Ebony's Fable

“Is he okay?” Ning Xin asked her friend Mallory.

She was worried, Ebony had been eating as much as a tenth of her daily food intake!

That wasn’t worrisome, but he was just sitting there and his hands never stopped reaching around for food. His mouth never stopped chewing. He was acting even more gluttonous than her!

She swapped out his meals with higher quality meat, denser meat but he paced himself and took smaller bites. Seeing that he wanted something easier to digest, she swapped back to light but consistent meals. Since she wasn’t always here, she packed food and had one of the squires that dealt with logistics to clear and refill the area within his reach regularly.

It made her happy that he kept eating her dishes but she was worried when the scene continued for weeks. It took a lot of persuading and fighting harder to free some time from the Crown Princess’s schedule to take a look but she couldn’t do anything. He was just eating. Except for the occasional steam rising from his body, nothing alarming was occurring. His life force was as stable as a rock.

There wasn’t any leak in mana. Dusk simply regrew in size and regained its mass in response and it was hard to tell if he was making progress when his emotions felt silenced and numbed to her senses.

At the end of the first month after he started his skill creation and training, Dusk was already fully regrown. Knowing him, he probably refilled the Will or whatever or it wouldn’t have been able to grow back to this size. She also knew there was a limit to the amount of Will at any one point in time until the dissipation rate equalled the rate that he filled it with.

She understood Will as the same thing as her Intent. She couldn’t utilise it to produce physical effects like Ebony but she could scare the living daylights out of creatures. The so-called ‘killing intent’ was palpable to any creature when she used it. To weaker people with low Perception, they believed this to be nonsense but anyone past a certain level and experience with monsters knew that, it wasn’t a load of make-believe.

Journeymen with enough experience fighting with their lives on the line would slowly be able to sense thick, unspoken death threats.

She could concentrate and exude the very same intent around her, directing it to a certain extent. ‘Scaring’ went as far as making them tremble and even stun them on the spot for a good fraction depending on her target’s strength. That fraction of a second was usually all she needed unless her opponent exceeded her capabilities.

It tired her out greatly and she could do nothing like creating a Domain with it, not even in her Atrophy state. As unwilling as she was, she likely needed to be a King before it would be strong enough to manifest physical phenomena. Ebony was the freak of nature here, not her.

She wasn’t an overthinker like Ebony, as long as something worked, that was enough for her. No need to think about the hows. It was enough for her to confirm that Intent was linked to Vitality like Will was linked to Wisdom and that her ability to use it would grow in time.

When Ebony said he would go into a trance, she expected a few days of inactivity and not being able to communicate.

Not 6 months and counting.

‘Sister Jing too, not a single word. Grandma too. Don’t even know if they are alright. We are now officially out of our secret stash of food and have to rely on Imperial rations…I should not try to leave and restock our supply. He would worry. Luckily my cooking improved and I can make use of most ingredients to their limits. I’ll make invigorating dishes that enhance vitality. I’ll wipe his hands too…’ The last line of thought got herself flushed to her ears.

Although Ebony had a large repertoire of songs, some people had to leave the area because the constant ringing in their ears either made them sleepy or go crazy after long enough. They either had to get out of the fortress or get inside a special building like the magic towers that were built to seal out strong vibrations and sound.

The music wasn’t a problem, even if it never stopped. There wasn’t any overflowing wisdom to worry about either when Dusk took every drop of mana, and his clones occasionally stopped by to recharge themselves. But there was something none of them took into account that became obvious over time.

The effects of overflowing Endurance. It was something that was close to a legend because there were no obvious effects from a difference in endurance between people. Even comparing a Grandmaster to an unclassed person. It irked her that some people were doing research on him and asking the knights closest to where Dusk sat how they felt.

Warriors weren’t that bothered, it made their hearts race, they got a little breathless and felt a little more tired than usual. Mages were affected in the same way but way worse. After a few months of observation, they deemed that it was long term exposure that brings out the effect of overflowing Endurance. From what they understood, Ebony’s stamina regeneration was only increased by the Meditation skill.

She didn’t tell them that he had the Fortification for stamina regeneration.

Because the scholars thought that he was working on deep meditation, they assumed he had a very high level meditation that increased his stamina regeneration. They weren’t wrong and as far as she knew, he wasn’t currently working on a skill that increased his stamina regeneration any further so their guess of long-term exposure before any effects were felt sounded reasonable.

