Ebony's Fable

Hector came back with Ryley on his back, the tip of his hair singed . Ryley was asleep, or unconscious with a frown.

“Looks like he’s not used to the mana density. He did run around the whole day.” Hector said with singed hair.

“Will he be okay?” Ebony asked.

“The mana density isn’t all that high. It’s a little lower than what you dished out so he should be up soon. A day or two and he should fully get used to it.” Hector just tossed the man into his tent.

They split the night watch duty up between the four of them.

Normal humans needed roughly 10 hours of sleep a full day of 28 hours. Having Classed or evolved once lowered it to an average of 8 hours. Warriors and even archers needed less sleep than mages in general which led to the ‘higher Endurance = less sleep needed’ theory.

Tuffock needed the most and claimed to need at least 7 hours before fully rested. As embarrassed as he was, nobody blamed him for it. Ebony already knew that that was pretty good for a mage already.

Hector and Scarlet needed 5 to 6. Though all of them could probably go 2 or 3 days without sleep they won’t be at their best which may be dangerous.

Ebony needed a little more than 2 hours a day. Saying meditation could reduce the need for sleep was a good and acceptable excuse to them.

Naturally, It wasn’t time for sleep yet.

Since the day and night cycle was the same, they had 14 hours of day and 14 hours for night.

Hector got them to sit around the centre where their tents had been set up. Taking out a stony whitish-pink spherical orb the size of a walnut.

“Here, my precious baby. We can use it together, we’ll have to take turns to stay on watch though.” Hector caressed the pearl gently.

“Wo..woaah… th..that’s…” Tuffock had his mouth wide open, he could probably fit his fist into his mouth with how wide it was.

“Heh. Awesome right? It’s a Rare calming pearl I managed to get. It can increase the speed at which you can get into the state of meditation by 25 to 28%. It even increases the effect of meditation type skills by 3 to 5%.”

‘Oh? There’s something like that?’

“Increases the effect of meditation type skills? Is the increase based on the level of the skill?” Ebony couldn’t help but be curious.

“Of course! I wouldn’t be able to become a 4 elemental mage in a few years if it wasn’t for my baby here.” Hector proudly showed his pearl off. What he didn’t say was that only the increase in speed to get into the state of meditation was helpful for him. His low level in meditation caused the increase in effect of 3 to 5% to be minimal. It was still better than nothing.

The calming pearl was always in effect and being within 3 fifths of a gir or 3 metres could let one feel the calming aura or so Hector advertised. Since they wouldn’t be aware of their surroundings and couldn’t move they had to take turns.

It was his most prized possession. A treasure to any mage or so he says.

He carefully passed it to Tuffock who was basically begging to touch it. Ebony also got to hold it. It was smooth and cool to touch, even to him. He couldn’t feel a lick of the aura Hector said it had. He was already in a state of meditation but there was no noticeable increase in his mana or stamina regeneration rate.

He handed it back to Hector.

“Can’t you at least act impressed?” Hector looked disappointed not getting a reaction out of him.

“It doesn’t work.”

“? What do you mean it doesn’t work? It’s the real thing okay. If you slander my baby again I won’t let you near it anymore.” Hector protected his pearl with his body, hugging it close.

“...I didn’t mean to say it was fake.” Tuffock’s reaction was good enough to tell that it was the real thing. Scarlet also gave an uncomfortable stare when he said it didn’t work.

“Then what did you mean?”

“I can’t feel any calming aura or any aura that you’re talking about.”

Many things went through Hector’s and Tuffock’s heads all at the same time. This was a Rare calming pearl, one that was pretty large. The aura covering them entirely was strong enough that Hector wasn’t even as mad or excited as usual.

Scarlet on the other hand was digging into her bag. She pulled out something that fit in her palm comfortably. It was shiny, reflecting the orange glow from their phoslamps. It was clear light pink and resembled the calming pearl Hector brought out.

