Ebony's Fable

“Thank you. For the inn and also this.” Ebony said and tetted in greetings, no longer actively avoiding Scarlet.

Gloves seemed to be worn by most people, even in summer. Maybe it was a freelancer or traveller thing.

“...You owe me one.” Scarlet eyes burned into Ebony’s.

“...” Ebony didn’t know what to say. He wanted to propose a spar but he was kinda tired and wanted to rest soon. There was an awkward silence between them as they stared each other down.

The receptionist held a tray with mana ores on it but she seemed nervous and didn’t dare to call out to them for some reason.

“How would you like me to pay you back?” Ebony asked. Scarlet declined the bounty which confused the receptionist, she was unsure of what to do in such cases.

“How about a duel?” Scarlet asked. It seemed like she was just as interested in a fight.

“Perfect.” looks like Ebony wasn’t the only one who was itching to fight.

“Any free space? There’s a spirit to slay.” Scarlet asked the confused receptionist.

“?? If you’re asking if the duelling grounds are open then yes, there should be many free rooms now.” The confused reception was even more confused by the statement.

Practically every town and city had a public arena not unlike a colosseum, it was an integral part of their culture. They were more for public tournaments and events so it wasn’t open all day.

A public training ground can also be found in any Empire town or city. However, these training grounds are not safe for most when levels and skills get high enough.

Every Quest Hall has a large underground space, toughened earth and fortified by magic in some fashion. Conflicts between parties and individuals are commonly settled through duels. Parties can train and work on their teamwork here as well.

It was almost tradition for parties arranged by the Quest Hall to duel each other to understand what each other can do. If the gap in strength between the members were too large they could also reapply for another party and which the Quest Hall would take into account. It would take time and luck to match up with equally strong people though so most settle with what they’ve got.

Ebony paid a tiny fee to use the duelling grounds as they call it. They were brought to a well lit spiral staircase towards the basement. They went deeper than Ebony imagined, at least 10 floors down or at least 50 metres underground. The floor and walls were stone and the lights were normal looking lamps on the walls. They were more like Clovis’s table lamps using mana as an energy source instead of phos. Rich of them as expected.

They arrived at another double door not unlike their entrance. It didn’t feel like he was underground at all with the spacious feeling and even more when he saw the wide open space beyond the opened doors.

It was bright as if he was on ground level and at the very least the size of 5 football fields put together. Ebony saw many earth mages over level 100 at the side. The Quest Hall was already undergoing expansion and he did seem to recall seeing people survey the perimeter of the Quest Hall building.

The ceiling was really high up and the dirt floor field was split into multiple ‘rooms’. The place was basically an underground stadium, the entrance was to the seats high up. Looking down to the square field that had lines dug into the floor, separating and dividing the field into 9.

Some of the lines were lit up in white and there were people within the box, duelling. Coincidentally, Ebony saw a missed arrow fly past a warrior. The arrow deflected off air and landed back in the box within the lighted lines. Ebony saw the arrow impacted into something as light reflected on the invisible walls. Barriers of some kind.

The fee to use this place seemed a little low for the measures put in place. The barriers probably use more mana than he paid. It was kind of a complimentary benefit for the freelancers, part of their taxes of exchanging filled mana ores for empty ones probably go into maintaining the place.

It looks like it was Scarlet’s first time here as well as they looked around curiously. There were only a handful of people on the seat watching the duels. 4 duels taking place at the same time. The one with 10 people in were using 2 boxes worth of space and was a party vs party duel. The other 3 were 1 on 1 duels taking one slot each.

The employee handed them over to the similarly uniformed people overwatching the duelling grounds. They gave some instructions seeing the curious look the both of them had. They just had to walk into one of the free boxes and give them a signal. They would put up the barriers and once the lines boxing them in lighted up, the barriers were up and they could begin. The employees weren’t mages so Ebony could only assume they used some kind of magic technology.

Ebony could hear metal clashing and shouting, cursing. The barriers were not soundproof. The Elcrian curse, ell sounded a lot like hell without pronouncing the h.

