Ebony's Fable

Scarlet rarely lost in initiative. Lightning pulsed over her skin, she burst to slice the head of the fire mage who kept staring at Ebony. She couldn’t stand the look in her eyes but justified that taking the mage down was only logical.

The Great Fire Mage couldn’t even react before she was pushed back and onto her butt by Lalt, Toxic Blade the Master Rogue. His dagger stopped Scarlet’s long sword but he stumbled back a step, not expecting so much force from a journeyman. He had held his dagger loosely and almost got it knocked out of his hands. Embarrassing.

Lalt didn’t underestimate the legendary creatures known as Xeng any longer. Absolutely stunned that the woman could see and stop his swift attacks. The Great Fire Mage didn’t stay stunned and started chanting with a small fireball forming and growing from fire mana in her staff.

Scarlet didn’t even look in her direction as Ignite and Flare heated up, the ‘Great’ Fire Mage had her fireball decrease in size. The fire mana in her fireball was deconstructed and absorbed by Scarlet. Scarlet only managed to do that since the spell was still just a lump of fire mana rather than an actual spell. It was kinda pathetic. Scarlet couldn’t even feel the Great Fire Mage’s attempt of control over the fire mana she took away. Otherwise, with Scarlet’s Intelligence stat against hers, it would be impossible to wrestle control away with Scarlet’s current ability.

Scarlet was willing to bet that the lousy fire mage only evolved with level 125 requirement for 50% Fortification, whatever Fortification she had.

The Toxic Blade she was fighting was still faster and stronger than herself by a large margin. She covered the gap with Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery that increased Strength and Agility by a static 0.01% every strike, swing, slash or stab as long as she could connect the path and flow of both her swords. Though it decreased her Strength by 15% while she wielded dual longswords, it increased her attacking speed with the weapons by 25%.

Cascading Lacerations further increase the speed of her strikes by 0.001% after every connected blow, per level. Cascading Lacerations at level 133, meant that every strike was 0.133% faster than the previous and that wasn’t even considering the 0.01% static increase from her Mastery itself.

What's more, the swordsmanship her mother handed down to her didn’t have a supposed limit to the increase. She could endlessly go faster and every attack getting stronger. As long as her body held. It was also possible to be like Ebony, constantly disrupting the flow of her strikes, not allowing her to build up power. That’s why he was such a great sparring partner, Scarlet improved so much over the short period of time with him.

This rogue didn’t have even a tenth of his capabilities, letting Scarlet grow in speed and power. He wanted to go on the offensive, a single nick on her would let his poison do the work. But he couldn’t get the chance. Every action was moving to defend himself against a blow that seemed to have come faster and more ferocious than the last. He also felt his fingers and palms heat up and burn. The poison on his blades evaporated and even blew in his direction even though there was no wind.

His head lopped off with a char as his sight spun before he even knew it. Last thought being how was it possible that Scarlet was so fast. Master Class gained 15 stat points per level in their main Class, 10 stat points for a level in their Sub-Class and 3 Profession-focused stat points that were allocated when Profession levelled. His Class at level 153 alone gave him 795 more stat points, not to mention his Sub-Class and Profession.

That was a pointless number to Scarlet. The rogue just didn’t have any good skills; perhaps he didn’t even have many Fortifications or even any useful and high percentage Fortifications.

Strength: 122

Vitality: 150

Constitution: 330

Endurance: 250

Agility: 180 [360]

Intelligence: 215

Wisdom: 300

Perception: 110

Her stat points had skewed a lot from what she planned. She didn’t regret changing how she planned to allocate her stats even though it was largely affected by Ebony. She didn’t even feel irritated at him for affecting her choices.

Scarlet didn’t add a single point of Strength, less the Strength that came from her Profession Combat Chef. It’ll increase even more after she evolves. She needed Vitality for her Core Skill to be more sustainable or her blood would run too thin too quickly. Even when she found that her Core Skill increased her health regeneration rate proportionally as well, her maximum health stayed constant.

Constitution really was a drainer for her. The stronger her body the more she could handle higher levels of buff from her Core Skill and sword mastery skill set. Endurance was the same, she needed to have the energy and stamina to sustain her increased physical stats for as long as possible after all.

Her Agility might look really low at 180 but her unheard of Fortification made it have the effect of 360. With her Fortification, her sword attacks had the speed of over 1200 Agility. Scarlet only felt a little pain, she shouldn’t have added any more points into Agility when she was still around level 40ish to 50. She had no doubt at all that her Fortifications would only rise further and her Constitution may not be enough anymore.

