time to learn but he had to taste them for himself and practice before he could present it to her. He also had crates full of spices and herbs that were only found on Cinderash as a gift. If he was honest she was probably going to like these spices and ingredients more than the rare items that could provide help to refine her Physique.
He went on about less combative skills he had like making a network of Will to connect his thoughts to clones at extreme distances and how he spread his network through more than half of Cinderash.
He even praised Mr Guru as the greatest opponent he had on Cinderash. Talked about Saint Gearhart’s volcano’s defences.
“Wait, it hasn’t been that long. How did so many things happen?” After hours of recounting, she noticed just how many experiences he was going on about.
“Clones.”
“What about you?” She referred to his main body.
“I was locked up.” He looked around the empty house.
“What!?” Her surprise got him to start the story again from how he went to Cinderash to begin with since he started recounting when his clones explored Cinderash.
“Oh it's fine, look, I brought my cell with me. Teheil is keeping it asleep but I think she’s already awake and is just storing energy. I might have gotten a Saint on my back.”
“What did you do?”
“I held his island and family hostage to make my getaway. If the Boiler Knights or a certain few Bellicose Savants knew I existed, I wouldn’t have gotten so far to begin with.”
“Those Savants are weak though.”
“I suppose most of them are.”
She let him continue his recollection while she got her sword back from him. Her mantle was not lost but it seemed like the priestess of the natives did not like wearing it. Considering their customs and habits where none of them wore tops, it wasn’t intentional to show off her figure in a bodysuit.
They were interrupted by people including the blind native who was late to the party, surrounding her residence after three hours but the Natives scattered when they felt Xin’s anger. “Only she would come, and their guardians. But we have time.”
“I’m all ears.” Sensing her growing desire to speak out and express her suppressed feelings, he let her have a turn.
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It was not as complicated as Ebony was prepared for, which was expected from Xin. She followed her intuition and was hungry for many months without anything in sight. Coming here without her bag, she had close to no food or sustenance on her.
Her intuition told her not to waste her energy and blast through the barren plains so she starved. And starved.
She was living through one of her worst nightmares.
The Ferroquads stalked her for weeks if not months, her memories hazy. Ten might have died around this time. It was interesting to hear how she instantly kept them in one of her glass crystal tubes that Kong Jing made to preserve her bloody energy soup stock.
Then she woke up around the Natives. Sheltered and fed but attacked by strangers.
What to do was obvious to her, she fended off the attackers. Be it Cinderashians, Ferroquad, Mirellans or Veilarans. Outside the Golden Fields, food was gold. The natives and everyone in general moved light due to the cushioning and gravity. And her entourage consisted of less than a hundred people, she had to carry her weight since feeding her was starving others.
They took two months to get back here, the Natives' home. Two months were enough for them to be convinced that she was some sort of Holy Maiden. Though they were convinced from the start just from her looks.
It took years before Ning Xin understood their story because she initially followed along through intuition and the ability to sense emotions. She didn’t like the Cinderash to begin with, and the Ferroquads tried to bag her up. It didn’t take much consideration to stand with the Natives.
She did meet humans, the Mirellans and Veilarans on many occasions but on all of them, none of the people had good intentions with or against her.
The Natives had legends of a Holy Maiden that had similar if not identical physical features as her. The biggest problem was that she was a human and there were obvious differences from the sketches and description of their actual Holy Maiden. However, it took little effort for the natives’ High Priestess to propel Ning Xin to the status they needed her to be.
That lady was convinced that they needed a Holy Maiden, regardless of whether the person was real or not. It was something more cultural or religious that drove their race crazy.
Ning Xin personally noticed that the Natives got stronger after she was known throughout the race.
“The horns, the more they have, the stronger they got after I was announced Holy Maiden. Some kind of spirit-based skill or racial trait.” She surmised.
Anyway, her life was simple. Fight and kick out the invaders.
However, the High Priestess always urged Xin for more forceful and brutal measures. Because Xin never went out to hunt people. When they did attack other camps, she didn’t kill anyone without a high degree of violent intentions.
Not knowing the language, they couldn’t communicate properly and the High Priestess didn’t push the issue too much. However, she did throw Xin to more dangerous fights which indirectly led to deaths on both sides. It helped the High Priestess spread her ‘accomplishments’ better with word of mouth amongst the fighters and families solidifying her status.