They both jumped down to the duelling ground and walked to the empty spot they were asked to take.

Standing near each other, both knew it would be a close range fight. Their thoughts unknown to each other.

❅❅❅

‘There’s nothing much here… The Cysarus were okay. I’ll look for those 90 and above, a few of them a day should get me to 50 soon enough. I heard there were earth, or was it mud? golems in some parts but they are around 130 to 200…hmm. I probably shouldn’t try… fire, wind, lightning and swords aren’t that good a match for them. Maybe I should…Nevermind, I’ll drop these inedible scythe arms and continue hunting Cysarus I guess.’ Scarlet pondered as she walked towards the Quest Hall.

‘It’s noisy in here today.’

The people were complaining amongst themselves while the Quest Hall personnel were busy with the quest board and party complaints.

‘Avoid the woods? An ice type spirit? Around level 80? Interesting. I’ve never fought a spirit type. They are usually much higher level and why would one be in the middle of a forest? They like dark, damp places don’t they?

Ice type. Likely a stray from Hoarfrost Glade. Since only one was sighted a dungeon break is unlikely. I guess I’ll take the quest, sounds interesting. I could hunt a Rhoat group or two on the way. It was getting boring anyway. Cysaru meat is tough and rubbery. Wait, the spirit doesn’t have flesh does it? I wouldn’t want to eat those things anyway…’

Scarlet got information about the spirit haunting the nearby woods. She was intrigued by such a low level spirit type found so close.

‘The new dungeon tower’s size rating has been raised from average to large. That means it has at least 15 floors right? I forgot. I’ll find out soon enough.’ She checked for the updates regularly since the dungeon was the only reason she was staying in this town. Her grandma may be meddlesome but her divination was always right, since she said this place was a crossroad of fate it would be worth the wait.

Scarlet left Plainston for the woods which was only a couple dozen of minutes away with her speed. Her Sub-Class had gained considerable levels and a lot of the stats were placed into Constitution and Endurance while Intelligence and Wisdom got a few here and there. She gets Strength from her Profession as well so she didn’t bother with it too much for now.

With her Core Skill she didn’t really need too much Strength or Agility for now. Besides, her agility was doubled with her Class Fortification. Scarlet was so happy to see that it was a conditionless Agility speed buff. Probably no one else would have a Fortification like that. Only runners with the movement speed buff and good movement skills could catch up to her and it wasn’t like they could beat her.

From her studies, a single point of Constitution can withstand 6 points of Strength or 8 points of Agility. The calculation gets iffy when considering both but Agility has less impact on the body. Training can also help the body get used to higher amounts of force and pressure. There should be skills that help with that as well, her Combat Tenacity helps with the pain in her shoulders and wrists but it was not nearly enough anymore.

At 130 Agility with the effect of 260 and attack speed up till 910… Wind magic helps with air resistance but neither wind or lightning increases her Constitution. Scarlet could barely use a portion of her speed. However, spending so much of her stat points into Constitution seems like a horrible waste and Combat Tenacity doesn’t actually make her body stronger either. Thankfully her Core Skill helps a tiny bit.

Her doubled Agility was one thing. Her 2.5 times attack speed on top of that was basically useless unless she broke her own arms. Her Cascading mastery and Laceration was another thing… While she could still swing her broken arms a few times she didn't have a habit of causing irreparable harm to herself like that. At that speed she also had to worry about her coordination of her strikes.

‘The entrance fee raised again… what a scam. Going out daily wouldn’t be worth it for most of the parties here.’ She mentally commented. It wasn't expensive but in a barren town and area, the fee was horrendous.

‘Hmm. I can’t find any Rhoat about 60… the temperature is a little lower too, just a tiny bit though. The ice type spirit’s hunting them down. Without prey it would probably leave soon enough anyway but if it has enough intelligence to not hunt the weaker ones is it an aberrant? That would be great. I doubt so though.’

Scarlet reached the woods in a short while and was looking around for some prey, in no rush to find a single spirit. She only spotted the usual monsters while the Rhoats seemed to be actively avoiding areas. The remaining ones were either newborn or just young.