Her Core Skill can raise all her physical stats by a little over 350% except Endurance. While her Strength wouldn’t be much higher than Ebony's, her Agility was nothing to laugh at. Nothing here could stop her really, for the second or so that her stamina could sustain her at a fully enhanced speed of 1600 or attack speed equivalent to 5600 Agility. Not even Ebony if she wanted to kill him and only attacked him when she was at the peak of her power. She had to refresh her arrogance she didn’t know she had a few times after seeing Hector’s punch and Ebony’s blue flames.

Hector’s speed and power was also mind-bending for a Journeyman, for an Imperial anyway. Something Scarlet couldn’t wrap her head around. Just what were his Fortifications? He had the same problem as her, only held back by their body and endurance. The exact opposite of Ebony, it could be seen that both of them were influenced by training with Ebony. And so was he influenced by them.

She was originally supposed to have twice as much Intelligence than Wisdom, but she couldn’t find an argument against having faster mana regeneration that increased her magic training progress. She could always split more into Intelligence after she evolved and had more leeway with stats. Unfortunately, even with her overpowered Core Skill and Class Fortifications, she couldn’t use all her speed and power properly. Her Intelligence stat was holding her speed down since her body was too fast for her mind even with Mental Acceleration and Combat Tenacity helping her with that.

Flare didn’t stop after slicing the head of the Master Rogue off, the fire mana used for Heated Blade sent flying out. Copying what Ebony did with ice mana, the fiery slash flew and met the ‘Great’ fire mage's second attempt at a fireball. It didn’t stop and flew through and past the mage and her fireball. High pitched screams filled the area before it stopped abruptly.

The fire mage stopped moving, there were no screams despite being on fire. She was too still, even her clothes and hair stuck in place. Motionless.

Scarlet’s fire was then extinguished somehow. She didn’t manage to see what did it. She glanced back, but she wasn’t ready for what she saw. Ebony didn’t look worse for wear excluding the fact his robes were torn up and he was using a greatsword made of ice. That was a relief. But what he had in his hands wasn’t a weapon, it was another hand.

An upper body was more accurate. Ebony was holding onto a hand, an arm connected to Ryley’s upper body and upper body alone. Half of his heart was still beating, hanging out of his body along with torn lungs and another stump of an arm. Life faded from his eyes as Ebony nodded and listened while he kept Ryley’s upper body close, hugging it tight.

‘Ah…’ Scarlet could sense what Ebony told her about. The silent yet deep, deep sense of helplessness he felt now. She didn’t even have a split second to consider his fears and pain any longer as her eyes shot to where she thought Tuffock was.

She didn’t find Tuffock where she looked but only Hector who had his helmet flung off at some point and she was pretty sure his head was more sunken in then it should be. He didn’t look conscious and was bleeding from his head but he wasn’t dead. One loss less, she thought.

Yet, Scarlet didn’t realise she made such a simple mistake until her neck forcefully snapped back and she was flung spinning backwards like a ragdoll. Looking away when her opponent wasn’t finished and that there wasn’t only one of them. Folly.

“...You dummy…what did I tell you…?” Scarlet couldn’t see clearly but she felt the cold arms wrapped around her. Cold arms that felt so warm.

❅❅❅

Scarlet jumped started the battle by shooting off for the mage and engaging with the rogue instead. The others didn’t sit still. Hector did his trademark fist smashing and leapt after the warrior stepping on Tuffock.

Ebony quickly defended Ryley from the martial artist’s incoming punch. The other 2 could handle themselves, he thought. All his buffing and enhancement skills kicked in, he’ll have to make do with an Ice Sword. Any type of enhancement skill, even tier ones just seem overpowered when one’s Intelligence is high enough.

139% of 376 was 522.64. The number jumps even more with skill level and skill tier, that, and mana compression. Why isn’t everyone a hybrid at this point? Well, Ebony knew that it was because it just wasn’t sustainable for others and they would have to survive with subpar physical and magical stats at least until they evolve to Master or beyond.

The martial artist kept whacking at his Layered Ice Carapace that they gave him time to cast and compress. Punching and kicking, then pulling his arms back and raising them into the air while yelling “WARGHH!” it sounded like a fake roar instead. While he didn’t sound impressive, what Ebony saw was impressive enough.