The discovery was that it was also impossible to guard against at the moment. Since few people could actively and accurately manipulate stamina. When warriors used skills such as ‘slash’ that were buffed by skill levelled and not just pure muscle, they consumed stamina but this was done as naturally as breathing. There was no active manipulation of stamina.

When it came to life force and mana difference, it was something people could get used to or even block using the right technique. Such as thickening the mental defences using mana and the same for life force against life force. But stamina?

It quickly showed that no one had a proper solution that worked for everyone. The bigger issue was the lasting effects of overflowing stamina. While the effects of mana and life force take place immediately, they also get removed the moment one gets out of range. Stamina seems to work differently. It took an extended exposure before the effects kicked in but even after leaving a certain range, the damage was already done. The exhaustion, breathlessness and irregular heartbeats did not stop immediately.

They were fortunate the range of overflowing stamina was extremely small before it completely dissipated into the surroundings compared to mana. People just had to move one block away from Ebony.

‘When we duel, I have to go all out as fast as possible. What can I do about my charging period? It takes too much time.’ Ning Xin added to the fact that a battle of attrition with Ebony was turning from difficult to impossible.

She could only bank on her energy pools being fantastically large thanks to her blood being containers of energy and her mask turning hyper-efficient with energy transfer and conversion. She hadn’t felt full for a year because her mask took all the blood that she was feeding it before her body recouped the blood loss and continued to do so. It could do more than store blood fully concentrated with sustenance and energy.

Her mask might as well be a second heart for her because she could cast her Core Skill using her mask instead of her actual heart. This already reduced the time that she needed to charge energy to cast her Core Skill but it didn’t grow as quickly as the amount of energy she could utilise at any one time. She could increase that speed as her proficiency with her mask increased.

She was a little bothered that increasing her stats barely increased her top, physical speed now. The resistance she faced as her movement and attack speed increased was forcing her to slow down and greater acceleration seemed hard to produce even with, say, 50 levels worth of stat points.

The soldiers were a bit silly for moving away from Ebony. She simply walked up to him, told him that his stamina was affecting people and asked him to find a way. Three weeks later, his overflowing stamina didn’t affect people negatively anymore. She bet 100% that he used Will to tell his stamina not to do anything against friendly targets or something like that because even he shouldn’t be able to manipulate stamina to such a strong degree.

Will was his solution to bend anything to his…will and it worked best on himself.

Dusk had a denser crown of plum petals and empty plums than ever before at the end of the fourth month. It was also around then that Ebony’s rate of eating increased but he took more breaks. She could tell because the numbness that he was expressing would warm up, telling her that he woke up from a deeper trance for a moment. He was getting tired more often.

In the fifth month, Oplot returned from the portal he walked in. Reported that he destroyed the Venom Legion’s Powerhouses. The Venom Legion was the sub-species that caused the Imperial Army the most problems and it was also the one that Oplot could deal with the easiest since the Venom Legion wasn’t particularly fast, strong or tough. With The Indestructible’s current weak offensive ability, it was the easier target that he could guarantee a successive raid on the opponent’s storage of Emperor-ranked stat providers. He was not afraid of poison, acid or the like and he might be able to build a storage of poison mana to use against the others though Ning Xin wasn’t sure how that worked.

Without a huge portion of their powers, the True Kin of the Venom Legion was excessively weak. Like a Grade 2 Emperor or lower. They retreated and their portal was only open for the Saint to recover the rest of the Venom Legion that was spread across the battlefield.

The seers reported the True Kin of the Venom Legion being scolded and persuaded to stay by the Necrochitins but the Venom Legion’s Saintess was insistent on leaving for better waters to recover her losses. They were well aware that Oplot didn’t do anything to them because of who they represented.

Mallory had a hunch that the Saintesses of the Tetramyths were all very weak physically. She assumed that they were all part of the Powerhouses of even greater Kins of their race. Perhaps their stats were syphoned for Demi-Gods or the Goddess of War herself through their Spirit Nexus. However, the Crown Princess debunked her theory because if they were all connected it would mean all the Tetramyth True Kins could be backed by the entire race worth of Saints and above and would be nigh-invincible should they redistribute the Powerhouse accordingly.

It would also mean that Elcra had long been under the watch of the Goddess of War. If the connection between their innumerable Kin was that strong, they would’ve had enough ants to overrun their planet a hundred times over by now. They had more individuality and independence than one would think from the type of race they were.

Oplot didn’t take a long break before he walked into his next target, the Arcanite Cortex which had the best magic resistance and protected a lot of the weaker members from the Magic Towers’ bombardment. No one could stop him. He could walk there under as many attacks as physically possible and he would arrive at the portal completely unscathed.

