Ebony's Fable

“Hello, little guy.” Ebony picked up the handball-sized perfect sphere from its orderly rows and columns. It should be his mana chassis. Having shrunken himself down, this should be smaller than a red blood cell.

It was sucked back into place after he let the sphere go.

“I should be inside my head. Let’s watch how they produce mana for a few cycles. Thankfully, my regeneration speed is not too shabby, I don’t have to wait months in here to see a change for seconds outside. This confirms that the mana chassis exists both physically and mentally at the same time for me and highly likely, more heavily mental for non-mana-beings. Can’t rule out that normal humans just have a weak physical form of mana chassis because even though I have them throughout my body, my original mana pool and regeneration were no different from a human.”

Ebony observed his mental body closely. His mana chassis was part of each of his cells but they were not tied down to a single cell. They tend to stay still and move along with his physical body. They were interestingly weird.

For example, when he lost a foot his physical foot was lopped off but the mana chassis was still connected. So his ‘mana body’ was still the same shape and when he regenerated, the flesh, bones and nerves regrow from the stationary mana chassis. He couldn’t be sure if it had a memory of his body, or his body just regrew according to his body’s memory through genetics.

“Huh. They expand and contract. I never noticed that, was it too small and fine for me to notice normally? Tiny movements...they are expelling liquid. My mana. Okay, but I already know I don’t have the means to make it pulse faster to generate mana.”

Ebony observed and did his calculations around the head region of his body for 5 perceived years before moving on to his skeletal structure. The entirety of his observations for his skeletal structure took the same amount of time as it was far less complex despite its comparative size. He spent less than a year on each organ and his musculature also took a year of observation.

“Too bad a massive overhaul would be dumb. If I forcefully change them, I won’t be able to regenerate like I’m currently able to. I can potentially use a brain or heart to reconstruct since I’m already protecting these vitals but it would be silly if these vitals lose their ability to regenerate at my current speeds. It wouldn’t matter to the elves but no way I’m losing my healing in exchange.” He spent about 80 years purely observing and calculating the possibilities together with what he wanted to do to them yet less than 20 minutes passed for his body.

20 minutes of a highly intense thinking session was easier than casting his domain for a minute. He could do this all day.

“Refining a physique would be making these cute little things pump faster, converting sustenance to mana. That’s why, my food or calorie intake is still high compared to my Constitution and Wisdom stat. I can only increase that by sacrificing another source of energy like I did before with the help of a catalyst. The other way is to slowly train them to pump faster and that’s why it's time and effort dependent. Higher evolutionary stages make it easier to refine a physique to a certain degree thanks to the increment of base stats. I can’t do much and I don’t want to sacrifice more stamina or health regeneration. My latest refinement was probably assisted by my ‘recent’ evolution where I did not allocate the small amount of liquid potential to a skill and poured it on the largest monolith instead.

My conjured mana can form a solid brick when Coagulated Mana Repository reaches level 750 and when I let go of mental control, there is a physical block of mana. I can conjure mana ores directly and its purity is slightly higher than a Blue which is a Rare-quality mana ore but its density is closer to that of a Black which is an Inferior-quality material equivalent to an Unclassed.

That’s pretty crazy to think, my natural mana density is already high and it took a tier 4 level 750 skill to compress mana into a solid form. The numbers don’t match, a mana ore I create holds vastly more mana than a Black. Is it because of the increasing purity? In any case, at the same density, I can crush both to dust between my fingers but mine is as hard to crush as a Green-Uncommon mana ore. Soon enough, I don’t need sister Jing’s industrial mana compressor, I would be better than a mere machine at mana compression.

So the reason coagulated mana is still a grimy liquid despite its density is because of mana purity. These are my reserves that I never use on normal occasions. I won’t change them, but I can rearrange them to be a workspace. It’s a waste to let them sit and do nothing and…this is three months old mana, it’s not even at three-quarters of my current maximum capacity.

Let’s do an inventory check.” Ebony wasn’t used to hearing his voice in his head.

Thanks to how hard to use coagulated mana was, he never used all of them and let them pile up in him. He had long thought about how to make use of them. The plan was to use it along with another skill that was hard to use often, Mana Chassis Implosion. Using the skill on coagulated mana was slightly different but they were all components of mana and he already tested its viability.