The man’s right arm had a translucent upper head or face of a wolf, while his left was the lower jaw. He opened his arms but kept his fist gripped tight, taking a step forward and having his arms coming in for a bear hug. The ‘jaws’ overshadowing his arms closed in together with his snapping motion, like that of a crocodile. Ebony quickly hopped back with Ryley but his shield didn’t move in time. He received a mental spike of pain, feedback from his Layered Ice Carapace being crushed from side to side.

The martial artist laughed and the translucent wolf head disappeared. It didn’t look like he could use that continuously as his breath hastened already. Likely mana constraints of a martial artist. Ebony could sense the foreign mana signature earlier and it wasn’t hard to tell it was magic at work.

Ebony calmly orbed Ryley up before 2 gunshots rang again. The ‘archer’ wasn’t staying in hiding anymore and was in plain sight. With Scarlet keeping the fire mage and rogue busy, Hector taking the warrior on, there was only the martial artist and gunman with the odd sniper rifle looking gun. Ebony kept an eye out for his movements but found that he was busy with his bracelet in the beginning before taking a shot at Ryley.

Ebony also understood why he only shot twice before stopping. The man was reloading his gun after only two shots. His shots didn’t ricochet or slide off his orb but dug deep in. Metal bullets as far as Ebony could tell at a glance.

Ebony dodged the incoming kick from the right. It was a lot faster than he could react to, he had no choice but to predict the man’s move like usual. He didn’t expect the next kick to have a translucent wolf claw 3 to 4 times larger than the normal desert wolves to materialise mid kick. He misjudged the dodging distance and the materialised claws shattered his Ice Sword and dug into whatever was left of his tattered sleeves before flinging him to the side.

It was not as strong as it looked and didn’t cut into his icy skin. He didn’t stay on the defensive any longer, it didn’t take too much time to form and repair what broke off his Ice Sword. Ebony stomped, Magnified Gravity Field cast and gradually increased in strength to buy time together with Frost Mist Perception Sphere. It was good enough to cause the martial artist to panic a little.

❅❅❅

Ged didn’t expect to get heavier all of a sudden, almost tripping. He obviously knew about the cold mist since he was watching this guy battle but the increase in weight of his body was unexpected. A panicked defence against the incoming stab worked, again and again. He was getting worried, the mana slave was too slow to really land a hit on him but he was sufficiently strong with his enhancement. Ged was gradually freezing and a thin layer of ice formed on his fist and legs when he blocked or even when he attacked.

His boss, Tewa, who was busy shooting the ice orb and supporting the warrior also noticed his situation. They exchanged a glance and he knew that he was forgetting something. The ones they had to kill was everyone else, not the mana slave.

He noticed his boss starting his mana charge bullet and got himself ready too. The loud and noisy burstbow echoed and he burst into action. His Hound Crunch ready to snap. His opponent also realised his orb defence broke and that he took the opportunity to dash to the party’s archer. He smiled, the mana slave was still too slow.

His arms and the mana wolf’s jaws were about to meet but the mana slave’s movement speed was faster than he thought, or he was more affected by the freezing than he thought. The archer’s arm was grabbed and pulled aside violently. Yet not violently enough.

Hound Crunch!

The archer’s lower body didn’t get pulled away in time and was completely separated by his wolf’s jaws. Ged even made the inside of the mana wolf's mouth to be jagged like countless teeth and whatever trapped in between was crushed to a bloody pulp that he relished looking at. The smell of internal organs, bones, blood and fat crushed and mashed together just gets him so excited. The look on the mana slaves face must be even more delicious.

Ged couldn’t help but grin and look towards their target. His grin froze, as did his body. He looked down to his chest to see a huge blade stabbing through him all the way out through his back. He didn’t bleed or vomit blood, the blood in his body froze too quickly.

‘He.. he stabbed out at the same time he pulled him…no way I’ll end like this!’

“He…heehhh… and you still… didn’t make it in time.. Haaa…haa.” Ged was going to have the last laugh. It was just too bad his last laugh was one so cold.

❅❅❅

“Take your stinkin feet off!”

Hector recovered quite some mana, the warrior looked to be the weakest but he was a Master Warrior after all. Hector casted water, wind and earth enhancements. It should be more than sufficient to have higher stats than the average Master Warrior at level 126 by a large margin.

“Tch!”

The burstbowman and likely leader of the party knew that too and focussed his fire on him. It wasn’t so bad since the trajectory of his shots was so easy to read but it was annoying that he had to keep a constant eye to watch when he pulled the trigger.

