Ebony's Fable

The day that Kong Jing was supposed to arrive, Ning Xin made it back home in the early afternoon. He was glad he decided to cut short on library time.

Ebony checked for injuries before he welcomed her back. He couldn’t tell if she ignored his greeting, a high five or if she was just more eager to jump Kong Jing and put her into a hug.

Although her mask now covered her eyes, he felt a little weird that he didn’t feel any gaze on him either.

“You stink.” Kong Jing pushed her sister’s hug aside, outright rejecting the hug.

“I know!” Ning Xin shouted and rushed to the bathroom.

‘...was I ignored?’ He shook his head, she stood in front of him to let him check for injuries so that shouldn’t be the case.

After a long shower, she kept herself in the kitchen till dinner.

Muse coincidently returned, announcing her arrival with a high-pitched scream that caught all their attention. She managed to bring out the chef from the kitchen, the craftswoman from his forge and him who was asking for some advice on his birthday gift idea for the chef.

“What is this doing here?! How long have you left it out!?” Muse was so mad her face turned red while she pointed at his piano.

“What do you think, good placement right?” Ebony was rather proud of his design choice.

“Terrible! Why’re you putting a pittaw outdoors!?”

“Does it not look cool?” Ebony placed it where it was thanks to a music rhythm game he played. He liked it where it was.

“It’ll get damaged when it rains!” With Muse glaring at him in rage with her hands on her hips, he looked towards the other two people for their opinions.

“It’ll deteriorate and some internal parts will rust over time.” Kong Jing gave her an assessment before taking a better look at the instrument. She might not have made many instruments before.

“Looks out of place.” Ning Xin commented.

Stunned, Ebony defended, “it’ll block out rain and wind.”

He didn’t even manage to finish his sentence before they shut him down for better reasons like humidity control. Discouraged at the three-pronged rejection, he was ready to take the piano into the house. It was a standard medium grand piano that he used to play. The craftsman replicated it one for one so it was different from the pittaw that they thought it was.

‘Hmm?’ Ebony cocked his head when the piano wasn’t lifted.

“Look, even my pet tree agrees!” He pointed to the piano legs which had ice roots holding them firmly in place. This was the first time the tree moved without his input excluding its growth process.

Muse looked at him with…disgust? He didn’t know what to make of the scowl.

“I’m going back down, call me when dinner’s ready.” Kong Jing didn’t bother replying to him.

“You can just say you like it there.” Ning Xin finally chuckled and relaxed her shoulders. He felt like the distance she suddenly put between them shortened again.

“This is a misunderstanding. I did not manipulate the ice to keep it here.” Ebony quickly caught onto the reason for their disbelief and explained.

None of them trusted his words and that felt bad.

“It’s okay, I trust you. You like this?” Ebony caressed his pet tree’s bark. ‘I gotta give her a name.’

The tree roots wrapped its roots around the piano's legs and pulled it closer against its trunk.

“Okay, it’s yours from now on. Can I play it from time to time?” They might have been right and the tree was just moving thanks to his subconscious control because there was no response from his pet tree.

“Scarlet! He’s going crazy!” Muse ran into the house in tears.

‘Might as well try to play something.’ Ebony took a seat on the accompanying seat that came as a set. The tree roots pushed the seat out for him. Now he was self-conscious because he wasn’t sure if he was moving them manually or if they were moving for him.

The first piece that came to mind was classical, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven but it didn’t feel like the right time or mood. ‘Can’t go wrong with a Ghibli…One Summer’s Day it is.’ The people in the house except Muse should recognise the tune.

Muse dashed back out to grab his wrist. “Wait a minute, what are you planning to play? This is a combat-grade pittaw”

“Combat grade? It's okay, I’ll play a gentle piece. Hopefully, I didn’t lose my touch.”

He hadn’t.

He didn’t remember ever playing so well. The power of physical control was hardwired into him. As for the piano, it was crisp, clear and velvety. Despite being played in the open, it left lingering reverberations within his entire range of mana sense.

