Ebony's Fable

“So do you know what’s up with him?” Ning Xin asked.

A few healers surrounded the ice dome that contained Ebony shadowboxing. It looked like he was fighting himself, no clones, just his afterimages overlapping. The healers were quivering around her and it was getting annoying but she was already changing states as fast as she could.

“We know that he was deep within his mind. The mind mages are convinced that he was using a similar technique of putting oneself physically within their mind. Having stayed over 6 months without moving his body, he might be relieving the deepest parts of his memories. And…it’s hard to believe but this movement of his is pure muscle memory, he is not conscious yet.”

Ning Xin glared at the whisperers who called him a monster. So what if he beat the knights with pure muscle memory and was doing it completely blind? It was only natural. He could play with a person with tier 4 sword mastery, these knights who only had tier 3 sword and shield mastery were no different from babies flailing their limbs.

Dusk was unsealing the frozen soldiers and buildings while his clones were cleaning up while some studied the main Ebony.

Two clones stared at her as if waiting for an explanation for her disappearance but didn’t say anything. She did come back safely after all. Even if they didn’t say anything, she knew these two had long found her and helped extricate her out of enemy territory while staying hidden.

“Since I’m not harming anyone, just leave me alone.” Clone Ebony decided that the trouble main Ebony had caused did not deem it necessary to try to reconnect their Will and wake himself up.

“Why do you think we’re doing that? Aren’t I supposed to be creating Marsh’s Grove Conduit? It should have nothing to do with physical movement.”

“The healers should be right then, I don’t know what nonsense physically going into somewhere called mindspace they are talking about but we’ll get an update on that when we wake up. Maybe we’re craving physical movement? Or our Conditioning has started to drop in levels?”

Ning Xin zoned out to the Ebony clones talking. They ‘felt’ like Ebony but she didn’t like it because it confuses her to feel multiple exact same emotions. They weren’t perfect either and the emotions she felt from them were odd compared to a normal person. Not the emotions themselves but the way she perceived it.

So even looks and power aside, she could differentiate the real one from the clones.

She followed her scent and Intuition and found the catalyst for Ebony’s sudden movement. By the accounts of the people who got frozen first, they were a group of people who began their training not too far from him. That was all.

‘His mind is exhausted, so it’s getting haywired and his body moves reflexively, but he doesn’t even know what the danger is because he went past his mental stamina limit. So he’s actually punching at phantom danger because he’s too tired.’ Being able to directly sense that numbed-emotioned Ebony had slightly arisen, she could guess and her Intuition would reaffirm her guesses.

Her Intuition was truly bordering foresight.

Ning Xin thought that he was acting very cute at the moment but she was also worried that he would start to injure himself past exhaustion. Mental damage was not something easy to heal.

‘I’ll wake him up if he doesn’t wake himself up in 6 hours. Why 6 hours? Whatever, that feels best.’ She prepared to make herself some food, tired as she was, she didn’t want to eat rockhard rations.

Gobbling up ant flesh which was the most abundant and the densest nutrient source in this place for 4 hours straight, Ebony woke himself up from his trance but was fast asleep. They knew since Dusk pulled the body into its shelter room.

At the end of the 4 hours, Ning Xin felt her heart skip a beat. He took a huge leap ahead. However, she was surprisingly at peace with that. Even a little excited. Her heart skipped at something else.

Premonition, that’s what it felt like. A bad one that she couldn’t stop that wasn’t related to his health.

‘Maybe having too strong of an intuition isn’t all that good.’ Sitting crossed leg, she put one up and rested her elbow on it. Laughing internally, she understood what helplessness felt like when her bad premonition didn't want to disperse.

When one of Ebony’s clones tried to reconnect, the clone fell forward and crashed into the floor with sonic repulsion on, creating a small crack on the stone floor. The rest of the clones couldn’t get the casualty to wake up and stopped themselves from connecting to Ebony.

‘He went overboard.’ Ning Xin walked up to the tree and walked in without hindrance. Sitting down, she placed Ebony’s head on her lap and caressed his hair. The slight wave of elation from him tickled her and infected her with the same emotion.

❅❅❅

“Hwa?”

Ebony felt his throat rumble. He heard a roaring laughter that was in slow motion and it pierced his head. Reflexively, he tried to cover his ears but then a sensation of vertigo made him slip and he rolled off something soft onto cold hard ground.

He heard words but couldn’t put them together as if every single word was stretched out forever.

Flailing around, his body protected itself but he found himself tumbling in the cramped space. He’d never felt such intense vertigo before. Nothing was straight, his eyes saw black, white and red but it was just a mesh of colours with no outline.

His limbs were held down tighter than he could fight back. It felt like ages before he calmed down.