Ning Xin pitied and respected him and the path he set on.

It was too hard to grow. When one got as durable as him in a fully defensive set of skills, he wouldn’t level unless he got damaged past the limit of his skills. It took someone as strong as her to make him bleed in an unprotected state.

How much stronger did one have to be to push him to use a defensive skill?

How much stronger to break past his defences to put pressure on his skills to level?

It was nothing she had to be concerned about, she was just moody right now. Her best friend Athena had been here with her till very recently when she hit level 425 and said she was bored, needed a better-paying job and wanted new targets to shoot or her archery and close ranged fighting skill would deteriorate to specialise against ants. So she returned for a well-deserved vacation and was going to take normal Quest Hall jobs again.

Ning Xin could understand that the Tetramyth were hardy to the average soldier because of the level difference but they were quite pathetic as an opponent for technique training. The problem with high-tier skills was the difficulty in levelling them required more than mundane repetition, not that repetition wasn’t necessary but they required constant refining and improvement.

So her level had been increasing fast but her skill levels weren’t, except for newer skills she had been picking up.

Hence, after hemming and hawing since Ebony’s clones kept watching her she decided to slip past them as her Intuition told her that Ebony might leave her behind. She didn’t have as strong a tendency to put herself in danger compared to him but she did love a good challenge.

She barged into some of the soldiers’ meetings with the old man Wilson multiple times in the past, to get information on the Emperor-ranked movements their seers were keeping track of. The old man with a good old club was actually quite amazing. With her Intuition, she could tell that he would probably beat multiple Minor Generals but only those who were Knights.

It was slightly harder to gauge a mage because there was far more variation in their abilities. Dark magic for example was quite a killer against most people. It completely rips senses away, both physical and magical. Supposedly, even Ebony with his high perception wasn’t able to see when dark magic was employed. However, it didn’t matter to him since he could fight through sheer instinct and muscle memory. Even blind, he could hear and smell and that was enough for him against unskilled fighters.

Dark magic users could easily kill far stronger or higher-level targets if they were careful and had proper training.

Light magic was low power, but basically unmatched in speed. The power of light magic can be increased through simple weaponry making them very suitable for fortress defence because the caster didn’t have to be strong or high level. As long as they had good weapons that increased the power and heat of light magic, a low-level light mage could be as effective as a magic tower in terms of firepower but not sustainability.

Ice magic, needless to say, was universally good against most organic and even inorganic creatures. A Journeyman or Master with minimal skill training and just ice mana expulsion can help change the flow of a battle for the knights, or better yet if they were good enough to target joints or freeze a target and immobilise them. Regardless of the evolution stage, every element held its advantages. So not even Journeymen were pushed away and could be found underground, within the fortress.

They had no business past the fortress barriers but they were not useless, especially if they were a mage and even more so if they had affinity with rarer elements.

She had hoped merchants were allowed to traverse between the fortress and the surface to buy the services of one or two caravans to resupply. Unfortunately all the food and weapon resupplies were handled by the army. As surprising as it was, this pest control wasn’t common knowledge to the Empire’s citizens yet. Amazing.

There were many freelancers here, and many even returned to the surface after a period of hunting. Yet, this war wasn’t the talk of the Capital.

Even so, it was none of Ning Xin’s business. She didn’t care whether something so big-scaled was public knowledge or not. She only knew that she confirmed the location of the Silversonic Tetramyth’s Emperors. There was a camp of 30 of them just under 6,000 km away. Ebony was right, this was an easier method to judge distance.

Originally without any enhancement, it might not even take her an hour to get there. At the cost of excessive and wasteful stamina consumption. There was plenty of interference on the ground which would slow her down. She could fly there, but her flight was lacking compared to her sprinting.

However, the damn Elven spell that made everything tougher to prevent the ceiling and floor from collapsing made even the air harder. It was so hard, her speed was greatly impeded by air resistance. Irksome didn’t even sum up how suffocated she felt by the ridiculous skill.

It must be tier 6, backed by my multiple castors who may have similar skills that were tier 4 to 5.

Knowing how many of the Elves who cast the spell were rather old, she would not be surprised if they had managed to get a whole group of them to have a tier 5 version.

Unable to protest, it was what helped prevent the Emperor-ranked Tetramyth from jumping across the entire battlefield and chomping on their fortress barriers. It was a skill that impeded strong forces while lower level people weren’t affected by it as much.