“Anything older than a week is a waste of space. Workforce settled. Factory site is settled. Energy source, 1 week old coagulated mana. Process, tests are to be conducted immediately.

Plans -

Primitive: Workers boil old slime using molecular vibrations, gas(mana) is released as a product. Plausibility confirmed. Efficiency - 30% recovered. Since molecular vibrations take up energy and mental effort too.

The skill would take away some mental processing power equivalent to a tenth of a spell cast.

Estimation - tier 1 skill.

Early industrialisation: Hammer down the coagulated mana into even more solid blocks, build a facility using these hammered down or even frozen blocks if I can’t get them to stay in a solid form. Build a waterwheel or turbine. Workers carry old mana and let the factory do its job. Efficiency is higher, unable to estimate how much higher as not even early testing had been completed. Mana vibration is still required but more gas(mana) can be recaptured and the energy produced could cycle back to the factory’s moving parts.

Mental effort required is estimated to take three times as much compared to primitive.

If done well, normal regenerated mana produced by chassis can be properly cycled to power the turbines instead. Further increasing efficiency.

Estimation - tier 2 to 3 skill

Sadly, I don’t think I have any additional waste energy source in my body. I want and need my vitality and stamina.

I’ll start small, primitive. If I can get the ‘workers’ to automate, it’ll be a passive skill. Then move on to early industrialisation. Coagulated mana is like a river spanning through the chassis, within the chassis. I can either collate them or make tiny factories everywhere. I’ll try both, I might be able to separate them from the chassis altogether.

The factories are smaller than the workers?

No, the factory is inside the workers…make internal organs for my chassis? That sounds good too, I’ll have to test out and check which method gives me mana. After finding out which method has a positive output, I’ll compare them and pick the one with the greatest output. Efficiency can be optimized after.

Once the greatest output is discovered, I’ll start making it a skill and repetition begins.”

Small-scale experiments didn’t take long thanks to his speedy regeneration, he had all the resources to work with even in a sped-up thought. He ran each experiment ten times using a sample size of a thousand chassis. Verifying that each individual chassis contained the coagulated mana and some simply spilt out and contaminated the chassis. The method with the highest output was using each worker as the factory since the material was inside them. It threw off his initial plans a little but not a problem.

“I think it’s best to see them as mitochondria rather than worker cells, each of them is the factories and the energy source in one. Less movement saves energy. But how do I change what’s inside them? The best I can do is directly burst them inwards but that’s simply partial Implosion.

Get it straight this is a passive skill I’m trying to create. The passive skill’s function is to automate efficient use of coagulated mana and implosion but I’m not trying to merge the skills. Merged skills, skills that have many abilities and functions are much harder to level and evolve. Implosion is not up to Repository’s standards, merging might reduce my skill levels owned base percentage buff.

So the main function of my new skill is mana production efficiency. Then I should forget about using ice magic to freeze them, that’s a waste of mana.”

Ebony got to work but as he thought, it was mentally challenging to manipulate the internal workings of a single mana chassis cell. The fine control required was diabolical if at all possible, it was thanks to his current mental stats.

He made buckets within the workers by mentally hammering and holding the slimy mana together, filling them up with older mana and ‘burning’ them using vibrations. It was a lot less mentally taxing compared to Chassis Implosion and less violent. He wasn’t blowing up the factories and neither was it the same technique.

One was easy and didn’t take a minute of thought to do so. Being careful, he was changing them one by one. After making the fine control to one, he held it in place and moved on to the next.

On fifthteenth factory, the first one stopped working and the bucket collapsed.

One mental week of processing power passed. He finally managed to keep 100 factories working at the same time.

“How many cells does the human body have again? Trillions right? Whatever, it works. In fact, it’s working extremely well. I feel like I regenerated almost half a point more mana within this…quarter of a second outside. Now I continue till I can do it for all of them, concurrently. Haha, I was wrong, there was still something else I could sacrifice for more mana. Mental processing power. I can’t get a good estimation right now but this might reduce my ability to multicast as much as I could before if I keep the skill working around the clock. This is good. This is an actual skill that requires mental effort to produce an effect. I am on the right track.”

