Ebony's Fable

“I’m home.”

Ning Xin was outdoors with an extra kiln large enough for two cows that seemed to have popped out from nowhere. Her personal craftswoman must have made it for her. It sat against the side of their house and didn’t look out of place.

She was eating something so he could see her smile. “Go wash up. I’ve already eaten. I’ll whip something up.”

“Pan-fried dumplings.”

“Sure sure.”

Ebony listened and went to scrub out the splinters that were still stuck in his shin. His pants had tiny holes in them but mending them didn’t take any effort.

Then he made his way to feed his pet tree. A lump sum of Will took time to iron out neatly and imbue. The Serpent hunt took over an hour and he recovered over 90% by the time he got home. He emptied his entire mana pool but it generally took two full days worth of mana regeneration for a day’s worth of Will imbued. All thanks to how compressed his mana could get.

“Yeah, your biggest problem is sustainability. Odd, with my Will that should’ve been your greatest strength.” Ebony put his hand on his chin and talked to his pet tree.

It didn’t melt or leak too much mana but his pet tree lacked the ability to regenerate mana. He was also starting to sense that the Will that he imbued on the first day of the tree’s birth was starting to dissipate. He was still imbuing faster than it was dissipating but it would probably reach its limits soon as its dissipation rate seemed to be speeding up.

‘I’ll observe it for the next three days since its dissipation just started.’ He wanted a little more time with the magical tree in the dungeon but he pushed that back since it wasn’t as important anymore. He had to check on his children's training Models too but that could wait.

These training Models were programmed to walk back home in full transparent mode and they were in one piece, parked near the gate. They also had internal clocks to tell when to visit the Quest Hall, together with a Mental Map so they wouldn’t get lost. Hence, he had no issue leaving them to train the children without his presence.

‘I guess I should’ve at least informed them that I wouldn’t be there.’

She had brought dinner outside so that she could see him eat while she watched the kiln and controlled the temperature.

After that, he slept better than ever thanks to using almost a full capacity of Will in a short time.

“I dreamt again. What’s so interesting about butts?” Ebony woke up and shook the memory of a certain night in Ordina away.

It seemed like after Everlasting Tranquillity evolved, he also gained the ability to dream. He didn’t know he was such a person. His dreams kept revolving around Ning Xin and she was frequently wearing little in those dreams. Although he was aware of his admiration for her body, it had always been about how well-toned and built she was. His dreams’ focus was clearly not on her musculature or her anatomy.

He then tried to imagine other female bodies’ anatomy but didn’t receive the same feedback. There wasn’t a better body for combat. Of course, he was just distracting himself and was well aware of the nature of these dreams. He shelved it to the depths of his mind and went about his day.

His routine days continued.

Ning Xin didn’t blatantly avoid him anymore.

Kong Jing was a little busy in his forge but still helped him a little with getting a birthday gift made. She already got him the metal he was looking for and was just making practice attempts. The craftswoman allowed him access to her library again and he made more headway with Gia language with the books within.

He tried to open the second door in her library but was completely played as it was an empty room within a room. Her comment had been a laugh and a ‘how unlucky, I’m renovating that room.’

On a different day, he sensed a fluctuation in the mana in her library and tried to open the door again but it led to a wider room without any furniture or bookshelf. When he closed the door, there was a suction of the ambient mana. He opened the door immediately only to find the guest room he used to stay in on the other side.

Repeating the same motion, he opened the door to a different scenery every time. From rooms in her house, to his house and even the wilds with monsters on the other side of the door. He tried until he got scolded for wasting Kong Jing’s mana.

“Xin, come look. Fruits grown overnight.”

On the second day after he returned from his dungeon trip, he filled his pet tree up with enough mana for it to flower. As he expected it was plum blossoms but they didn’t have any stigma or filament just the petals. The flowers of ice had light blue veins and could glow. It was an extension of his spell, Blossom of Shimmering Chill. He had no doubt it would fall and combust into flames when it needed to.

The tree had branched a lot and looked odd with so many tiny branches with numerous flowers with 5 petals each. The tree crown was rather wide so that it could accommodate more flowers. The flower-to-leaf ratio was quite high, likely because the flowers had more use. It was still flowering as it took a lot of mana for a single fully compressed petal.

On the third day, he fed it with more Will and continued watering it with mana.

Finally, the fruits had grown.

“Still plums with you. I wouldn’t even be surprised if it grew dumplings.” She was excited when she heard ‘fruit’ but not so much when she found out he was still talking about his pet tree that didn’t have any delicious edible parts.

Ebony didn’t ignore her on purpose but he was observing the plums intently.

“Wow.” He held the plum within his palms. There were only three plums at the moment

“You don’t need to show off and be impressed by yourself.” She didn’t share his surprise.

“Grab it.” He released the plum and tugged her sleeves towards the fruit.

“Why?”

“Just grab it.”

“It’s cold. And?”

“Inject your fire mana inside.”

“Huh, you want me to destroy it.”

“You’ll see.”

Ebony waited for her to do her magic.

