Ebony's Fable

“Enn..” Ning Xin had a headache and quickly knocked away the mental speech that told her that her poison resistance levelled up.

‘How much did I drink?’ She fumbled around but her eyes were struggling to open in her drowsiness. They fluttered open but it was pitch dark and cold all around. Still feeling hungover, she felt like she was about to fall back asleep as her eyelids forced themselves shut.

Fumbling about towards the nearest heatsource, she grabbed what she thought were the swords that never strayed far from her to calm her down. At the same time, hugging her bolster felt warmer than usual but it was a lot stiffer than she remembered.

She grumbled in her sleep, ‘is this scorchie or scorchy? I can’t grip fully…’

❅❅❅

‘What’s going on.’ Ebony woke up to a groan.

None of his instinctual defence woke him up so he shouldn’t be in any danger but he woke up being wrapped in a cool but soft embrace.

‘Never mind, this is a dangerous position.’ He got his bearing in an instant and reevaluated his situation.

This was not something he was trained for.

‘I can’t wake her up, she’s going to start avoiding me for some time again.’ He tried to finesse himself out but she only gripped onto him tighter whenever he shifted.

Using every skill in his repertoire, he managed to cool his blood down and slip through the embrace. Thankfully her swords were nearby for him to substitute. Ebony wiped the sweat off his forehead.

‘Drunk bad. Sober good. No drinking for Xin.’ With a new lesson learned he covered her with his robe since the cloth had slipped off in her messy sleep and exited Dusk. He didn’t get drunk but it felt like this was the closest he ever got to the sensation of being drunk.

The first thing that caught his attention was music. He looked at the piano just around the door. Roots were playing the piano.

“Why are you playing a piano cover for all of me?” He slapped the piano cover shut and shooed the roots back to the ground. He didn’t even know the sheet music for it, Dusk must have played it by vibrational recognition from his memories.

“You’re up late, no breakfast.” Kong Jing was in his garden planting metal stakes in his soil.

Ebony looked up and found out it was time for their usual morning training. His automated children sparring partners were gone so they must be out training his classmates. “I’ll sue your sister for sexual harassment another day,”

He straightened his clothes and Flickered to the Quest Hall.

“My apologies for being late.” The Masters whom he had been tutoring recently were already in the middle of training with Rauffeq. Surprisingly, they were in the middle of watching Rauffeq getting grounded by a storm of lightning.

“Good morning Ebony.” Madam Wilcox flashed her gentle smile while she slammed the butt of her staff down to disperse the continuous storm of lightning that torched even the training grounds' flooring.

“Warming up.” He wanted to put his social voice on in front of his seniors but his question mark wasn’t voiced out yet again.

“Just giving them some tips. This generation's spellcast is getting shoddier as their reliance on good weapons that aid in mana manipulation spoils them. Would you like a duel with me? I’d like to show them how a mage should fight.”

“Couldn’t ask for more.” Ebony had wanted a spar with Madam Wilcox from the day he met her.

Although artillery mages did have power, few or perhaps none that he’d seen at Fifth Tide could likely hold a battle or even protect themselves when an opponent came close. It was like they lived their whole lives only increasing how destructive their spells could get.

Ebony trusted the freelancers who didn’t train or learn traditionally from a school and worked in the field to perform better in a duel.

“Forgive me for getting a headstart.” Madam Wilcox bowed as he entered the ring and the barriers were put back up to separate them and the Masters.

Light flashed from under his feet the moment the barriers were back on.

His Augmentation barely came on in time while Stalwart Foundation was only halfway through its cast before he Flickered away from the pillar of lightning that spawned from the ground.

‘She already laid traps. And her cast speed is too fast.’ When Ebony’s feet landed the next lightning strike was summoned and activated even faster than the first but it wasn’t from the ground and just a spot in the air that landed right at his ribs.

‘Why so much physical impact from a lightning strike? Fortification that boosts the physical impact of lightning?’ He couldn’t conjure any shields in time and the sheer impact blasted him to the walls of the kilometre-squared training ground.

After the second strike, his mental cast finally caught up. Fractions of a second already made him a direct lightning strike that could have struck through his heart if the caster wanted.