‘Du-Dusk is-ho-holding me down. Eve-everything is fine.’ Ebony stopped thinking, even his thoughts were coming together properly. His sense of touch was just as hazy, feeling hot at times and cold at others. His clothes burned his skin. The air felt like needles scrubbing across his skin. Breathing felt like he was in Hoarfrost Glades again.

With Dusk calming him down, he fell unconscious not long after.

After a period of blankness, Ebony found himself back in the core of his mind.

“Whazad. Fah, mah speh is weard hear too.” Ebony heard his voice repeat his thoughts out loud.

He found Dusk in his mindspace and lay against it. If it was a mind problem, he just had to meditate for some time. Since his perceived time here was a lot faster than the passage of time for his body, he didn’t worry about a deadline and just set a wake-up call for when his mind healed.

Going into quiet meditation is different from going into a working trance. It was similar to sleep and he could go deeper making a sleep more restful at times. With his proficiency, that was all the time.

Ebony wasn’t unfamiliar with the feeling of closing his eyes and opening it right after, as if blinking but a whole night or two had passed. This time was no different.

However, he woke up completely refreshed and the loudspeaker of his thoughts went back to normal. Checking with his bioclock, his jaw loosened.

“220,320 years of meditation? Isn’t that over 30 days outside. My mind was so injured it needed that long to recover? What have I been doing during my trance? My memory is hazy but there shouldn’t be a need to remember, I was only rebuilding and refining the skill. I probably only woke up because I finally succeeded or did I get too injured before that?

I might as well stay here and check myself out, get my bearings before I wake up properly.”

Ebony habitually stretched his body to diagnose his condition even though this wasn’t his physical body. The first thing he did was link up with Dusk and get a situational report together with a more accurate time check.

“Huh? I went into meditation only over 13 real days ago, not 30? But my perceived time is 220 thousand years for sure. Ah, I see. Calculated Hunch evolved, my speed of thought accelerated and so did my perceived time. Let’s see…haha, I was putting aside the simulation skill to focus on Marsh Grove Conduit but I still got it while refining my factories. Partial tier 4, that’s more than I hoped for for a generic skill.

Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge - Simulate combat within your Battleforge, battles border near-perfect accuracy based on recorded data when you are one of the combatants being simulated. Without any data, instinctive simulations have reduced accuracy. Precision of simulations increases by 450% + 10.0% of Intelligence while speed increases by 100% + 5.0% of Intelligence per level.

“This is image training, corporeal-illusory. I see, training in my Battleforge is almost no different from my body undergoing the training as long as my Conditioning stays constant. Since I have total control over my body and my mind or mana can take control over my body too, it laid the foundation for how effective image training can become. It’s cool that higher-tier skills give me a better understanding of the skill by feeling rather than word description. Then, ‘Instinctive simulations’ should refer to my guess based on the aura, gait and appearance of someone else. Skills sure are whimsical, my factory creation had nothing to do with battle, but this is a battle simulation. Reduced accuracy is vague but it should still be better than before. Though I already knew Calculated Hunch was also my mental acceleration skill, this confirms it. Precision might have helped my factory building as I go through fewer errors. Speed, I didn’t notice in my trance since I was disconnected with my body and I still perceive a minute as a minute.

Dusk, what’s the date?

I see.”

Ebony received the answer to his question as soon as he thought of the question. Suddenly a version of him spawned beside him.

“You’re number Twelve. Cool, so this mindspace or whatever is also like a physical location where our or my Will meets up. Nice, my information transfer is a lot faster between clones and Dusk this way.”

The clone didn’t talk, there was no need to. It was him, and he was it. The moment the clone entered, information started to transfer into his mind but it was a lot slower than he remembered it to be until he realised that this shouldn’t be the case if he wasn't ‘physically’ present.

Mindspace was the term the clone transmitted to him from the healers that specialised in mental injuries, they were almost always mind mages as well as healers. This should be his mindspace. Being able to see things from this point of view wasn’t a special skill but it was an acquired ability through targeted practice and usually only Grand Mind Mages make use of.

Grand Mind Mages could enter other peoples' mindspace to mend, protect or attack their minds straight directly. They needed to be able to go through a person or creature’s natural defence before they could enter. Unless the target could use active mental defences which was rare. That was all Ebony Twelve learnt about mindspace. The stingy mages never liked to share too much about their abilities.

“Anyway, 6 months 13 days 4 hours 12 minutes and 41 seconds passed excluding the 13 days I went back to sleep. Calculated hunch evolved two months ago. Including skill level scaling midway and evolution how much ti- Oh wait, let's see how fast it is. How much time did I spend in a trance including the before I got the tier 1 version?

Nice, 7 seconds of thought. That’s pretty much instantaneous in real time but this is rather simple arithmetic so it can’t really count. 1,797,082 years is rather unbelievable but it’s just a number and that’s not how much time I aged. Meh.