There were a few differences. One was the carved curvy and wavy lines all over the pearl, he could see the light fog or white mist it was releasing. The other was that it was at least 3 times bigger. Lastly, he felt a weird feeling coming from it.

It was the calming aura Hector mentioned.

“Oh my…ass. Is that an elling enchanted calming pearl? You rich show off.”

“W..woow…”

The 2 mages had more and more exaggerated expressions. They got to closing their eyes and shutting up real quick though.

“Can you feel anything?” She couldn't be bother to correct the fact that it wasn't enchanted but runic in nature.

“A little.”

“Only a little?”

‘It increases the ease of going into meditation by 80 to 90% and he only feels a little of the aura?’ Scarlet thought. It was pretty ridiculous, her’s was even worked on and gives a 20 to 25% increase in the effect of meditation. The range was up to a full gir as well.

Keeping it in a spatially expanded bag with other magic enhancements sealed the effect which Hector’s bag had as well. It didn’t really matter since it wasn’t like it was of use when they were on the move or in battle. Not exactly useless since the calming effect was beneficial in a battle but it was not all that powerful of an effect. It was one of her most expensive and rarest belongings. She didn’t have Meditation yet but it even worked for her natural mana regeneration.

Scarlet had a tiny bit of trust in the party, since Hector didn’t hide his, she didn’t see the problem with showing it. She wouldn’t have brought it out if she wasn’t curious about what Ebony said. This was rare enough for a Grand mage or even an Arch mage to kill her for. As long as they were crazy enough to disregard the fact that she was a Xeng. On second thoughts she may have been a little rash by bringing it out.

Ebony’s Battle Song was a little embarrassing to show to suggest helping them due to the minuscule increase of mana regeneration.

He stayed on the lookout while doing his stretching and conditioning, both physical and magical. He was still trying to increase his range of mana control. He noticed he needed to improve how he moved multiple shields or even his ice swords.

He tried to form as many swords made of ice at the same time. 5 was his limit. Perhaps it was a habit but he put effort into making all of them as perfect as possible. That wasn’t how it should go if he wanted a barrage type skill though. At the same time, he didn’t want to settle for anything less than his best.

He could still mentally hold on all 5 ice swords with one mental ‘hand’ or cast, then go on forming more but it just felt off somehow. That may or may not be how other mages cast barrage type spells, the long cast time would make sense if that was the case. The inability to cast other spells due to the immense focus needed to do so would also make sense.

Having no bright ideas, he just had the shield shift and fly around, getting the swords to attack himself and having his shields move to protect himself. Testing as many angles or directions as he could.

The swords were much lighter than his shields and could move much faster. They were uncompressed of course.

Most of the time they could pass through his shields if they came from the opposite direction. He lightly knocked it aside with his greatsword. Essentially fighting himself. It was not very effective since he knew where the attacks would be coming from as he controlled them.

He was reminded of the time he was training with Sei and Ton. They had made ice and snow clones of themselves to fight him with manipulation alone.

‘I should try to do that some time as well. It would be interesting if I could fight multiple copies of myself. Or make ice copies of myself and fight for me.’

Thinking that it would be pretty good manipulation training he got right into making an ice sculpture. It was the same size and roughly the same dimensions as himself but he didn’t bother adding every feature and detail like his clothes or facial features.

He manipulated its hands and fingers to grab onto an ice sword. It was harder than he thought it would be. Mentally tossing and shooting a projectile was like a two dimensional and thoughtless action but, moving the ice sculpture was a three dimensional motion.

He had to move the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and fingers all individually. Like coding a robot. It took half a minute just having it grab a sword.

He had renewed admiration for how Sei and Ton pushed him with just manipulation alone. They weren’t even very high level from what he remembered.

‘Could I beat them now?’ Ebony shook his head. They may not have a very high level but they weren’t monsters that he had fought. They were another race altogether like Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen.