‘Okay, no touching the ground. I can feel fluctuations of mana in the air, I’ll avoid those. She’s not moving, I’ll assume she has a weak body so I can’t punch her in my augmented state or she’ll die.’ In the instant of his decision-making, the duelling ground crackled and a storm of lightning was summoned.

‘There’s nothing for me to predict, I can only react the moment I sense the mana fluctuations before a spell’s fired.’

Ebony’s Imperishable Frost Armament gathered above him but he could only feel the zap on his body right before he saw the lightning. The next thing he knew, he was struck once again and forced onto the ground.

‘It passed through ice…is my ice not pure enough to be an insulator? No, it’s another fortification or skill effect.’

Unable to predict where a lightning strike would come from, Ebony was left to reactive measures. Unable to outrun lightning after it was activated, he was left with no choice but to take the hit. His magic seemed ineffective as a defensive measure too.

By the fourth direct hit he took, smoke started to rise from his body and barely three seconds had passed since they started.

‘I knew this would be fun.’ Ebony finished setting Firm Paths everywhere along where he sensed congregations of foreign mental control and mana which were likely Wilcox’s precast spell traps.

The next mini-explosion of mana being dragged out of Wilcox made his mind flex as he hopped onto the tunnel of gravity he created.

‘…so it’s homing.’ It barely bought him enough time to see a yellow flash twist and turn after him before he was forcefully whacked out of his gravity tunnel.

‘She got my thighs, the numbing stacked.’ Ebony’s pants were ruined and his right thigh was burned black. The direct spell instead of a trap was stronger and he was no longer able to push through with physical control alone. He quickly overrode his physical movements with his mental control so he could retain perfect control of his body even through the numbing and muscle twitching.

None of his Firm Paths led anywhere within 50 metres of the lightning mage. She already had numerous layers of her mana surrounding herself.

Since evasive and defensive measures were moot at this point, Ebony ignored dozens of traps he sensed would lead him straight to her and charged through them with a Flicker to get within 50 metres of her. Taking on all the traps, his skin was fully torched by the time he reappeared into view.

He didn’t want to stop a distance away from her and meant to give her a slight push to signify his victory but that’s when he entered her territory.

‘Electrical field, ooo it’s highly magnetic. Since it’s an area-of-effect spell, it can directly interact with my body and ignore magic body's resistance. But its damaging properties are a lot weaker. It's trying to pull me to the ground…’ Ebony already took note that her attacks dealt the most damage but she wasn’t spamming those spells over and over again in the span of a few short seconds. Her traps could hurt him too, while her defensive electrical field is meant to slow down and drag any targets to the ground.

It was similar to some of his skills.

He walked forward step by step with thick threads of electricity connecting his legs and arms to the ground. At this range, he finally noticed that the floor had a magic circle. ‘Is she like Mark? It’s not runic, so enchantment? What did she enchant to be able to cast this here, the earth here is not enchantable.’

Engrossed, he didn’t even look at the mage he was walking towards and was rag dolled back by a shot to the belly.

‘That electrical field stopped me from Flickering. Can I win without trying to kill her?’

Ebony continued to tank hits as he dissected and watched an experienced mage at work.

‘Ah, these traps can be dealt with like that?’ He made a few Models touch floor traps and midair traps. The traps activated and continued pulling forth a stream of mana to zap the target standing there.

Wilcox had to watch the continuous zapping for ten seconds before she realised that his Models were standing there to keep the traps activated and they weren’t getting destroyed. It took her time to manually deactivate them. Preplaced traps that were programmed weren’t that flexible. That was something Ebony was familiar with hence, his insistence on mostly manually controlled spells for defensive measures.

‘Haha so 468 is enough to cause me lethal damage if I’m not careful.’

❅❅❅

Wilcox watched the ‘young’ man with increasing confusion.

Completely taking the man as a senior mage, she had taken advantage of the fact that she already made the duelling ground her territory. Thanks to his overwhelming display of mana that easily put him against the de facto leader of the Magus Consortium, she thought it was a small handicap for herself in front of an Arch Mage equivalent.

However, Ebony was falling for the simplest tricks in the book. He was not reacting the way she imagined. He didn’t use his mana to override her spatial control by wiping her mana off the face of the planet and didn’t exert dominance with his mana like mages with superior mana did.