Knowing that she was being used, Ning Xin stopped all killing even against people sent to assassinate her. It had been a difficult 2-3 years because she had to hold back and even back down against people she could have beaten but not without killing them. Unsurprisingly, those years improved her technique the most because she had to not kill.
Throughout those years, the High Priestess got fed up again and again as she sent Xin to more dangerous missions without achieving what she actually wanted. She tried to push Xin up as a figure to be worshipped or dependent on. Xin wasn’t sure which, but she did her best to achieve the opposite.
Her two physical states helped, transforming into her calmer black haired form slowed the spiralling of the fake stories being spread about her.
Their conflict got less verbal and more forceful. She was grateful for the food, shelter, water and even fighting guidance from the two Guardians of the race. Those two were extremely strong.
Hence her confusion. A strong fighter was not what they were looking for.
She was just there as a figurehead for faith or spirit to empower the rest of the race. Needless to say, she was pissed. She stopped going into her red-haired mode completely.
The tension between them continued to rise till the High Priestess somehow possessed her body. Like the High Priestess said, she only succeeded because Xin didn’t have any real anger or hate towards any of these people. She was more so grateful for the early years she was sheltered and fed. She was also caught when she was in her resting state, unable to fight back and her aggression state was sealed up by spirit only to be used by the High Priestess.
From then, the High Priestess just took over and accomplished what she wanted to. The Holy Maiden was a household name that people praised day in and out.
Fighting for their land and kicking out the invaders was as holy as any accomplishment could get for these people. They were an intense group of people.
“You know, they said their population was in the tens of billions. But the Cinderashians culled them once and the Ferroquads came in for a second culling.”
“I see where the intensity comes from.” Ebony nodded half in understanding. It seemed to him that Xin was more affected by their emotions than he assumed throughout her recounting. She felt for them. She cared for the well-being.
She must have kept a lot of stories through her summarised recollection because it was unlike her to feel attached to a group of people. Maybe not, that might be his own experience.
“I take it you want to stay here?” Ebony did not have any major goals to achieve on Teheil. His minor goals include getting his hands on raw materials and ingredients of note. Like the bulk of gravity element material that he was still sensing.
“...Yes and no.” Kicking her legs on the sofa while lying down, her dejected voice hit him.
“Okay.” He looked around the nearly empty house before looking back at her.
“What’s with that look? I feel like you want something from me for a while now.”
“I want your food. Haven’t tasted food in years.”
He succeeded at changing her mood when she jumped out of her dejection. She surprised him by taking out the wok he gave her as a present. “Where did you keep that? Was it not in your bag?”
“It's your present, I have it in my mask. A small storage, my emergency soup stock is stored here too.”
She unfolded the weird metal sticks into a square. The metal pipes had a cross at the bottom and middle between the four corners, sort of like foldable table legs. She used it as a platform for her wok to rest on.
“Strong metal pipes.” Impressed that 4 pipes could withstand a wok a few times heavier than Icicle.
“It was very hard to get. They don’t have craftsmen. I had them piece it together from parts taken from some Cinderash structure.”
“Fire?” He saw her stop in her tracks after fumbling about for ingredients. He highly doubted she could use magic like he could.
“...I should have some wood left over.” She opened a door to the side to reveal a storeroom about the size of a bathroom. It had 3 split logs of wood chucked under a shelf
“How long has the priestess taken over?”
“I’m not sure…a couple months?”
“I’ll get the fire started.” Ebony took the logs and injected mana before violently vibrating a portion over the surface of the logs and working his way down. Igniting them was far harder than he expected but not enough to be an issue, he still had to be careful not to burn it down to ashes.
The Rare quality wood could burn at a high temperature for a long time. He didn’t have to drag another log or two from the edge of his senses with mana.
“Gluttonous rice balls?” She knew that sweet flavours weren’t his favourite so a sweet dessert was unexpected.
“They represent reunion.” She rolled up the last dozen dough lumps into perfect spheres with slow precision.
“Mmm.” He knew but he was more surprised that she had the ingredients for it in this empty house.
Boiling water with a few types of alien green leaves and some coloured hardened jelly cubes, she swept the rice balls into the wok when the water boiled. It didn’t take long before they had a bowl full of rice bowls. The soup was dark orange, he was familiar with it.
The soup was clear but spiced more than any pepper or chillies and it warmed the throat and body right as it slipped down their throats. The chewy goodness had peanut and sesame fillings oozing out when he chewed.
“Delicious.” Ebony felt his sense of taste revive before he emptied the bowl.