From his experiment and past experience fighting them, their magical prowess was leagues higher than his. At least he shouldn't get knocked around that easily anymore. Even if they were holding back most of their power previously.

After an unknown amount of time, Scarlet and the others came and she sparred with him as usual.

She didn’t hold back her magic this time. Fire and lightning. Apparently, she had been using wind magic on her blades all along.

Ebony’s shield melted so fast under her glowing red swords that recently started to have a thin layer of flames covering it. Its temperature is many times higher than it looks. It was due to the material of her weapons as his upgraded sword was the same in that it took a lot more ice mana before ice appeared on its surface.

He kept getting pushed back with nowhere to run or hide.

Steam rose with every clash.

It blocked neither of their perceptions. His Vibrational Gravity Sense or the ability to sieve the information gained, is starting to catch up to speed with high speed movements. The ice mana in the air was basically Frost Mist Perception Sphere at work as well. They didn’t really clash or flood his senses.

Scarlet’s Heat Perception easily differentiates levels of heat. Ebony’s body was at least half as cold as normal humans. Scarlet long recognised his heat signature. Their enhanced eyesight was more than enough anyway.

Ebony mentally grabbed all but one of the ice swords lying on the ground and chunked it towards Scarlet to create distance. Scarlet just exploded in heat, the very air burning together with the grass on the ground. Nothing reached her.

“Extinguish.”

It was very soft but Ebony heard her whispering.

As if listening to her, the fire on the ground burned out and the brightened dungeon dimmed down again.

‘Did she say that as a habit or was she commanding the fire to be extinguished?’ It would be pretty amazing if Scarlet could control fire with her words.

Noticing the tipping of Scarlet’s foot, he pushed himself to the side at his max speed. Dodging the unseen menace, who practically teleported towards him and pointed a longsword to his neck. She left little sparks of electricity where she blasted off.

The very mana trembled at her arrival and movement. Shockwaves strong enough to knock a person off his feet pushed forward as well.

Ebony twisted his body and placed his greatsword where he expected her to move to. The clash of her sword thrust on the flat side of his greatsword blew him back a step, he used the momentum and spun on the spot. Following up as he let one hand carry it and flow into a backhanded swing.

It was too slow to even faze her.

The remaining ice sword jerked up from the ground behind Scarlet and shot toward her. As if expecting it, she lightly swung one hand and shattered it all while parrying his attack with her other longsword. His body fully spun to face her again, he gripped his blade with both hands again and forcefully pushed her back with his higher, enhanced strength.

Well, it didn't buy him enough time or distance to do anything meaningful as he was defeated again.

They swapped around and fought the others as well but none of the fights was as exciting or helped him improve much. Fighting against Hector was still fine as he could push Ebony with his superior stats. He also showed some skills Ebony hasn’t seen him use.

There was not much to say against Tuffock and Ryley who woke up partway through and joined. Ebony just had to close the distance between them and it was game over for them.

Ryley was somewhat decent with daggers but reacted a little sluggishly in close combat. Perhaps the increase in gravity, likely the fact that he was not fully used to the mana density as well.

If not for Ebony’s movement speed and shields, Tuffock was more than capable of keeping his distance with his enemies while counter-attacking. He said he was an offence-focused mage but didn’t want to show Ebony the offensive spells, less the stone lance. Yet.

After that, they went on with a little light training of their own with Ryley just retreating to his tent after saying he’ll take the last shift closer to the morning.

Hector asked for one of his shields with a deep melted cut in it for his weight training. It was for his Profession, Body Builder. He did all sorts of exercises which was pretty intriguing, since there were stats here he didn’t think weight training would be a thing.

Watching a little was enough to tell that the exercises were not for him. He would lose his flexibility if he were to train his muscles like that.

Ebony continued his training and creation of spells till the others slowly went to sleep. He had to go easy on magic since most of his mana was gone by now.