‘If they are such ‘amazing’ mages, why don’t they limit the effects to only the ants!’ Ning Xin complained when she remembered overhearing them humblebragging to the other race’s Nobles. She had been too busy eating at that time in her convalescence state so she didn’t burst out in anger when the sudden spell caught her off guard in battle. The Elves didn’t even bother informing the freelancers that they were about to cast a spell that could harm both sides.

On the topic of Elves, she didn’t like them. There weren’t many of them in proportion to the population but there were many of them in the high-ranking meetings. They were actively showing disgust whenever they spotted her, especially in her Atrophy state that wasn’t natural.

She didn’t care about the disgust she felt from them, it was how they treated Ebony as if he was some natural treasure. It went beyond admiration to near worship amongst the older generation. Those who could feel that Ebony was made up of mana itself. The reason they had a strong affinity with plants and nature was because most plants were highly attuned and receptive to mana. The reason she hated that was because they weren’t even treating him like a person. How dare they sneak in fruits and place them beside him when she wasn’t around!

As the one in charge of his food and without a stockpile of fresh fruits, she felt as if she lost to them.

Ning Xin prepared a large batch of dry meals that were easy to consume, rich rolls were the last of her stock but she would give it up for him. Wraps were the most abundant. And although she hated to feed him lazy meals, she made smoothies that contained mashed-up energy ration bars that the army distributed and canned fruits which was also a luxury item she got her hands on. And, as much as she hated the Elves for trying to get a win over her, she pushed the fresh fruits closer to him.

Learning from Ebony, she also got a contract for money. Not as much as he did, but contribution-based assessment got her quite a high pay. No matter how many ants she killed and how fast she did it, it wasn’t as high of a contribution as increasing the mana and stamina regeneration rate of tens of thousands of people. The number also increased over time, a sign that his mana regeneration increased enough to help more people.

As a proud woman, how could she eat off his money all the time? Her abilities were more than enough to feed herself and more. Her negotiation abilities were lacking, but her intimidation factor helped. Being able to sense emotions meant she could feel the fear everyone had around her with greater clarity. If her presence could get the Generals on their tip-toes, those in charge of mana ores and logistics were hardly able to talk.

So she used a partial Atrophy state to help her chances. She wasn’t smart with money but she wasn’t a fool either.

After being slightly ashamed of taking advantage of a trance-state Ebony and wiping his hands clean, possibly with skewed motives besides hygiene, she used a bit of mana and turned her body into flames. Getting rid of the Clones’ watch was the first step.

Firebird Heathen’s Imitation Composition didn’t get her far but in this form, vibrations, gravity or ice wouldn’t be able to sense her. Making her invisible to Ebony’s physically blind clones. The Fortress forcefully absorbs all ambient mana so there was no mana sense for him to sense a bundle of ‘foreign’ mana either.

Reforming from her mask down using a ton of energy, her bodysuit and clothes were summoned along with her transmutation back into flesh. Although the consumption of the Heartblood Essense of a Phoenix gave her the bare minimum ‘affinity’ to do so, it shocked her to be able to do what she could. As if she wasn’t a physical being anymore.

However, it was temporary and extremely intense in energy consumption of all three resources: life force, stamina and mana. She would never use it without a good reason since the normal consumption was over 95% of all three resources' natural maximum. With her mask, resource capacity was greatly increased but she needed to activate her mask which caused half a blood disk to bubble and start rotating like a saw on her face. There were also drawbacks because she was not a Phoenix, her Physique couldn’t handle the stress of transmutation and was still a work in progress.

No matter, she was glad her keen Intuition made it so that she was pretty sure that changing into a bundle of fire mana would not take away her ability to return to normal.

Oh…and it was excruciating the first time she did it. Worse than her melting her flesh and bones off before regenerating them over and over again when she ate the thing.

She also felt that the fire mana that she turned into was practically foreign to the fire mana that she was so familiar with. It was uniquely her and felt nothing like normal flames in many aspects. For one, she was sure that even if an extremely powerful fire mage was near her when she turned into flames, there was no way they could manipulate her-turned-flame.

No matter what her Intuition told her, it was too dangerous to play around with so she didn’t overuse it and so far only used it to turn a small portion of her body into flames when she faced an unavoidable attack.

‘A Phoenix should be practically unkillable…that Spear Saint guy, is dangerous. I guess depending on how you see it, the gluttonous solar-blooded phoenix isn’t completely dead.’