‘How far does it go? It doesn’t sound loud but my senses picked it up even two kilometres away. And the volume or strength of vibrations is constant throughout.’ Ebony was thoroughly impressed.

“May I?” Muse cut in when he finished playing the piece.

“Are you finally going to teach me?” Ebony shifted aside but his pet tree pulled the seat in. He patted it and told him not to be rude. Muse puffed her cheeks at him. He no longer defended himself because he was unsure if he was controlling the tree or if it was moving itself. He was sure he wasn’t using mana or any mental control.

“I want to know if you can tell the difference when I play the same piece. Oh, amazing piece by the way I bet you didn’t write it.” Muse took a seat and Ebony could immediately tell a difference.

Her entire…vibe and aura changed.

She replicated his piece to the dot, his ears didn’t catch a single tune or timing off. It was as if his piece was replayed on a video.

But Ebony couldn’t look away from her. More importantly, everybody in a two-kilometre radius from his house or the piano was standing on the spot. He didn’t have many neighbours but every one of them outside their houses stopped and looked up. Some had tears running down their cheeks, others broke into a pained smile.

Two kilometres was only his range, he had no idea how far the piece or soundwaves went.

‘There’s no mana used in that so how? What’s different?’ Ebony used every single point of his immense Perception ability to no avail. She was just a woman playing the same piece he did. No magic, no foreign energy.

Personally, he heard no difference.

But evidence of not just the random strangers on the street but the chef in his kitchen slowed down her ingredient preparation just to listen.

“So what difference did you spot?”

Ebony didn’t even know when she stopped playing until her voice hit his ears. Erasing the reverberations of the same piece echoing in his head.

His mouth opened but no words came out.

He wanted to say a lot, mostly about people’s reaction to her music but he knew that wasn’t what she was talking about.

“I don’t know.”

“You can ask around. This is your assignment. When you find the answer, your music will improve.”

Ebony dearly hoped it was not some philosophical question. ‘But why didn’t I just tell her the observational difference?’

The first thing he did after Muse got off the seat and returned to the cheery girl who asked for candy was to check the instrument. He wanted to see if there was some function in the piano that he didn’t utilise but he didn’t find anything.

There were magical constructs on the interior but he knew that nothing was activated. There were zero traces of mana in them. They were brand new.

“Xin, could you hear a difference?” He covered the piano keys and entered the kitchen.

Muse was in the kitchen with a spoonful of sweet jam in her mouth. Unperturbed that he directly got started on his assignment.

“Hu-hmm.” Ning Xin mumbled.

Slightly distracted because he was furiously replaying every observation he made in his head to find out what the difference was, he didn’t wait and tapped her shoulders to get her attention. However, he snapped out of it when she jerked forward and allowed a cube of bird meat to fly out of her pan. She twisted around to slap his hand with her spatula so fast her spatula bent before it reached him.

“Relax, you’re home. Still in battle mode?” Ebony tried to calm her down when he noticed her red hair. He closed in on her with his head over her shoulders reached for the cube of meat that fell out and blew on it before eating it. The dish was almost done so the bite of meat was piping hot. Nonetheless, his face felt more heat than his tongue.

“Go away! I’m cooking!” Ning Xin rammed her shoulders back and pushed him back.

‘Right, she’s busy cooking. Of course, she’s angry I interrupted her.’ Ebony went out to ponder on his homework by himself. It was like someone interrupting him when he was in a reading trance. He wouldn’t be angry but it wasn’t pleasant. Too distracted, he didn’t notice her over-reactions.

“You dumb rock.”

Ebony ignored the comment from the kitchen. He sat at the dining table in contemplation. It was almost time for dinner and he didn’t want to try to recreate the music only to be stopped mid-way.

“Here’s an early gift. I’ll set it up and teach you how to use it later.” Kong Jing slid a small black gem over the tabletop.

Unlike the myriad bracelet’s standardised slots, their masks could meld over spheres which was generally said to be more conducive for most types of energy transfer. It was also why good staves had sphere elemental orbs instead of uneven-shaped ones.