“It-its sucking my fire mana!”

“Mmhmm, in each of these plums are gravity vortexes.”

“You’re saying-”

“Yes, it’s growing our specialised bomb containers.”

“So we can literally say, eat this plum!”

“...”

Ebony wasn’t expecting a joke from his discovery. She clearly wasn’t as impressed as he was.

‘Still, no wonder there’s only 3 plums; the gravity vortex is a constant mana drain. It uses gravity mana from the whole tree together with ambient gravity. Did it grow because I’m giving it a constant influx of mana? The reason it can’t regenerate mana is because it doesn’t have any mana chassis. And it’s not like I can cut my mana chassis off to share it…’

“Stupid brother. That’s a tree, not a person. Did you forget what I taught you?” Kong Jing’s hand spawned above him but slowed down to a pat instead of a punch.

“...Ambient mana absorption runes, together with my personal mana to ice mana conversion rune. I already have the complete runic circle for that.” Ebony kept having the impression that he had to use his mana. It was a lot stronger too, so the thought of using ambient mana didn’t come to mind at all. Hence, not a single hint of using ambient mana was in the Will that had already been imbued.

But for his tree, a harmful source didn’t matter. It just needed an additional energy source.

“And the problem?” She was tinkering with something in the forge and only her voice continued to stay with him while her hand retreated.

“Inefficient. The max range of my best formula that can fit on something the size of a ring can absorb mana from is less than half a kilometre. My pet tree can compress ice mana so that’s not a problem. The amount of mana in half a kilometre for the current ambient mana densities wouldn’t even be enough to grow a single petal. I can increase the range since the runic circle can be enlarged thanks to the size of the tree but then my conversion of mana to ice mana cannot keep up.”

“Your solution?”

“Back to the drawing board. I have a few ideas already. Thank you, sister Jing.”

“Hey,” A mask popped up to glare at him, “I gave you hints so let’s hear what those ideas are.”

“First, the roots I gave it after watching the ruin’s magic tree. I can make it longer to get mana from deep underground. I don’t like this idea much and it’s very limited in terms of area. The ground has more earth mana than pure mana so it’s not reliable.

Next, the more reliable one is to mould them onto the bark or scales of my tree. It covers a large area and even if it loses some scales, it’s entirely layered out of the same stuff so it won’t lose all its absorption capabilities unless it's destroyed in seconds.

I want to allow a layer or two to be able to fly to the limits of its range to absorb mana from a larger area but that would take mana too so it depends on the surrounding mana density or purity. I won’t give it that ability until I can calculate and give it the ability to gauge if it’s worth spreading out a layer to absorb mana.” Ebony continued to think out loud for the craftswoman to overhear.

“Your ideas are fine but this method is still unreliable. If your tree is immovable, ambient mana will run out. Especially with how mana-hungry your spells are. Even if I help you improve your runic formula to have a hundred times wider range or increase its conversion rate.”

“What do you suggest.”

“I suggest you use your brain. That’s for you to think.”

“There's no point cutting out a portion of my brain. The thing that regenerates mana is the mana chassis, I have enough experience to tell. If I lost a body part, the area where its physical portion was would still contain my mana chassis and I would regrow it. The lost part would slowly die out. I’m also not sure if I can survive long enough to regenerate my brain.” Ebony considered the possibility but he was quite sure it wouldn’t work.

“That was not what I was suggesting!”

“Hmm, are you asking me to create a new skill or forge an additional brain? I don’t know how to forge or create brains, unfortunately. As for mana chassis, I could try to figure something out but I highly doubt any quick results.

“Oh come on. Think about it in a way rich people do.”

“Power source…right, I can toss a million Blues in a cargo space. It’s a stop-gap measure but that’s better than nothing. I still need to improve my runic formula to convert mana from a Blue efficiently.” Ebony had missed out on such a simple solution.

“...come on down, I’ll show you another baby of mine.”

Ebony was also interested in seeing what kind of industrial equipment Kong Jing had hiding in her basement. Her house wasn’t displayed out in the open since there was no space for it but she took out the equipment and items she needed and made his personal forge her room.

“Look at this baby, this is what I used to make the power source that your trailer is holding.”

The large machinery could barely fit in his basement. It was a hunk of metal with an empty glass container in the middle. It was connected by a glass tunnel to another space with a few metal tools within the glass container.

“See this cabinet, toss mana ores here and this baby would crush it without any loss in mass. It would take that mana and resolidify it as a perfect sphere. We can watch the baby roll here. I keyed in my own three-dimensional formula and it would engrave it inside out to further expand its capacity by over 300 times for Blues. If you had purples, their inherent purity would allow my runes to increase their capacity by over 500 times instead. Hehehehh, don’t tell anyone that I have this, got it!?”

Ebony never got a number but he now knew why his trailer’s power source seemed like it wouldn’t ever fill up. It was mass and size equivalent to hundreds of thousands of tiny mana ores meant to fit on a bracelet but the math never added up. He underestimated her runic formula’s prowess.

