Ebony's Fable

“Don’t wear your myriad bracelet, it’ll interfere with our work. Don’t worry you won’t have any spare mana and none of us is afraid of a little overflowing mana.” Roya tried to act strict.

Ebony had asked if she was willing to teach him more about her craft and she was delighted to hear that. Roya wanted to pass down her family’s craft in some manner. Clovis clearly wasn’t interested.

Also, Roya was apparently really pregnant. Her belly had the tiniest bump. Ebony just found out that Frost Elves' pregnancy lasted for around 4 years. That was a really long time. That was equivalent to 1568 days or 4.3 Earth years.

They knew a lot about him that he didn’t know they knew.

Firstly, Ebony finally learned why he had all the weird looks. Mana slaves, it was a reasonable thing for a world that ran on mana. He cleared up the fact that he wasn’t a mana slave and that he didn’t actually lose his memories. A load of his shoulders.

Next, Halvis asked if he was from another world. It was a simple yes and no question to which he answered truthfully and explained his circumstances. On second thought, it wasn’t really all that hard to deduce.

They couldn’t tell when Ebony hadn’t Classed yet but once he gained a few levels they knew he was partially made of mana. They were too sensitive to mana not to tell. While they knew about mana beings they weren’t made of mana themselves and couldn’t tell Ebony much. On the other hand, learning about mana manipulation and tailoring work would help him understand a lot more about mana than he already knows.

Roya still had her own work to do and she could tell Ebony was more interested in learning how to control mana and about the properties of mana than learning how to tailor or Mana Tailor. He obviously had his own plans and training to do as well so they scheduled their time.

He made it a point to actually sleep and rest for at least 3 hours. He set the 28th hour to the 3rd hour as his sleeping time. The 3rd to 7th as his conditioning, melding both physical and magical together as much as he could. Merging them would make it more…complete or so Scarlet and Hector insisted. As with Evolution. Hector apparently Classed, Sub-Classed and Professioned all in one. Something about melding them into a more complete evolution process and that it has some benefits.

Ebony was aiming for that, he somewhat trusted that piece of information especially with Scarlet confirming it. She didn’t undergo the complete first Classing but she was going to do so this time. The benefits that Hector knows about were limited. It would apparently be easier to merge different skills into one, freeing up skill slots or even maximising Fortification benefits by locking in merged skills as a Core Skill. The first choice for Core Skills were generally those skills that benefit from the most number of Fortifications.

Ebony definitely wasn’t fit to go to the playground now and he wasn’t that interested either. There were slightly older Frost Elves to spar against too but he had something else in mind. From the 7th to 20th hour, he was out of the village. He went to search for blazing flames of frost. He put searching and exploration as the priority, hunting didn’t matter much unless it was a level 160 and above monster where he could gain Natural Potential. The combusting forest obviously wasn’t where he first found it which seemed ridiculously close to Arcta now that he thought about it. There was no way the Frost Elves didn’t know when it popped up.

The 20th hour was break time, washing up, cleaning and helping with dinner preparations again. After dinner around half past the 21st hour up till the 24th hour when Roya would teach Ebony all things mana.

The 24th to the 28th hour was when Ebony would shore up on his lesser used magics. His skills that were over a level 100 took a long time to level if he didn’t fight monsters many levels higher than him. That didn’t mean he didn’t practise those skills.

Back to routine.

❅❅❅

A week.

Ebony went far out in every direction except back toward Bubble Hills and Plainston. It was not surprising but there were still many places he couldn’t go as it was too dangerous. Even more so with his speed having increased so much it took a shorter time before he reached such areas. He thought that the monsters were more active compared to the time he was here and he asked about it.

Hoarfrost Glade was humongous. In terms of land mass, it was said to encompass more than 15% landmass of the entire continent. Arcta was only one of the 2 Frost Elf villages. It cleared a few of his doubts and confusion, Elves might age slowly but they still aged yet there wasn’t any old Frost Elf in the entire village that he had seen either. The village chief, Orren, was apparently only around 480 years old with his wife being about 3 decades younger.

They classified the glades into a few sections namely, Chilly, Icy and Glacial. When Ebony visited Plainston he realised that the people there didn’t know much about Hoarfrost Glade. It might have been that it was a small town with a small population but they generally avoided Hoarfrost Glade.

Arcta was in the region they called Chilly. It was the safest place and the older Frost Elves only came here if they had kids as any deeper into Hoarfrost Glade was too cold for their young, even so, not all of them moved over. Arcta also consisted of most of the non-combatant families, which was why it was so easy for 2 elks to destroy and kill many of them. Halvis and Roya’s families included.

Ebony had heard that most Elves were proud, arrogant people but more importantly, heard about their strength and power. It had been weird that he hadn’t seen any truly high level Frost Elf, having another village with the true powerhouses of their race made sense.

Another thing was that when he mentioned he was in a party with Fergus was that the Frost Elves weren’t really on good terms with Elves. Even though Fergus had come to this village he didn’t realise that Fergus was only tolerated and not welcomed at that time.