It took a whole decade's worth of processing before he was used to the mental movement required to make the internals of a single chassis move the way he wanted. His speed and fluency increased greatly over time but peaked after a decade. The problem he faced was that the greater the number of factories he was operating at one point in time, the harder it got to operate anymore and the difficulty scaled exponentially.

He let go of all mental control over them at the decade mark, to rest his mind and also do a deep scan on the total number of these tiny factories he had. It had been daunting to calculate not dozens of trillions, but dozens of quadrillions of them due to their size and distribution. No wonder after each evolution, it was like they got a beauty treatment and their pores reduced. The same happened for his mana chassis.

As if in a trance within a trance, he lost track of time and built up the number of factories he could operate at the same time. The first goal was to make all of them factories.

This was no different from the mental puzzles and exercises he used to do.

When he succeeded in converting every single individual into an operating factory at the same time. He made sure he could replicate the exercise with 1,000 complete successes in a row before he slipped out of his processing.

Unknowing, his physical body let out a steamy breath and his head had steam rising from it with Ning Xin fanning his head with a chopping board to cool his head. Taking a moment to sense how much time had passed, he estimated that 40 days had passed outside.

“That. Was hella lot more processing than I imagined. Over 280 thousand years worth of processing? My brain hasn’t been fried has it? 40 days of continuous spell casting is this intensive? Noted, it looks like my brain can keep going. Anyway, this is still easier than Domain casting. So even if I can run Domain around the clock, 40 days is too much for my current stats. I’ll let Dusk handle the maintenance, having a separate core to handle the mental stress is so convenient. Will is amazing.

Time for a break, grab that sandwich right hand!” Ebony slipped out of his trance but he didn’t open his eyes. However, the one feeding him stopped fanning him suspiciously. Her intuition was too keen but he stayed quiet and ate as if he wasn’t being stared at.

Chomping down, he checked whether or not he had acquired a new skill. Sure enough, it was there. A new tier 1 skill in his Profession that was already at level 22 that he learnt 4 days ago. But he didn’t bother looking for the description, he wasn’t done.

An hour of real-time break was taken before he tested out the skill. It was no passive.

“This takes up as much mental effort as controlling three models to fight at maximum intensity like their lives depended on it. That is too much.”

Although he didn’t manually control Models to fight anymore, the mental strain required to activate Mana Chassis Internal Desiccation was like controlling 3 complex spells at the same time. For one, this was the primitive method he came up with.

Buckets held together by sheer mental force, and boiling. Then the released energy was his regeneration, and most would be collected within his Preservation Bubble of vitality after Coagulated Mana Repository was filled up and then escaped as excess.

The amount it produced, as expected, was minimal. He had enough experience with skills to know that he probably had a skill that had a scaling of 0.01% per level and no base percentage. It didn’t scale with any stat either. It probably scaled his regeneration directly. He understood enough of what he was doing that he didn’t need a description to tell him what he was doing.

However, any success was huge to him. He was aiming higher.

“Since she seems fine, I can continue onto the next step.” Ebony tried to taste flavour but he was still mostly disconnected from his physical senses, it was a pity that he didn’t even know what kind of sandwich he was eating.

He began to lose connection with his sense of touch in another moment and found himself back into the viewpoint of looking at invisible phantoms of his mental space. He reappeared outside that space and into the view of his mana chassis.

“All the changes I’ll be making from now will happen concurrently with the 52.31 quadrillion mana chassis in my body. Baby steps. Settle on a procedure, finalise it, and then optimise. Question is, can I turn kinetic energy into mana? Probably not. Making more advanced processes would only make it easier for me to turn coagulated mana into useful mana when I want to use it. The rest would still sit as stable slime. It wouldn’t give me more mana, excluding an increase in efficiency. The total amount of mana I have or will produce will still be the same. I would get a skill evolution, and that would in turn increase my mana production. Energy comes from nowhere? Course’ not. Nothing is free. Higher level Fluid Blitz for example, increases my stamina consumption. If I level the future version of this skill, assuming my stats are constant my energy output would increase.

What would it dip into?

For physical skills, the endurance of my body, muscles, bones, tendons, everything undergoes more stress. IF, this becomes a skill and I don’t increase efficiency, simply level it without any refinement. I suppose my mental endurance would be stressed and maybe mana chassis can be stressed. Taking the drawbacks of Mana Chassis Implosion into account, there is a high likelihood that the drawbacks of this skill after overuse would be a temporary reduction in mana regeneration.