Only in this duel did she finally realise that his movement skill didn’t consume any mana. With how well-toned his body was, she was not completely surprised that Ebony was some hybrid combatant. It was only natural how he was capable of making so many figures simulating warrior’s moves.

She didn’t understand how he could be so frighteningly fast but it only proved that he was far stronger than she imagined.

With that thought, she didn’t want to embarrass herself and did her best to get out of the rustiness in her bones.

‘Huh?’ Thinking he would at least be serious and defend against her spell, she was shocked to see her spell get a direct hit and was frightened. She was afraid she fatally injured the unknown man and made him retaliate in ways she didn’t want to imagine.

‘What? Only torched skin, and he can still mo-” Her thought process was cut off when she sensed her electrical field consuming her mana.

Her lips parted, Ebony stood straight and walked forward while observing her spell attempting to chain his limbs down in futility.

As a semi-active member of the Magus Consortium who frequents an Epic dungeon, her 4 skills compounded electrical field protected her from King-ranked monsters. Depending on the type of monsters, they could even be completely grounded. Yet this man was casually being engrossed with her spell while taking steps towards her.

She didn’t even have time to wonder about how he was barely harmed from this after he took a direct hit from her and was still walking towards her as if he hadn’t been stunned.

After she prepared a half-compressed bolt and pushed him back out, he finally attempted to take her seriously.

In the minutes to come, she got more and more confused as Ebony fell for the most basic tricks in the books and didn’t counter her. Initially thinking he was making fun of her until she saw that his entire body was releasing black smoke, she realised that she was pushing him back.

She couldn’t fathom any reason for a superior mage to mess with her to the point of taking so much damage. The moment she tried to hold back, her spine tingled, warning her not to ease up.

She didn’t understand how his body could awkwardly shift sideways but her mana sense did tell her that it was the work of magic. It just didn’t appear to be pure mana manipulation or wind magic.

‘He wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t know much about lightning magic. How humble.’

The moment the ice figurines appeared, she got ready thinking he was using his speciality but all he used it for was to tie down her pre-set traps from her previous lesson with Rauffeq. Internally, she was rather disgusted that a continuous blast for ten seconds didn’t even put a scratch on the ice figures.

Her Fortifications increased the physical and kinetic force of her lightning magic by 300% but it didn’t seem to matter to these statues.

Ebony’s magic body was as unassuming as his mana output as her aim was completely thwarted. She couldn’t lock her mana onto him throughout the entire duelling grounds. It meant all her spells that weren’t area of effect and trap-based had to be aimed and shot out from her staff directly.

Conjuring lightning from a distance from her body felt like her mana was in a swamp as they struggled to get out since Ebony’s mana began to fill up their arena.

It was suffocating.

Ebony attacked her with a variety of cold arms and from the looks of it, he could conjure his spells less than three arm lengths away from her body. If she didn’t have her lightning field cast, she feared that he could probably conjure a sharp blade right at her neck with ease. It made her feel like she didn’t have a magic body.

His projectiles were a massive pain to deal with. They were practically indestructible but moved rather slowly and the physical force behind them was so light she would believe that the caster was a Master.

Enchanting her staff and casting thunderblade on it before swinging at the swords, axes, arrows and simple shards was all it took to shatter his spells. Even with a sub-class suited for close range, she had long decided that she had a better chance of staying still and not getting anywhere close to Ebony.

‘I can’t tell if he’s strong or weak.’

Ebony never got hit by an active spell from her staff after the first. The traps were all seen through and dealt with after she disabled them so her mana wasn’t needlessly consumed. She could keep him at a distance but he was pushing further into her lighting field

Her lightning storm did the best job as it was a spell that had a random aim. She didn’t have to guide her mana to release the lightning strikes and that prevented mages from sensing congregations of her mana where the lightning mana was. Her lightning was also 300% more likely to chase and connect with flesh bodies or any conductor in general.

The longer the duel went on, the more convinced she was that Ebony was not as high level as she initially assumed. More importantly, he fought like he never fought a mage before.

However, in just half an hour, he came up with methods to counter what she threw at him. Coming up with counters wasn’t surprising but he managed to consistently counter her. He was learning at amazing speeds.

The person she was facing didn’t feel human. Without showing a sign of pain, his facial expression was rock solid even as he took a strike that ravaged his internals and made blood spill from his mouth.