The Silversonic were the only ones fast enough to give her some trouble excluding the Necrochitins’ Emperors who seemed to be quite a bit stronger, likely thanks to a far larger or more numerous Powerhouses.

They were also the only ones whose usage of leg or arm fighting was similar to blades and might even be considered a fighting style around tier 2 compared to a warrior. Their exoskeletons wouldn’t melt on collision with her swords which made them a viable target that could fight back.

There was sufficient pressure to breathe down on her neck and a threat to her life. That’s why she sought them.

She had always been more of a pure, close combatant. Numerous enhancements ran through her body, she didn’t spare any mental effort to fling spells around except for her helper blood disk but that spell was almost fully autonomous.

She ran across the army without any enhancement lest Ebony’s clones notice the obvious heat source. Halfway down, she burst out of the army’s vanguard and into the range where freelancers move about thinning the horde. There were also sporadic squads of soldiers who did their best to strategically gather the horde.

Past that, she was in the range of the ultra-far range, random bombardment. Due to the distance, it was mostly Elven Archers and Magic Tower’s enchanted cannons. Pure beams of mana were a waste and more suited for closer ranges. With how spread out the field was, she wouldn’t be hit by a stray arrow or cannon unless she was unlucky and blind.

And even further past that, she slipped out of range of the Empire’s contact. This was the region where the number of soldiers and freelancers was less than a hundred at any one point in time. A small fraction of the Empire’s numbers.

It was around these areas where Kings amongst the Tetramyths were sent to gang on people that came out far enough to hunt them. They were protected by the True Kin to some extent but the True Kin wouldn’t always come out to save them. Thanks to that, the Empire couldn’t tell if the Tetramyths had any special treatment towards certain groups of ants to funnel training and resources towards.

Another day, another hunt.

“My sword art still has gaps if I can get hit by a sword-style equivalent.” Ning Xin didn’t make any excuses like being outnumbered and faced many more legs and mandibles. Since it was to train, she didn’t force herself to charge enough energy to get as fast as her opponents. It wasn’t cost-effective after a certain point.

She had nicks around her torso and underarms. They were good at targeting legs but she was also good at protecting her mobility. That opened her up to attacks on less vital areas.

Although hard to think straight in her Atrophy state, it was already ingrained in her to keep a good gauge of her energy reserves. With enough of it, she could still increase her physical stats. Firebird Heathen's increasing levels made it possible for her to withstand truly unimaginable amounts of energy.

If it ever gets as high level as her first Core Skill Rampaging Immortal’s Pulse, she might get a better sense of Immortal’s Pulse limit sooner than she had hoped. So far, she had always been limited by her body but she wasn’t naive to think that she could gather unlimited power.

‘I still don’t know what Ebony’s third Core Skill is. It should be empty, I wonder what he’s going to shift up. Maybe his new skill? It would make sense but…I have a feeling he wouldn’t do that. Rather than 2 similar skills, it's better to make them compatible and support each other like mine. I shored up my weaknesses with Firebird Heathen’s Imitation Composition and my Core Skills are a complete cycle working together.

So what is the weakness Ebony has that he needs to shore up?

He has mana regeneration and a Domain, pretty much universal skills and two of those basically don’t have many weak spots like my skill set had. Another support would make sense since Domains are pure power for mages but his Domain is just significantly inefficient, otherwise, 1 support skill is enough to support a Domain assuming they are of the same tier.

His mana compression? He would’ve done that long ago if that’s the case.

Flames…will he start to incorporate one of his cold fires skills into his Core?’

Ning Xin thought that it was too early. The Xengs, or rather, her grandma taught her that a section of 3 was used as a general divider and she taught Ebony the same.

Such as the difference between tier 1 to 3 and tier 4 to 6 were classified separately.

The same was used for Core Skills.

She was taught to keep the first 3 Core Skills to be as universally useful as possible. No elements, no specific offensive attack or spell. Something that enhanced all parts of themselves.

Only from the 4th, should she start to consider having a Core offensive, defensive or evasive skill.

By then, the first 3 core skills would practically enhance every other skill they would learn. It was also around that time when one would run out of Class, Sub-Class and Profession Skill slots.

The Xengs were handed a few pieces of advice from The First. One of them was to get their 3 core skills to work together, and then attempt to merge them when they were Emperors and all three were tier 6. It was supposed to merge into something special. Special didn’t say much because her grandmother hadn’t succeeded yet, along with everyone else but their 3 clan heads who were Saints.