She moved towards where they were avoiding, trying to keep her speed down so that the wind pressure and sound doesn’t alert the spirit. Scarlet already saw areas with frozen grass and frost on branches. She kept her distance when she saw a thin white fog on a tree.

It wasn’t moving, it may be resting but undead don’t have a need for stamina so most likely it was just recovering mana. Scarlet gave a better look to see that it had a human form, she knew the reports were nonsense by this point. She moved around to see who it was, staying far away.

‘That’s… Ebony right? What is he doing up there? I forgot I told him about the Rhoats. He’s not one of those weak imperials after all since he’s hunting Rhoats alone at level 36’

[Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 49] [ ]

‘What? 49 already. He doesn’t have a Sub-Class yet but to level so fast would mean he went for the strongest ones. No wonder I couldn’t find any mature Rhoats, how long has he been fighting though? I didn’t see him in town after he said my food was…delicious. I-I knew that of course. Weird guy, I can’t tell if he’s avoiding me or not after that.’

Scarlet was wondering why Ebony was wasting mana on the fog that could hardly hide him. She noticed the 2 shields as well. Triple casting. Too far to hear the mana vibrations but she was already pretty impressed. She could barely triple cast, usually only double casting in battle. It takes too much focus and ability to multitask to cast mid battle.

She went for an enhancement build that was more for close range and physical combat style. Enhancement magic didn’t require nearly as much thought or focus and can easily have the body get used to casting them.

Scarlet noticed the Rhoat Ebony was observing. It did seem a little odd seeing how it was alone and its shape is a lot different than the usual Rhoat. Watching it eat a live Rhoat was pretty interesting and disgusting at the same time, it started chasing Ebony too. The mist cleared and he took a black orb out. ‘Condense vital muscle, no wonder. But are they usually that dark in colour?’

The Rhoat’s fighting style was weird. Scarlet saw Ebony feeding it the condensed vital muscle before realising how smart Ebony’s idea was. He was obviously unsatisfied with their strength and was trying to make them stronger against him. Scarlet was a little surprised to see the Rhoat trying to escape immediately after digesting the vital muscle. Low level monsters rarely do that, Ebony probably carved fear into them.

‘But how? How many did he hunt already? Rhoats are one of the more stupid creatures.’

It was a pathetic sight that it ran almost immediately. The strength of Ebony's shield was quite shocking and she assumed it to be a tier 2 skill or a really high level and refined tier 1 one. To not get damaged by a monster so much higher in level was quite the feat.

His speed was meh to Scarlet but his footwork to move so lightly as if he didn’t touch the ground or surface was impressive. He moved from tree to tree to ground as if it was flat ground. She guessed it was either a tier 2 movement skill and one not as simple as pure speed like her Streaking Sprint or he had a Class Fortification with a tier 1 movement skill. He was much more agile than herself, it was not easy to change directions as smoothly as he did with her movement skill that was focused on pure speed.

The only painful thing to see was his swordsmanship. Likely self taught, she had never seen the style. Ebony finished it off fast and the mist came back.

‘Will he not run out of mana? Why doesn’t he stop casting and recover mana? Even combat meditation requires calm in a high intensity battle to recover mana if I remember correctly. The large shields should use a lot of mana… Meditative classes have quite the advantage… I want a proper duel with him now.’ Scarlet was pretty jealous about the abundance of mana, it can help speed up training magic as well as make a mage more sustainable in a fight. Especially a low level mage.

She was too far to see the little details like Ebony’s enhancement magic that made him translucent. Seeing Ebony going back towards the town, she stayed to hunt for dinner but it didn’t take long. It was pretty funny to see Ebony stopped by the guards. The arrows aren’t even a threat to him and neither was the guard captain or anyone in Plainston now. With the exception of the town noble or his guards and the Quest Hall’s personnel.