Ebony didn’t know that it was unspoken common sense in the Empire that Hoarfrost Glades was one of the most infamous regions as an extremely dangerous area. There wouldn’t be another reason why not many people came here.

The monsters were actually hibernating in summer and many hid or stayed deeper. Now that it got cooler they started coming back out. The Frost Elves guards also switched out and the young were free from their ‘internship’ and back to holing up in their homes for training.

He was a little shocked that a level 81 Snow Gale Strix caught up to him as he passed its tree with a few flaps and shrieked dozens of hardened and sharpened snow needles sped up by coiling gusts of wind out of its mouth at him. It even curved along with his agile and gentle change of direction. Ebony only managed to cast an uncompressed Layered Ice Carapace that the snow managed to embed into.

Ebony wanted to ignore it at first but it was persistent and faster than him with its probably magic enhanced flight. His ice projectiles were easily evaded. Neither could harm the other and the owl eventually gave up. He didn’t remember the monsters here to be that powerful.

He had forgotten or perhaps didn’t notice one thing about monsters that can use magic. And that is that their environment matters. The owl only had to use a minuscule amount of its own mana to use the environment’s abundant snow mana.

Ebony didn’t even spot a single maple leaf in the entire week. The snowing made it harder to find as his sight was limited. He also remembered the Frostblaze Amur Maple forest would be surrounded by a blizzard or something. He didn’t see any signs of blizzards and the snow got heavier the deeper he went into Hoarfrost Glades. Was he supposed to find a blizzard within a blizzard that had trees covered in thick snow?

He had no breakthrough in regard to his Conditioning, any new skills or stuff like that. Skills like Sonic Overlay, Mana Vibration and Magnified Gravity Field improved considerably.

In the entire week, Roya didn’t teach him how to better control mana. She also didn’t teach him how to manipulate mana into materials to change their form or use them to make something. Ebony didn’t even mana weave anything.

She taught him about what mana is and how he had to improve his Mana Perception before he even started on anything. He first had to learn more about his own mana and what his mana can do. She was also in a slight dilemma since he was slightly different in the sense that he was partially made of mana. That was even more reason for him to first learn about his own mana and body.

Roya had Ebony only sense his own mana and figure out its properties. Everyone’s mana was unique.

It might have started out close to pure mana in the surroundings but changes ever so slightly with the use of magic. It was what made the mana signature of a person unique as there was no identical mana signature between 2 people no matter how similar. Race also have a small part in differences between mana.

The thing was that he had already been attempting this long ago. It was all foggy and blurry when he had just Classed but it improved a lot after getting and levelling Mana Perception. That was how he figured out his entire body was his mana pool and not just his mind. That was how he directly mana manipulated his own body to recover.

Speaking of, he was easily exposed that he lost a hand but they knew he could probably recover so they were not all that worried. He still got a scolding from Roya about it. Saying that he needed to take better care of himself.

Mana was almighty, according to Roya there was nothing mana couldn’t do. Because everyone has unique mana, the properties of everyone’s mana are ever slightly different. This uniqueness only grows with one’s age or rather use of magic and their mana.

For example, Roya’s and all the Frost Elves mana was naturally colder despite not being conjured into ice mana yet. In this sense, Ebony’s mana was more resilient based on his Fortification but Fortification wasn’t the only thing that caused his mana to be any different from another’s.

Still, this dedicated time to solely learn about his own mana and body was something he really liked and he even put aside more time for this from his magic practice time. It was Mana Perception and meditation at the same time.

Diving his senses into his body, scouring every inch. Emptied his mana, sensing his mana regenerate back to full capacity. He had found out some stuff and clarified some of his previous misconceptions about his body.

His whole body was his mana pool, yes. But it didn’t mean that when his mana was used up, there was nothing left in his body but his physical portion. He lost a hand, but his mana could still reach 5300/5300. His health on the other hand, didn’t fill up.

Mana Perception was high level enough that Ebony only needed to put some focus to get a 480pixel quality mental image of his whole body. Not a very high resolution but much better than a foggy mess. The main base for mana is still his mind but mana regenerated not just from his mind but every part of his body.

Roya confirmed with her senses after he allowed her to ‘scan’ him with her mana that every single cell of his contained mana.

There was like a new organ in his cells that was a mini container of mana, just like the main one in a normal people’s mind. A whole lot smaller though. It made sense for his Icebody Enhancement to cast so fast since there was hardly any need for them to circulate as he could just conjure ice mana in his body directly. He was already doing that instinctually but finding out these things were going to be useful in some way or another.

It was weird, the so called mana organ was not actually physically there. For normal people, in their minds and for Ebony his entire body. In a sense, a metaphysical organ was the best he could describe it as. A reason why his mana could still recover till maximum maybe. It was there but not exactly there. Supposedly becoming more and more physical as one evolved, becoming more complete.

Ebony had observed the phenomenon of overflowing Wisdom in a much closer viewpoint with his Mana Perception alone. The ‘mana organ’ which simply sits there would slowly fill up from who knows where, his mental power maybe. When it was full it would simply flow over. It was really simple and exactly what it was called.