He sat down in his tent to meditate and focused on his perception skills. It was not his watch time and he would stay out of sight from his party members for now. He took out the various raw materials and tried to use Mana Moulding to alter their shape.

Scarlet lent him her calming pearl pretty easily despite how seemingly expensive or rare the item was. The effect was pretty light on him but he did have faster mana regeneration by about 5%. Why did it not work as advertised to him was a question no one here could answer.

He repaired his shields when he could.

Ebony didn’t feel like sleeping. He felt a little bad when he realised his Vibrational Gravity Sense allowed him to sense past the thin fabric of tents. He could sense Scarlet taking off her mask and untying her hair to let it fall. She took out a cylindrical item from her bag, uncapped it and put her finger in. Smearing whatever contents in it over her hands.

Applying hand lotion, maybe? He did notice that her calluses were thinning out and smoothing out when they tetted each other in the mornings. Even his own was reduced. He attributed it to the increase in Constitution and also the increase in health regeneration; it was Wisdom for him but Scarlet probably had higher vitality now. It was a bit of a pity but she was a girl after all, she didn’t seem all that embarrassed or ashamed of them though so he was a little surprised she used hand lotion. Well, he could be wrong about the lotion thing.

He could also feel Hector outside his tent cleaning his armour and Tuffock outside mentally juggling 2 stones, trying to pick a third once in a while. He didn’t register any of their actions but Scarlet’s though. Ebony quickly shut his senses off as well as he could when she started stripping down. He felt oddly guilty even though he wasn’t peeking on her intentionally.

‘She’s really the greatest training for meditation.’ Ebony thought. Scarlet repeatedly broke his calm sometimes even without doing anything.

Tuffock came to call him for a switch. He continued his changing and expanding training routine. He realised that his skill levels were rising slower and slower compared to his class levels.

He was about to wake Scarlet up for her turn but she came out by herself seeing him stretch.

“What are you doing? You can rest now.”

“Stretching. It’s okay, I slept already.”

Scarlet tilted her head and asked what kind of stretching. Ebony didn’t think they didn’t have the concept of stretching, he explained it was to keep himself flexible, increase his range of motion and warm his body up for training. Constantly distracted by how nice she smelled, a floral scent. Darn increased senses.

She was clearly interested so he taught her a few exercises. He found that she was already as flexible if not more flexible than himself.

Ebony didn’t expect her to start another conversation. They rarely chatted outside of what was necessary and he thought she was avoiding him earlier.

“Why do you train so hard? What is pushing you to grow stronger?”

“...”

There was a long pause and silence. Only when Scarlet was about to say he didn’t have to answer, did he speak up.

“Fear. Fear is what’s pushing me to grow stronger. Faster.”

It was an unexpected answer.

Fear seems to be the furthest emotion she imagined a level 50 going to pick a fight with a level 136 golem had. She never felt him being fearful of her when most imperials were either.

Sure, they were a pretty good match for golem since ice and fire worked surprisingly well to weaken them and their extremely slow speed was the only reason they were able to hunt them but it was still a level gap not just anyone fearful would take on.

Ebony thought back. It was true. He has been living in fear since he came to Elcra. Be it the first night he spent training his Cold Resistance under the frostblaze amur maple tree. The first night after leaving the underground dome, he moved through the night instead of sleeping on a tree. The time he spent 3 days hunting rhoats non-stop. The 3 days he spent training non-stop in Teld city. Hard working? He was just scared of dying in his sleep.

“Fear of?” Scarlet asked.

Ebony was afraid of getting killed by some random monster in his sleep in Arcta. Afraid of being killed by Rhoats. Afraid of being killed by unknown forces he can do nothing against.

“...Fear of being helpless.”

Even without hearing stories and news of the things happening on Elcra, there was one thing he was afraid of the most. It was being helpless. He couldn’t stand being helpless.

Any random monster or person could kill him any time of the day if they found him unlikable. A random aberrant monster can walk into a city and massacre every living being if it wishes. A dungeon break may occur and monsters beyond his level may stampede the city or town he was sleeping in at any time. Some extremely high level monsters may sneeze and kill him with it.