“...Did you steal it?”

“Don’t say steal, I picked it up alright! You remember how I was chasing Zenin down to buy another industrial mana compressor so that I could tear it down and remake it?” She told him about one of the owners of the Z&Z company before. The genius inventor who made himself half golem, half human and sold her the industrial mana compressor.

“Mmm.”

“I found him a few years ago. I don’t know what or how he has the contact but this baby is so technologically advanced it’s unlike anything I’ve heard of. I don’t even think any of my family members know about this baby. Oh, the wonders of reshaping mana ores to a perfect sphere is beautiful.” She closed up to the glass container and caressed it.

“So what do you mean by picking it up?”

“...I might have unleashed a few little beasts I keep in my spatial world to disturb his factory deep in the mountains. Look, I didn’t have them kill or attack anything. It’s not my fault he got scared by their presence and abandoned his precious factory and equipment.”

“Spatial world? Like a domain?”

“Urgh, it’s similar but more of a space mage’s natural advantage and my mask’s main function. I can’t use Will like you do so I have no idea what a normal domain spell is like. Can you not get distracted by the unimportant details, I’m showing you something amazing enough for my clan members to come kill me for.”

“Surely not, you can just share its use.”

“Let’s just say sharing is not a Xeng’s speciality, I know you’re the same. Your possessiveness gushes out all the time. I can believe that you have Xeng blood. Don’t try to deny, you don’t even like me touching anything in your forge.”

Ebony remained silent.

“Alright, go feed the compressor with enough mana to make a few Purples. We’ll toss it in with the Blues you have. Your personal mana would be the core of the power source, that’ll be more efficient for your spell too.”

“Have you succeeded in making another one of these mana compressors?” He wanted one of those machines too.

“I did, this one’s new and better but I took apart the old one to make this. I would make another but I don’t have a certain material to make it, that's why I only have one. That inventor warped away the moment his detection sensed something off so I didn’t manage to buy a second one.”

“My pet tree’s going to be hungry for a few days.”

“How big do you want it? It can make something up to a fifth of a gir in diameter.” Kong Jing told him that the sphere could be a metre in diameter while his trailer’s power source was not that big as it had to fit beneath the floorboard.

‘If the base is a Rare quality mana ore, my tree will still compress it further before use. A perfect sphere of a metre’s diameter would mean it’s 500 litres?’ Ebony did internal calculations.

The volume of a sphere increased proportionally to the cube of its radius. The tiny little shard fit on the myriad bracelet could contain 100,000 MP. He already knew that was referring to ambient mana. After taking into account the bracelet’s conversion efficiency of breaking his mana down to match Elcra’s ambient mana it took less than 100,000 not because of the conversion efficiency being over a hundred per cent but because the bracelet had to dilute his mana before it could fit into the mana ore.

‘I don’t like geometry.’ Ebony decided that he didn’t need to know how much that would equate to. It was easily in the hundreds of millions if not billions. Something that large was almost able to power one of those magic defence towers that shot beams of destruction that could melt him.

However, the power source that the magic defence towers on Elcra use were naturally large mana ores that were either sanded or sculpted down to a sphere and were probably Rare quality at best. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were made of Greens or Uncommon mana ores either. The ones at the border cities did seem far stronger than what a Green could output.

Ebony’s natural mana regeneration was 20% of his base mana capacity per hour instead of a human’s 10%. His current Fortification of 750% increase made his natural regeneration without meditation at 170% per hour. He could regenerate a full mana pool in less than half an hour even if he was unconscious or didn’t have his Core Skill activated.

All his stats were 40% higher than his status tells him thanks to a maxed-out tier 4 Conditioning which directly affects base stats. His Core Skill currently gave him a 71.6 times multiplier at its current tier, level and refinement. All in all, he roughly regenerated over 3.46 million mana per hour or 963 mana per second.

Losing only to Gen at full focus but he could do it every waking moment without being stationary. Gen didn’t have a Fortification for increasing mana regeneration but he had far higher base Wisdom and skill level.

Without his current regeneration, he wouldn’t be able to consistently use full compression.

It took under 2 minutes to fill up a Blue fit in his myriad bracelet. The unreliability of the bracelet forced him to get better and safely send his mana elsewhere. Luckily, it usually wasn’t a problem as he used all his mana for training in some form.

‘So if it can contain a billion points of mana of my quality, it’ll take ten full days of all my regeneration? That doesn’t sound so bad. If my pet tree’s usage equals mine, that still means ten full days of pelting spells but it’ll obviously use more than just my regeneration’s worth like how I dip into my mana pool in tough fights. Maybe 2 to 3 days of maximum output. That’s not good enough.’

Ebony was glad that just going by volume, the power source made of Blues should easily exceed a few billion and that hasn’t included Kong Jing’s runic expansion. He was relieved that even when his spell power and mana output were to increase in the near future, just one of these huge mana ore spheres could contain enough mana for a long time.

No wonder it took a whole town’s worth of tax to charge up one of these babies. Not even Ebony could fill it up in a short amount of time.