Wilcox began to feel fear for the creature she was keeping at bay.

His mana pool didn’t even shake. With every bit of her mana sense, she knew it was filled up to the brim. But that was impossible, he was casting magic like nobody’s business.

The creature in front of her didn’t act like pain existed but that was easily explained by the numbness caused by repeated lightning strikes and a common warrior adrenaline rush. His ability to move his body so adeptly in such a state was just as frightening as finding out that his mana pool remained constant.

It didn’t help that multiple figures were flashing and ramming her lightning field just a fist’s distance away from her. It wasn’t any ice summons, just after images of Ebony coming in and out of her field and ramming kicks at her from all around her.

Her physical body’s speed could barely react in time but she had managed to accurately slap the kicks away with her lightning-bladed staff thanks to her lightning field also acting as an alarm and perception skill.

The aggressor was no longer smoking black and neither was his skin charred anymore. With a faint hint of a smile, the creature kicked her lightning away. Learning from how she used pure mana to disrupt his sonic-imbued ice projectiles, he suddenly copied the way magic spells could be deflected.

It was by no means a defensive spell but just an external coat of mana could slow down most elements to some degree. Allowing a warrior to touch elements like fire or wind. If they were good enough to wrap their mana around a spell, they could redirect just like how a fire mage could deflect another fire mage’s spell. It was just far harder and less effective. But with Ebony’s mana, a basic coating becomes a durable shield.

When he figured he could touch lightning for an instant without being badly hurt, he slowly figured out it could be deflected and changed his tactics. Learning her patterns and coming up with countermeasures on the spot. All while healing at visible speeds.

Wilcox was aware that Physiques were a thing but she was just a normal human as far as she was aware. She didn’t know anyone with a physique that provided not just normal healing, but also physical regeneration of skin tissues to a perfect state.

She wanted to ask if it was okay to go so far for a spar but the words were stuck in her throat. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be so happy if she turned things down a notch for safety. Her gut feeling told her he would sustain no permanent repercussions. Something that her mind couldn’t believe unless maybe the Life Queen was personally present.

Her arms were numb just clashing with his kicks and punches, the sonic impact was arcane but it felt like a giant monster was ramming her with its full strength. Pushing away his attacks felt like she was futilely pushing the floor away from her as she was pushing herself away instead.

In her long life, she had seen plenty of creatures and even more people.

Everyone active on the field from her generation would know. Life was safe after the Lord family took over the reins.

The combatants and every Imperial citizen lost the ever-growing danger of a monster horde at their walls. They lost the edge kept for a random dungeon spawn, a random dungeon break. They lost the edge kept for some aerial monster swooping in and kidnapping a town for a snack. They lost the awareness that some underground fight could cause an entire city to collapse down on itself. Excluding that one city that disappeared just a decade or less ago that had no official reasons publicised yet.

For the new generation, it was 90 years ago.

For most adults, it was not long ago.

For people of her generation, it was barely weeks ago.

She could imagine how disorientating it was for the older generations as life as they knew it had collapsed within a short span of their lives. It might feel like yesterday for them when letting your guard down for a moment meant death.

The development of the Empire skyrocketed in a few short decades.

Just by changing her career because there was no longer an impending danger in their daily lives to that of an educator showed her how fast the generations devolved. One after the other, the newer generations were losing that…sharpness. Safety was by no means without merit but the demerits were obvious to her.

Despite Ebony acting as if he had less than decades worth of battle experience, he had everything required to grow stronger if not already strong. ‘Maybe he’s younger than 200 years old…’

“I’d say this should be enough for today.”

Ebony forcefully broke through her lightning field and had a fist in front of her shoulder while her staff was held diagonally ahead of her chest.

“So it is, I lost. Thank you for the lesson, Madam Wilcox.”

Wilcox removed the sharp blade of lightning that extended from the core of her staff at his neck and smiled. “Thank you for going easy on this old lady.”

‘Phew…this little lightning blade isn’t going to kill him. He really is humble, what a nice young man! I wonder if my granddaughter will be interested…he seems to love his wife, I wonder if he's open for a second.’ Wilcox took her handkerchief and wiped the sweat off her forehead while considering a prospective husband for her grandchildren.