It was common sense to get skills that compound on each other so this knowledge didn’t mean much to either of them right now.

Generic Skills would not show an obvious difference to their abilities unless they were tier 4 and above or whatever tier respective to their evolutionary stage.

So the main addition to one’s power after Grandmasters with 3 Core Skills heavily depended on the choice of their Core Skill. For example, if her 4th Core Skill was Gospel’s Perforation which was her active sword thrust skill it would turn into her greatest weapon since it would take barely ten years to evolve it to tier 5.

The difference between tiers 3 and 4 was already huge and it only increased from then on. Not just the scaling, but the base refinement would all be over 1000%. If her notes weren’t wrong, the minimal base refinement effect for a tier 5 active skill was 2000%.

So tier 4 skills had to be refined up to 2000% base effect before an evolution. It was not easy.

While both of them were young and their levels were low, the advantages of a Core Skill weren’t that obvious. It supposedly shined when one has reached their limits and over a longer period. While the rest of their skills are stagnant, their Core Skills would almost always see slight refinements every few years.

Having grown up slightly, even she felt the years passing extremely quickly. Their perspective of time skewed closer to how older and stronger people thought. 1 year felt as short as a month. The change in sleep schedule and biological requirements affected this perception. Staying in her convalescence state, she wouldn’t go hungry for days if she didn’t exercise. Of course, it was during this state that she stuffed herself with as much food as possible to stockpile energy.

A two-hour battle took her an entire day to extricate herself back into the safe region of magical and arrow bombardment.

When she got back, it was chaos within the fortress.

“Which idiot directed hostility!” She yelled and charged to parry the unstoppable punch at a knight. Her blades screeched when they pushed Ebony’s arms aside. Switching states between Atrophy and Convalescence took time and she was already halfway into rest mode since she got into the fortress to see a frozen wasteland with numerous frozen people around Dusk.

Dusk had its roots tied around Ebony’s legs, she did not expect that. It followed Ebony’s Will, if unconscious, it should do the same thing and attack the people around them. But it didn’t.

So this should be a completely unconscious movement from him and Dusk is aware that it’s not what he wants.

“W-we didn’t do anything. He just stood up all of a sudden and started hitting people, then he sealed everyone around him in ice. No-no one’s dead. I think.”

Ning Xin didn’t have the leeway to look at the speaker who was one of the elite knights Ebony was coaching on footwork. If he didn’t kill anyone, then it wasn’t anyone else's fault and nothing bad happened. This was Ebony causing trouble.

With unerring precision, he was fully focused on her. Thanks to Dusk, his legs were restrained but not completely. It gave her time to go back into atrophy but not deep enough before he took a huge step forward and sunk his elbow into her sternum right after a parry. One of her swords didn’t parry anything…except an afterimage or his ice magic feint.

Turning just her chest into flames in time, she was still knocked back by the shockwave and tumbled through a few walls. The buildings here were all made from durable materials, it hurt her more than the elbow strike.

She was not the first to be sent spiralling across the streets. There were rows of debris with knights that had dented armour. Meaning he wasn’t using sound magic or the armour should be shattered into pieces.

‘I knew it, he has a proper martial art mastery now. And it’s tier 4 Art. No other way he could send me flying without using any mana.’ Ebony’s body was harder than steel thanks to containing fully compressed mana but without any active enhancement, he shouldn’t have the strength to send her flying through walls. Unless he had a tier 4 Art and his momentum-based physical enhancement.’

Her enhancements came roaring on but she remained in half convalescence. Since he seemed to limit magic other than freezing some people up, he was not a big threat.

She rubbed her sore back, “you’ve been holding back against me, and now you’re suddenly rough with me.”

Despite staying twice as fast as him, she found herself locked with both her arms behind her back and pushed against the floor within a minute.

‘We’re both Art wielders. How can the difference be so big?’ She bulled herself out of the hold with a small pulse and raised her strength further. Thankfully, she didn’t require any fire enhancement or the surroundings would be in danger but Ebony had his legs held down and she was still knocked down?

She sheathed her twin babies, this was not a fight.

This guy needed a good whack on the head to wake up.

To do that, his hard head needed a heavy knock. Such as the unliftable wok that was almost 5 times heavier than Icicle.

With Dusk holding Ebony down, she took out her large trusty wok and backhanded it at his face and upper body.

Dusk let go and allowed him to fly back, smashing into the tree’s unbreakable trunk.

“Hmph, I’ll let you go with that.” She rubbed her poor back again.