Scarlet was thinking if she should ask Ebony to party up for the dungeon, he was definitely not going to be a burden and it would be difficult to find someone as strong as him within the local towns and cities. His attitude towards her urged her not to, but he was polite enough to thank her for the food. He was the only one not fearing and treating her like some monster too.

Well, she’ll decide after she has a chance to spar with him.

❅❅❅

The thick lines on the ground lit as a transparent barrier can be seen rising and deployed. It goes all the way up and boxed them in.

They drew their swords and Scarlet's twin longswords were a sight for sore eyes. Ebony didn’t know what type of material was crimson red like that. It was straight double edged and had a flat body like Ebony’s, almost just as long but less than half as wide.

Ebony wasn’t going to go easy as usual. Icebody Enhancement ran at full power, his translucent look garnering a raised brow from Scarlet and was the start signal of the duel. Ebony was great at prediction and moved the second her ankle shifted. She already eyeballed where she was moving toward so it was not too difficult for Ebony to know where to move.

He quickly cast a 2 layer shield but it’ll take a second or two for that. His bulky greatsword barely deflected a strike before another came at him. Treading Step didn’t help keep the distance but he could easily see where Scarlet planned to move or where her attack was coming from by checking her line of sight, shoulders, wrist and ankle movement.

It was a little pointless when Ebony couldn’t see her slashes due to how fast they were. The 87 stat point buff to his strength was used as a knockback to push her out of position so that his shield had time to get up and going. Her twin blades move smoothly and never obstruct one another.

Each slash and every strike seem to be devised for the next strike to be harder to dodge or block. A random light slash cut halfway through his shield. Ebony was quickly adding layers to it which takes much less time than casting it.

He couldn’t move the heavy shield fast enough to block her strikes that seemed to come from every direction. He tried sending an Ice Sword to keep her off which she matched with a spear of fire. Ebony was sweating just being near the thing. She controlled it in a similar fashion to Rowent but it vaporised the Ice Sword in less than a second, the spear being much hotter than Ebony was used to.

‘How much mana is in that thing?’ Ebony thought, not imagining it was due to other factors. His ability to stay multiple steps ahead of his opponents and shifting his body to dodge by a hair’s breadth was waning. Scarlet’s speed and power kept increasing, like she was holding back on him earlier. He placed his large sword in her sword’s path ahead of time but it was not enough as she easily changed the trajectory of her slashes.

Ebony couldn’t tell with the mask on but Scarlet was frowning, visibly pissed that so many of her attacks were dodged by such an unnoticeably small margin. It showed that at the same speed he was superior and easily read her movements.

The tough shield kept getting tougher and the sheer size of it was annoying, being a hybrid he didn’t have to spare a hand to carry the damn bulky shield. Deep gashes quickly fill up and thicken, turning blows that cause gashes to cuts then to scratches. It was so big it entirely blocked Ebony out of sight and his footwork let him move out from either side and land a sneaky blow.

She was not used to taking blows and the enhanced blow sends her skidding backwards a lot. The blocking resets her Cascading Laceration’s increase of speed of strikes and Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery static increase of Strength and Agility. It didn’t matter for now since she still couldn’t safely use her full attack speed without injuring herself and she wasn’t nearly at her fastest.

Scarlet was using Revolving Razorwind Film on both her longswords in the beginning which wasted a lot of her mana. Mana which she hasn’t recovered after the day’s hunt. Using fire magic seemed a little unfair which was why she dispersed her spear of fire but it was a mistake. She only has enough mana for Heated Blade or Lightning Inoculation which didn’t require a set amount of mana.

The 5 Layered Ice Carapace uses almost Ebony’s entire mana pool but he was regenerating mana fast. Spare mana aside from Icebody Enhancement went into compressing it. There was not much Ebony could do against Scarlet. She only allowed him to land a blow or two, now she was too fast and getting faster. Her strikes were getting heavier every second.

Ebony relied on his trusty shield that kept getting tougher as well. Scarlet thrust out with insane speed, her longsword digging an inch or two into his shield. The result seemed to have angered her as Ebony heard vaporising like that of a droplet of water touching a hot pan. Seeing steam rising from the front of the shield he quickly disengaged together with his shield.