But I already have mental endurance in spades, I see no harm. What are the chances I would be forced to spell cast intensely for more than 40 days? I would be out of mana before I can even get to that level of mental exhaustion. Tradeoff, extremely worth it since my Wisdom, linked to mental endurance, would only grow as my Profession levels. And this is all under the assumption that I don’t continue to refine the skills to match my growing skill levels.”

Even after the massive change to his physique where he cut stamina regeneration for mana regeneration, he still had endurance to spare. But he couldn’t afford to lose any more physical endurance, not for the stamina regeneration but for the muscular and skeletal structures’ endurance. Wear and tear was still a thing and too much of that in the midst of that would gradually weaken him.

Being able to physically fight continuously at peak conditions over ten days before exhaustion kicks into his muscles temporarily sets him in stamina regeneration reduction debuff, he didn’t see an issue because his mental endurance was far higher.

Against the Apex Apes, it took almost twenty days of constant spell casting - maintaining his output and input to be equal, before he got a debuff that reduced his mana regeneration. He was only a Master back then.

At that level of exhaustion, even stuffing food into his stomach would not remove the debuff immediately and his weight loss would be crazy. Just not as crazy as Ning Xin’s.

He had no choice but to stop moving or casting unless he was trying to kill himself as even his metabolism wouldn’t be working properly once the debuff was around 70% or more. In fact, even vitality regeneration would be debuffed in a state of starvation but he rarely starved himself after having a spatial bag constantly refilled. Ebony saw it as the body’s self-preservation ability. All three regenerations took energy and this came from food and sustenance. Without intake of food, their regeneration would naturally lower themselves. They had the benefit of notifications to find out a rough gauge of the debuff.

That was also why if he doesn’t train, move or take damage he shouldn’t feel hungry that fast. His intake was still extremely high due to overflowing essences. Producing mana around the clock meant he got hungry normally even with a high Constitution which was a stat that dealt with energy efficiency and sleep cycle. It was thanks to his high Constitution that he didn’t need excessive amounts of food like Ning Xin. And the fact that his Physique made him require less sustenance.

Hence, Ebony didn’t pull any stops and started upgrading the facilities in his mana chassis.

Buckets were reformed into boilers. A container with a small nozzle at the top.

This step alone would have him stuck for some time since he was concurrently changing every one of his factories' constituents.

Outside his mental processing, his body reached for plate after plate to stuff himself. It would’ve been nice if Ning Xin’s aura could increase his metabolism because he was not sensing the increase in energy fast enough. It was quite tiresome to wait an entire month of processing before one second actually passed.

The task of reshaping a bucket into a boiler exceeded his expectations, it was easy. After so much practice of forming a stable structure made up of the same slime, he could move them rather easily and he was already familiar with consecutive success rates when it came to manipulating this slime into a certain form. It took merely 445 years and 10 months.

“The passing of time feels weirdly… more real than before here. Is it because my point of view changed and it's more first person rather than third person? Unless I get into as deep a trance as clockwork, those 280 thousand years didn’t feel that long but these 445 felt heavier. 104 minutes? That’s fast.

Now I need to use most of the free slime and turn them into simple turbines, connected to the boiler. Hmm, do I have enough material? I’ll reduce the boilers’ size if I don’t. I’m glad I studied but I need trial and error for the number of blades, angle of blades, size of inlet and outlet nozzle.”

The next undertaking was far more complex, with moving parts to take into account. The boiler not being able to withstand the build-up of pressure. The facilities were not solidified by mental strength far enough, since the factory material was essentially the same as the energy source being steamed and everything melting. The sticky parts during motion.

Ebony’s first solution to any problems he faced was to put more mental processing power into holding his factory’s form together. The formation of the turbines took a lot of effort but not nearly as much as getting the turbine to work as he intended.

But it was quiet. He was undisturbed here and his body didn’t snap him out of his trance, so he kept working at it. Taking three-hour breaks every three weeks for his body. When he stopped all mental processes, he did not work on anything else. Completely shutting down instead.

He quickly lost track of time again.

He didn’t even snap out of it when his processing speed had a permanent jump. Since he said he would converge his skill set and not diverge, he focussed.

He would make this project succeed, no matter how many failures it would take.