Scarlet had called her skill Mental Supersaturation but he couldn’t help but visualise it as Mana Compression when he perceived things as he did now. He tried compressing his mana which was regenerated. It was exactly what he had wanted, if his mana pool’s mana was compressed beforehand, all his spells would be cast in their compressed state.

It didn’t budge even after a week full of attempts. The mana pool couldn’t be forcefully expanded and he failed every attempt to compress and push the overflowing mana back into his body. Scarlet said her mind hurt when she had first tried it. Ebony felt like he was trying to pump water into himself and bloat himself.

Roya wouldn’t tell Ebony everything. She wanted him to figure things out himself. He would understand things better in future or so she says. Telling him everything might limit his scope or perception of what’s what.

He tried whatever came to mind. Changing his methods along the way.

Trying to mentally hold mana where they were as soon as they started to overflow was unsuccessful so far. He thought it would have been many times easier if he only had one place to focus on but when it was throughout his body it had proven too difficult a task for him.

Taking Scarlet’s words and advice to imagine a lid on his ‘container’ and just hold it there to prevent mana from overflowing. Her experience was that the mana inside would change and a portion of it would fall to the bottom. This had kinda somewhat worked but it didn’t feel right to him. He needed to make slight adjustments to whatever he was doing.

Tonight, Ebony didn’t walk out of his room. It didn’t garner any attention since he was usually out in the morning. Roya and Halvis thought he was sleeping in since they clearly sensed his mana. Then he didn’t show up at dinner and Roya stopped Clovis from calling him down for dinner.

Another 5 days passed with Ebony not moving a single muscle.

‘Ting’ ‘Profession Skill Reinforced Mana Chassis (Passive) learned’

‘Reinforced Mana chassis (Passive) - Chassis and framework of mana pool is forcefully held and toughened to hold compressed mana without leakage. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 1.0% before leaking out. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.'

There were many questions he had about his new skill since the description didn’t help much. Some of which he could answer himself with a little testing. Even so, passive skills were the best. If he didn’t understand this wrongly, for every single percent that mana in his body was compressed his Constitution stat would increase by a percent of his Intelligence

Ebony never broke out of meditation and continued his mind-numbing and body-bloating exercises. He forgot to feel his own hunger and only opened his eyes when Roya came and got him for dinner on his seventh day of shutting himself in. The additional 2 days of introspection answered multiple questions together with many skill levels.

“We can talk over dinner,” Roya said. She only interrupted since she could sense that Ebony’s mana had settled down for some time already. Not eating for 7 days was still reasonable with mana beings not needing as much physical sustenance. Still, even without any physical exertion, Ebony was hungry. He ate and ate but not as much as he used to. Eating a little less than a single meal of Scarlet’s cooking. It tasted good as well but it just felt like it was lacking a certain taste.

“Better?”

“Yes, I understand more but only have even more queries.”

“Good. Do you know why I didn’t tell you too much?”

“Everyone’s mana is different, finding things out myself makes things clearer and also more natural for me.”

“Let’s get tailoring.”

❅❅❅

Roya taught Ebony all the basics of tailoring with mana. A diligent student was really encouraging to teach knowing that they are really keen on learning. She could somewhat understand Clovis’s love for not just reading and studying but teaching.

Ebony absorbed whatever knowledge she was willing to impart like a sponge. There were many things he couldn’t do even after Roya taught him. The difference in their Class, Fortification and Skills added many limitations to what Roya could really teach him.

From gloves to socks to shirts to pants and even underwear. Ebony learnt the basics of mana weaving from the start. Renewing his ability and control of mana and invading fibrous materials with mana. Mostly worked with frostsilk cotton until he knew how to make most clothing before moving on to other common materials.

He made quick trips to Plainston to either buy such common and cheap materials for practice or exchange his filled mana ores. Since he slept every day he had chances to refill mana ores. The trips were like a trip to the market and didn’t even take hours without the extra weight on him. He found out a few more things due to his constant exchange of Blues.

He had some privileges that he had already been receiving that he didn’t know as an ‘ex-mana slave’. All Meditative Classes could receive better rates, If he reached a really high number and became a considerably ‘tax payer’ he could actually receive more empty Blues for a filled one. Mana was a resource that was never enough and the Empire needed more and more.

Ebony never found a nice greatsword he liked, never found the need to trouble himself to go further to get it since he could still cast Ice Sword for now. It was in the middling area of his priority list since he was not planning on hunting stronger monsters right now.

He could also finally see the great damn difference between the monsters outside Hoarfrost Glade and inside it. The biggest difference was between the monsters that could use magic. Those that can use it well and those that couldn’t have a world of difference. Ebony also wasn’t completely sure but the monsters in Hoarfrost Glade seem to have higher stats in general even when he found monsters at the same level. It was to the degree that he could notice.

Ebony also learnt that monsters aren't just bloodthirsty creatures out for blood for no rhyme or reason. Not considering dungeon monsters whose actions and behaviour depended on the dungeon. Those that grew up a little, unlike the low level ones he fought before he Classed acted more like normal animals. Knowing when or what to prey on and who their predator was.