Hector got into a short stalemate trying to get the warrior and dodge the burstbowman’s attempts at shooting him. The warrior used a medium-sized war axe with a kite shield, probably the vanguard who played Ebony’s role on their party. Hector was about to kick things up a notch since Tuffock’s condition was unknown and smash his fist together before he stopped himself.

A grey spike rose from the ground under the warrior and pierced him from his feet to the top of his head. No way for him to survive that, Hector thought. He wanted to call out to Tuffock and was glad he was still alive but then Tuffock spoke first.

“Well well well. Tewa. Tewa. Tewa.”

The burstbowman was stunned. Hector didn’t understand, what the hell was Tewa? Tuffock sounded a little different too.

“Destroy that ice prison first.”

‘What? Oh…shit!’ Hector remembered too late. He turned towards the burstbowman and was about to ran over and stop him but he was too far away. It didn’t even matter that he was too far away, the moment his body turned away a hard impact smashed right into his head. His helmet was knocked right out, his skull probably broke. Was his brain smashed too? Hector saw Tuffock’s lazy back fist as he fell unconscious.

‘Lousy punch, mine’s bet…ter...’

❅❅❅

“The parties sent to this floor were too weak. No problem. I knew their standards. The horde was cleaned up. No problem. Panic Attack was a variable I didn’t see coming. You attacking all of a sudden…well, they split in the end. Results of that were acceptable.”

“...yes boss Pet.” Tewa was mentally yelling. ‘Why does it have to be boss Pet of all people?’ Tewa was most afraid of boss Pet.

“Why the ambush even after you saw them clearing the small horde. Stupid? Dumb? Retarded? Attacking me first out of everyone, good. If you knew it was me it would’ve helped lower their guard around me. This guy who stepped on me? Dramatic. I like it, that would hurt their pride and their hate would grow. Too bad you didn’t teach him well and the one he stepped on was me.”

“...” Tewa had no reply. He actually didn’t know he just shot his own boss in the chest. The skin his boss was wearing on his face was unfamiliar to Tewa. He was confused about how to feel about getting praised for that.

“If force was the choice I could have gotten them myself or have you get them before they grew. Now, Lalt’s dead. I managed to stop probably the only mage you’ve managed to recruit from being incinerated. Ged’s dead too, a pity. At least he was competent enough to take one down, with my reminder. Don’t just stand there, you still have my needle right? Shoot already, will you?”

Tewa quickly loaded the almost hair-thin needle his bosses gave him. He took aim at the most dangerous of their targets. Well, only target left, with his bosses actually going undercover in disguise, the archer dead and his boss taking down the quadra elemental mage. The Xeng was the only one left and what luck, she was looking around after boss Pet saved Delia. Noticing the dying archer then the fallen quadra mage and finally looking over at him in the middle of pumping as much mana into his burstbow as possible.

Just before Tewa pulled the trigger of his burstbow, he saw a shadow move into the path of his shot. 2 Massive ice shields moved with him and were in front of him. Naive. That didn’t stop his normal charged shot, much less a fully charged one with the needle from his bosses. It was a wonder how he suddenly moved with such intense speed but it wouldn’t help.

Like he thought, the needle went through both shields as if it wasn’t there. Tewa didn’t expect that the mana slave predicted that and got his hands up to block it. It wasn’t enough, the sharp needle flew through his palms and dug all the way through it and out of his shoulder. Landing right in the centre of the Xeng’s mask. Her neck snapped back forcefully as she was sent spinning backwards like a rotating axe throw.

The mana slave was unfazed by the tiny hole through his arm and moved fast enough to catch the flying Xeng but with enough grace, it was like a butterfly landing on a leaf without causing it to dip down even a little.

“Woohp!” Tewa coughed as air was knocked out of him from the back.

When did these shields get behind him? It pushed him forward along with the mana slave. The suddenness caught him off guard and he was about to move aside when the shield split apart and trapped him in. He wanted to take a shot and break himself out but needed to reload his burstbow.

He pulled. His burstbow wouldn’t move and neither could he. The orb was shrinking on him and his burstbow was stuck. Tewa panicked, he started punching and kicking but the walls were harder than a rock. Whitish blue mist started filling the orb. Tewa struggled even harder. Then the mist gathered on his skin, it didn’t stick. It exploded in his face. The chilly blue flames were the last thing he saw.