A random fight between 2 strong people can get him killed just from a stray attack or the side effects of their spells and physical strength may turn him to dust or a mush of flesh, blood and gore.

Everything was just on a different scale than what he was used to.

The only thing Ebony thought he could do was to get stronger and get less helpless as his power grows. His early focus on defensive and evasive measures was further proof.

“How strong do you think you have to be to not be considered helpless?”

“Stronger.”

Strong was never enough. It will never be enough. There was also someone, something stronger. Ebony understood. He had never been the strongest. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t get stronger.

“...Why did you save those people? That time with the young boy as well.” she changed the subject after a short pause. Ebony didn’t know what Scarlet was getting at but he didn’t ponder about it.

“Only regret things that you’ve never done, not regret things that you have done. My mother taught me that. I fully agree with it. It’s partly why I train and train. I would regret not training hard enough if I wasn’t strong enough when it mattered but I would never regret having trained for getting strong enough.

I would have regretted standing by and not helping the boy when I was there but will not regret anything if I did something. Same with the 2 parties, whatever their circumstances were, I didn’t know in advance. But I don’t regret helping, I might not have saved everyone but I would have regretted letting them die when I could stop it.

Well…it’s a pretty silly thing to say. For one, I don’t regret not dying. But even so...” Ebony felt weird, he never shared his feelings with anyone like that. The conversation was fresh to him, he oddly didn’t feel restrained at telling Scarlet these things.

‘Only regret things that you’ve never done, not regret things that you have done…I see.’

Scarlet stood up without a word. They sparred again.

This time she gave comments. How he should move his greatsword. How he used his magic. She had little to say about most but his swordsmanship, about how stupid and unrefined it was.

Ebony didn’t hold back and taught her breathing patterns to conserve stamina as much as possible too. It was not easy for her. She fessed up that her enhancement skill was actually a fully physical enhancement skill without using a single drop of mana.

She consciously increases her heart rate to increase her physical stats all round. Vitality, Constitution, Strength and Agility. The only limiting factor was that her stamina consumption rises proportionally to her increase in stats and also how much her body can handle before having her veins burst and rupture. It was not easy to slow down once it started so she had to control it a little. How? She didn’t mention.

The increase in heart rate made it difficult to control her breathing but Ebony’s input did seem to help. The problem she always had was that her breath had to fit her aggressive and intense combat style and rhythm. The creepy thing was he had made the breathing technique to fit her.

It was no wonder he could predict where she was going to move or attack. He even taught her how he always seemed to be ahead of her despite her speed. Her line of sight when she wants to move, the tipping and direction of her toes, the twitch of her shoulders and wrist.

‘What does he see when he fights?’ It was a little freaky. Ebony could observe all the little details and act to counter them in split seconds of an intense exchange? It was already beyond what mere training or lectures could teach her. It had to be hammered into her reflexes if she wanted to copy him. Her intelligence stat and Mental Acceleration may help but how would she fight normally if she had to take into account every single twitch or jerk from her opponent.

To Ebony, it really was just a reflexive kind of ability. He doesn’t really think things through when he is in battle. It was too cumbersome. It was better to just know what to do and when to do it. He didn’t know how to teach that.

They continued for hours till Scarlet stopped to rest.

Ebony went to wake Hector up. Sensing and hearing him snoring. He pushed Frost Mist Perception Sphere which was hardly used for perception recently, surrounding Hector’s tent. He wondered how much he needed to compress it before Hector woke up. He didn’t expect the tent to be able to ward ice mana off a little so he just opened the flap and moved his ice mana in.

Hector woke up with frosty hair including his brows and lashes. He wanted to chase Ebony but was shivering too badly.

‘I won’t forget this, Ebony!’ Hector wanted to scream out but his teeth were clattering from the cold.