Ebony's Fable

Quantity was an advantage but it wasn’t everything. Ebony’s mana was like an iron wall. Denser, heavier and more flexible.

The ‘mistress’ of the establishment’s mana was somehow old and had properties not unlike a tree’s mana. The properties of growth and nurturing but also unyielding to winds and earthquakes alike.

As endless as the current of mana felt, they both understood that there was no point stretching the exchange out. It was already obvious that she won in that regard.

Ebony was the challenger here, so he hammered at the core of mana she created and tried to break through. Who would’ve known that the core was also in the form of a tree.

His mana formed axes and chopped at the tree with the strength of his mind pushing. But it was more effective when he formed a thread and drilled at the thick bark. Dozens of these threads wrapped themselves on the tree’s branches and tried to uproot it but it remained still.

Ebony would argue that he would be far more suited on the defensive side but he already knew that it didn’t matter how hard he tried, the tree was not going to budge. The knowledge of futility meant nothing to him, he continued trying and changed tactics if something didn’t work.

The clash was happening in the air outside Aroma Alcove to prevent any disturbances in the quaint cafe.

Ning Xin noticed the misunderstanding and her attention went back to muttering and writing in her notebook after taking a bite of dessert every so often. The tea was the perfect fit for cleansing their palette before tasting a different dessert.

Ebony tried his best to search for the source of this vast amount of mana. It was too natural and pure to be those ambient mana to personal mana conversion type of skill. She had mana regeneration Fortification like he did, maybe even to the same degree of 250% per evolution. The purity of her mana told him that she was not a Grand Mage and very likely an Arch Mage, the King equivalent for mages.

Elves probably maxed them out at her current stage. Clovis didn’t know about 250% Fortification but that didn’t mean all Elves didn’t know. They likely did the same as him, retrieving the 250% Fortification in their later years or evolution stage.

Chances were, this lady had a 1000% increase in base mana regeneration. And she was an Elf, so her natural recovery based on her Wisdom stat was twice that of a human to begin with. An older Elf should have refined their physique considerably. Ebony thought it was well within reason if her base mana regeneration was 50% to 100% of her maximum mana capacity per hour.

Even with all those advantages over him, it did not explain the quantitative advantage his opponent currently had over him.

After all, the tree of mana he was attempting to uproot was connected to one that was wider than the observable sky above the Aroma Alcove and the height of it was unknown.

Out of his maximum range of 8.7 kilometres.

The sheer volume of it was mind boggling but he had a feeling the tree wasn’t completely hers.

‘This must be the phantom of the Elves Domain within Tidal. She can use part of it. So it’s true that they have multiple people stack Will upon their Domain, and then feed it with mana to fill up the vessel. This side tree connected means it’s separate, like a personal home but connected to a community. Can she draw power and mana from the main tree?’

Ebony was almost more entranced by the fact that some phantom tree image so large that it was out of his range and there was no presence whatsoever until he clashed with this unknown lady. Putting aside that it was invisible to the naked eye.

Maybe she didn’t intend to keep this drawn out because the lady was annoyed after an hour’s attempt and pushed back. Ebony showed her that he wasn’t lacking in any way in the form of defensive mana warfare as she couldn’t suppress him no matter how much mana she threw at him.

It was like they shook mental hands and stopped when his teapot emptied.

The Elven lady didn’t show herself but there was no need, they'd already greeted each other.

“Feel free to pick one, it’s my personal stash so don’t worry about my elders.” As her voice traversed over, the decorative bookshelf behind the seat cushion on the floor revealed books.

He didn’t hesitate to check them out.

‘Enchanting Energies: All things mana’

‘Marsh’s Grove Conduit: Nature to me, me to nature’

‘Art of Enchantment: Enchanting Plant Magic’

‘Whispers of elemental harmony.’

“May I?”

“Go ahead.”

Ebony got permission to get a brief synopsis. He was slightly surprised because they were likely methods that produced tier 4 and above effects.

Enchanting energies was about using enchantment magic on spellcasting, vastly increasing the power of a spell before it was fired but taking as much as minutes to days of additional preparation for a single enchanted spell. Unrealistic for a high-speed fighter like them but not out of the pocket, it didn’t hurt to have a ‘finisher’ and it would fit Dusk who wouldn't move in battle.

Marsh’s Grove Conduit was something he couldn't pull his eye away from. It was the most unique mana capacitance skill he had seen and he only read a short excerpt.