Ebony imagined there were multiple different studs of jewels stabbing their faces on the inner mask but the functional jewels, gems or ores were all within the mask itself and it was smooth on both sides.

“What does it do?” Ning Xin kept her eyes on the food.

“Nothing special, you’ll find out soon.”

Ebony made a sound bubble to repeat the piece throughout the night but he didn’t know if there was any difference without a test subject. He couldn’t spot any difference.

After the gentle exercises with his classmates, he returned home to find out what the craftswoman’s gift was.

It was a different type of spatial storage. One that allowed Ning Xin to summon her bodysuit, clothing and mantle. Her swords couldn’t fit.

The only special ability of the small storage space was that it didn’t require any physical contact. Items within could be withdrawn with mana. It was also registered so only Ning Xin could take out the stuff within, unlike their storage bags. Her bodysuit could be summoned over her skin within a tenth of a second and could be faster with some practice or so they said.

It would be good if she had spares but the organic material that her bodysuit was made of was not something Kong Jing had extra off. Ebony was pretty sure the crafter said she was trying to cultivate more of the material but with limited success.

As for why the gift was supposed to interest him, it was because she could make the little orb fit in a ring. It was one of those spatial rings he kept mentioning to her about. Sadly, runes alone wouldn’t cut it. They needed a vessel with a relatively dense space mana to contain physical objects.

Space-type materials were extremely rare on Elcra so he could forget about experimenting if all Kong Jing had to show was one prototype.

“Here, play the same tune. I’ll walk out and check how far the range of this piano is.” Ebony told his pet tree as it was already injected by a daily dose of Will and mana.

He Flickered out to gauge the accurate range of the piano. It seemed like it could reach a little under 200 kilometres. If this piano was on Earth, people from another city could hear the music just as clearly as if they were right beside it.

Flabbergasted, he was thoroughly convinced what ‘combat-grade’ musical instruments referred to. The volume of the piano didn’t decrease until he was about 100 km away from his house and even then, it retained the same clarity and melody. Mostly unaffected by ambient sounds unless there was a loud sound nearby.

He asked Muse what the normal range of combat-grade musical instruments was as data. After all, if he was ever running away from a sound mage or bard he didn’t want to misjudge his safety distance.

Her answer was that the range was generally a lot higher for large, immovable instruments like the piano. The piano was akin to a cannon or ballista while the handheld instruments that people could run around without having their movements impeded were like the bow and arrows.

The craftsman she recommended was the best when it came to crafting instruments throughout all of Tidal. He didn’t Appraise the craftsman but despite the weak aura, it was vast. Ebony wasn’t surprised to find out the Dwarf was supposedly king-ranked.

The piano could increase its range by up to 200% with input of mana but even increasing it by 10% was said to dry out a Master Bard in minutes and increasing it by 20% would dry them up in less than ten seconds. Ebony was not new to the exponential rise in mana cost when it came to area of effect spells.

“How did he know?” Ebony referred to how the craftsman knew what he specialises in as the piano's abilities were catered for him. He ordered it thinking it was a normal instrument and didn’t specify any combat capabilities.

“He’s also a musician. Exceptional at gauging what another player needs or is looking for in their instruments. Buh bye!” Muse ran out after explaining some of its functions.

With a little practice, he could control the range of the sounds with mana. Direct it only to a location, although it has to travel in a stream and not spawn into another location. Directed sound travel in a direction could increase its range even further beyond its normal range.

Other than that, it could also amplify volume to over twenty times its normal state without mana. It was quite a beast. Just the sheer sound or vibrational waves would shatter eardrums. Probably do far worse than just popping eardrums if it took his own skills and mana property into account.

“This must have cost her a bomb.” Ebony took a better look at the materials of the piano.

‘I can see why they were so mad I put it outdoors now.’ He found out that even the comfy seat he was on was made of Epic rarity materials. The chair alone felt more expensive than his entire house and land.