He could sense the large hole in the Layered Ice Carapace. If there was one advantage he had over basically anyone of his level it was mana. Seeing how she didn’t use magic much could only mean she was limited by it. He was obviously right since Scarlet didn’t let him disengage.

She sliced his shield in half without so much as a trickle of resistance and stabbed out with her other blade at Ebony. Ebony heard her click her tongue when her blade landed on the flat body of Ebony’s greatsword, pushing him back a step.

Scarlet’s blade steamed out and was no longer burning bright red, just normal crimson red. It was still hot though. Scarlet ran out of mana, Ebony had little tricks left. They purely exchanged physical blow after blow. Ebony noticed Scarlet’s breathing kept increasing, her intake of air more and more, almost haggard.

It was a very enlightening exchange. Scarlet showed Ebony all the weak spots in his swordsmanship which he changed and adjusted mid battle. He was getting pushed back until he hit the barrier and had nowhere left to dodge, Scarlet held her stab on Ebony's neck.

“I lost.” Ebony admitted defeat. A drop of blood slid down Scarlet’s longsword. The duel didn’t last more than 2 or 3 minutes.

“...it doesn’t count. You don’t have a Sub-Class yet, it wasn’t a fair duel.” Scarlet said.

“You held back plenty, not having a Sub-Class is no excuse.” Ebony caught the fact that she knew he didn’t have a Sub-Class. She had a second tier Identify, Appraise if he’s not wrong or some other kind of appraisal skill or item.

“...I didn’t hold back. My swordsmanship and sword skill increases in speed and power every strike. If anything you were the one holding back.” She wasn’t really lying, she used her Core Skill at the end there but it takes time to build up to her full power and her body couldn’t take too much anyway.

“I would not do something that rude.” Ebony wouldn’t go easy against any opponent but it was true that none of his blows were planned to land on her, perhaps she could tell.

“Then why didn’t you use your fire magic? You’re a Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze aren’t you?” Scarlet pointed out.

‘She can see my full Class? That’s concerning but if people who can see it assume I use fire magic it shouldn’t be too big an issue. I should ask if there are items that can hide my Class though.’

“Yes, but I don’t have any skill for that yet.” Ebony told the truth, he was a Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze and didn’t have any skill for fire magic. It seemed like it wasn’t enough to appease Scarlet.

“Hmmph” they eased off after she seemed to pout and sheathed their blades. Ebony let Icebody Enhancement go to regenerate his mana. He could charge his mana ores this way. He wiped the blood off and the healed spot on his neck didn’t escape Scarlet’s eye. She didn’t think too much of it, confident of her control that didn’t go further than just past the skin.

Ebony hand signalled the guy in charge and the barrier was removed.

“Do you…” Scarlet trailed off.

“Do I?” Ebony tilted his head with his deadpan face.

“Do you want to party up?” Scarlet said softly.

“...”

“We probably won’t be teamed up with anyone close to our capabilities. The dungeon will attract lots of people, sure, but if there are any talented imperials they would be closer to the Empire Capital. Most would be ambitious youth wanting to gain quick and easy strength. Those our age are around level 20 or 30 at best, most people around these part Class with untiered or tier 1 skills.” Scarlet explained.

Ebony himself has seen the standards of the average party hunting in the forest. The young were inexperienced like they have never been in a battle, those looking slightly older but still at such low levels were those that fought safe battles.

‘She was looking over when I filled the form wasn’t she…’ Scarlet was around 16 or 17 too if she said ‘our age’ that would translate to 20 Earth years.

It was a pretty good idea, Ebony didn’t really want to fight similarly levelled monsters in a party. It would be a waste of time and effort.

“Okay.” Ebony held out a hand for a handshake before pulling it back immediately. A handshake and a ‘nice working with you’ was a habit that would translate differently here. Scarlet didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. Perfect.

Ebony could stand to learn a lot from sparring with her anyway.

They went back up and changed their application to a joint one. There were lots of whispers from people around but neither of them even gave those whispering a glance.