Art of Enchantment: Enchanting Plant Magic was the least relevant to him but it was clear that this lady’s expertise lay in enchantment magic. In Enchanting Energies, there was a possibility that she enchanted her mana regeneration capabilities. That would explain the additional multiplier she had over him.

Whispers of elemental harmony was not that exciting, it was more of a journal about how to use multiple elements to produce greater effects than 1 + 1.

“Hmm…it’s not much but how about this in return?” Ebony pondered hard, he did not have many things that could rival the worth of these books.

He had to take a minute to decide between Enchanting Energies and Marsh’s Grove Conduit. He wanted both hence, it was time to barter.

He first conjured a seed of ice and dropped it outside the balcony’s edge. It was an open balcony and they sat on floor cushions, giving a Japanese inn vibe but the decor was too different to give the same vibe. He then showed off setting up his Domain, just a mini one two metres in diameter to show that he wasn’t here to pick a fight and steal territory.

It was surprisingly difficult to set up his Domain but he managed with a 6 seconds delay. That was noteworthy. It would be dangerous if he were to fight here and was unable to summon his Domain whenever he wanted.

Ebony had many versions of books on his experience with controlling Will. He decided to put a book 3 versions old on the table. His spells were not suitable for the Elven lady except Coagulated Mana Repository, a capacity and compression skill in 1.

He could also offer Runic Mana Sculpting, the evolution of Inscripted Mana Moulding but it was just a tier 3 skill and shabby compared to what she offered. The allure of runes to an enchantment mage was about the same as enchantment magic was to him, good to have but not essential.

Knowledge of Will was extremely valuable, that, he was sure of.

The Elven lady didn’t reply because she couldn’t determine the worth of his notes. She probably doubted there was any concrete information that she didn’t know herself. But the temptation was there and that was the value of information on Will, it was too scarce.

“I understand your doubts, but I am a Domain mage. You are seeing it for yourself.” Ebony already determined that he was speaking to a newbie when it came to Domain Magic and Will. He was a Grandmaster, she didn’t need to Identify him to feel his mana purity. A Grandmaster Domain Mage was practically unheard of even amongst the Elves.

“Do you like that room?” The two books that Ebony was eyeing remained in sight while the other two disappeared.

“Yes.” Ebony picked them both up and placed them on the shelf where they faded into mist.

“It’s reserved for you indefinitely.”

“Thank you,”

Ebony got a refill and the waitress brought out another three desserts from cakes to fruit tarts. He didn’t know when, but Ning Xin started talking to the Elven lady about pastries. Pastries were her weakest and most lacking repertoire in her cooking career.

‘Fantastic. Now this is a real mana capacity skill, not a compression skill.’ Ebony felt like luck had fallen on his shoulders. Good skills were too well hidden, and he found a strong, generous and open Elf that was willing to share something so valuable on their first greeting. If only everyone was so open, it would be so much easier to grow.

In certain ways, Marsh’s Grove Conduit was similar to his Coagulated Mana Repository but it was much more. Its potential was terrifying, the Elven lady who he knew not the name of did not expect how much this suited him.

It was close to being considered mental magic. The skill book described imaging one’s mana pool as a marshy grove. The marsh paralleled his coagulated mana, mana in a different state that was harder to utilise but could store far more than its space and density suggested.

The grove was about planting trees in their mental space. These trees would absorb the marshy waters and disperse the mana back to the user. Increasing the ease of using the stable mana. But that wasn’t all, the expansive stretch of thick, mental trees was supposed to be able to store 1850% + 10% more mana than the natural or base capacity per level.

It was a highly refined tier 4 mana capacitance skill. There might be a tier 5 version that the caster just erased or never wrote but that didn’t matter.

Then it all boiled down to how to create these trees and what was different for him, a creature of mana that didn’t have mana chassis in his brain but throughout his body.

The lady didn’t give him a mere skill. She gave him a physique refinement method.

Ebony searched for Coagulated Mana Repository and placed it on the bookshelf.

Marsh’s Grove Conduit was detailed. It stated that the lady crushed her mental space and reshaped it. They didn’t have a term for mana chassis but he was sure that was what the book was referring to.

Mana chassis returned to the same form no matter how ‘crushed’ it got. Ebony took Ful’s sap to reshape his musculature and bones.

The Elves had a different strategy.

The first tier of the skill was to be able to move their mana chassis. The second requires ‘exciting’ their chassis, sort of like a dulled version of his Mana Chassis Implosion. The third required them to be able to be able to tie and hold their chassis in a specific position for extended periods.

And the fourth, was when they tied their chassis up together. Using chassis to hold down itself with architectural design.

However, it was rudimentary. The book never stated anything about mana chassis, more about imagining one’s mana pool to grow into a verdant forest. Footnote, an estimation of 15 years to learn the first tier and 200 years to achieve tier 4, another century to perfect tier 4 to the stated 1850% + 10% refinement.

If imagination was the solution to the problem, he could see why it took so long. It was self-mental brainwashing.

Ebony had a hypothesis that mana chassis followed the form of souls. Souls grow up and are shaped to the same as his body and the reason the mana chassis repaired his body the same way was because that was the shape of his soul. How did he know?

He guessed after hurting himself with Pseudo-Imitation Roar. Soul damage was weird, not something he could heal from easily or at all. But he got an outline of his soul after it got hit often enough with the Apex Apes and he got the Soul Resilience skill. It overlapped his mana chassis.

He could manipulate his chassis, but they always go back to normal and he didn’t try to reshape it. It would be a dumb move if he reshaped himself and he couldn’t heal back to normal.

‘Then is the elven lady some sort of creepy creature that’s why she doesn’t show herself? Probably not. That’s why, it’s not a mana chassis manipulation but mental brainwashing. She brainwashed her chassis to think it contained a marsh and grove, and with superhuman levels of Intelligence, it's not impossible to make meta-physical changes with just that. Not reshaping the chassis, but altering the very make up and foundation of a chassis. It goes deeper than the chassis…or does it?’

Ebony was worried he misunderstood another mana capacity skill or that he was overthinking the language used. He decided not to overthink it and just try the practise the book suggested with a bit of his understanding of mana chassis incorporated to speed things up.

Enchanting Energies unfortunately didn’t include any enchantment that builds on mana regeneration. This singular book alone was not enough to teach him enchantment magic’s basics. However, it brought his mind back to the possibility of buffing his meditation skill rather than creating a new form of regeneration.

He’d already found Kong Jing’s stash of runic formulas. A few of them were used for the runic craft of the calming pearl but it didn’t work on humans or organic regeneration. The calming effect it produced didn’t work on him either. In fact, his mana produced a greater calming effect unless the runes were crafted by Kong Jing herself with all her Fortifications and Skill effects.

Still, enchantment was not a fruitless endeavour. He was going to give a few clones of his to study it for real. The houseguards could begin by obtaining the foundational books that were relatively easier to obtain. Generic skills were no less useful than Class skills.

All his clones wore a full mask since they didn’t use their eyes to see, it didn’t matter. Moulding his face off without any facial features was not possible, his Will fully situated the clone’s body to be Ebony, meaning its form couldn’t change as much as a Model could unless it was a temporary battle necessity. It was the side effects of having a large amount of Will imbued.

Despite the good scaling on Intelligence, 3 clones were insufficient to beat him. They were independent of him and should have been able to use all his skills at nearly the same power at the same levels of efficiency but their adaptability wasn’t as good as the original. They also couldn’t regenerate mana the same way he could. Their physique frame was also weaker than his because all they had was mana construct, his Physique and tough bones were not replicated to the same degree.

He didn’t get more than 3 to spar with at the same time yet, he needed to clone more before he could do that. They were separate entities, taking no mental power from him to control and by refusing to connect to their Wills, fighting his clones was not the same as fighting models that he controlled.

“I’m feeling anxious.” Ning Xin commented when they were on the way home.

“...The mandate user?” Ebony probed.

She shook her head and her long ponytail swayed left and right.

“Those steampunk guys?”

She replied with a nod.

‘The Mandate user seems far more troublesome to me but her Intuition is terrifyingly accurate.’

“Let’s go back to work. And no more returning to the surface for some time.” Ebony didn’t feel helpless but suffocated. He was not ‘free’.

“Yes. That sounds better. Let’s shop and pack, I think we should stay down for a long time.” The confirmation punched him in the gut and pushed his head down figuratively.

‘The mandate user still doesn’t want to come in but he can force us out if we’re in range. Or me, since I’m their target. Dusk is down there but that’s not enough if the older space mage acts. Although the location of the underground fortress is a secret, I’ll assume that’s not an issue to the space mage. If we’re down there, we have a lot more support. Hopefully, Navin will help.’

“Are you okay?” Xin asked after sensing his emotions.

“You will understand once you turn.”

She flinched at his statement.