So that’s why I short-circuited. Lost my senses. Lost my bearings. And had to be knocked out for 13 days. I lazed around for 13 days…so did I succeed?” Ebony brought up the notifications and he started looking from the latest to the oldest.

‘Ting’ ‘Ubiquitous Providence bestows you Natural Potential of equivalent value an Echelon 1, Order 9 Unique Skill has bestowed upon the Ubiquitous Providence.’

‘Ting’ ‘Ubiquitous Providence is studying your Unique Skill. It has been recorded. Incomplete state recognised. Temporary Echelon: 1

Temporary Order: 9’

‘Ting’ ‘Ubiquitous Providence notices you.’

“Curious…” Ebony did not expect that message to be the first and latest notifications he saw to be as confounding as it was, he was just here to check the progress of his new skill.

‘Ting’ ‘You have created and are the holder of a Unique skill.’

‘Mireloom Chassis Engine (Advanced Prototype, Unique) - ’

“That’s a first. So all my previous skills aren’t unique? What defines unique? Is it incomplete because it’s an advanced prototype? Also, ubiquitous providence sounds big. I wonder if this system of power is referred to as that?” His thoughts stopped before he even read the rest. If he took the word unique’s hard definition it would mean one and only.

Most of his skills were self-created but a lot of them do the same thing as skills with slightly different names. His meditation was learnt from his father, martial arts from his mother. Freezing flames were rare, but he took it from Ful and they had a whole race of plants that should have been able to use it. His Domain was unique to him but never prompted a notification about it. Ebony didn’t have enough information to determine what defines Unique in this case.

As for what Ubiquitous Providence was, he honestly didn’t care. It was just like during the time celestial bodies noticed him. Whatever that meant.

However, natural potential?

Now that was huge. He just didn’t know how much of it but it probably related to the echelon and order. Not that he knew what those are other than a form of classification.

‘Mireloom Chassis Engine (Advanced Prototype, Unique) - An original. Using the properties of your race’s traits, a functioning engine with and within your mana chassis is set up with highly adept mental and mana manipulation. Mana and muscle memory had been ingrained and segregational mental processing prowess is used to run the engine at any time without burdening main mental facilities. Passive activation and operation consistently consume a static 30% of your mental processing capabilities unless forcefully shut down for redistribution. Excess coagulated mana fuels your mireloom chassis engine and increases your mana regeneration rate by 10% + 0.5% per level. Overflowing mana’s tendency to coagulate increases by 100% and grows the mireloom. Constructed mireloom chassis increases the stability of your coagulated mana by 300% when the skill is in operation and under the effects of dynamic mental hold.’

“Long. but all it does is increase my mana regeneration at the cost of almost a third of my mental abilities? Does that make me cast slower? It shouldn’t, it might reduce how many spells I can control at the same time depending on the complexities of said spells.

One-third is a lot. I see. I did not manage to build it according to the design I had in mind, so it’s just a prototype in terms of design but it already works. Tendency should be referring to an increase in coagulation. As long as I don’t touch my repository’s compressed mana, I’m always sitting on excess so my factory should run even in battle. The factory is hammered into place that’s why it becomes even harder to control. It would make it nearly impossible to use coagulated mana in battle but I rarely do so this is a good trade-off. Just by design, I increased my mana regeneration by 10%. It’s not efficient considering it uses up 30% of my mental power. And it’s static, so increasing Intelligence wouldn’t help. And no mana capacity, that should be related to the growth of the mireloom so I need to give it some time?

I’ll call it a success for now.

I wonder if Unique skill is what the Xengs know as the special skill they get if they merge 3 of their core skills. It would make sense to aim for. Free natural potential. Assuming they are referring to the same thing, I already have it.”

Ebony checked the rest of his notifications, hoping that there were no goofy happenings like his skill taking the third Core Skill spot. While doing so, he checked his status.

“Unique Skill is a different category altogether. It’s placed above Class but below Core Skill. Knowing Core Skills, the different categories probably don’t change anything obvious. So far, all it got me was natural potential and that wouldn’t be useful till my next evolution.” Ebony thought that 182 levels in the skill in 6 months wasn’t too bad.

“How do I wake up prop-” and with that, he found his body dispersing and before long his eyes blinking awake.

He was under a blanket with a white tiger plushie and the owner of the plushie hugging it beside him. Fortunately, she was dressed but her terrible sleeping posture had her left leg locked under his own and her hair almost drowned him. It was freezing cold, enough for mist to form around them. Barely any light was allowed through Dusk’s bomb shelter and it was more cramped than he remembered. Too many pillows and bolsters surrounded them.

‘Is this her way of nursing?’ He looked up at the ceiling, along the walls were shelves with pots and jars. They were empty now excluding all the wine he brews and stored. Frost plum wine needed to be stored at very low temperatures so this was perfect. Ebony took it back out of his bag after the great escape with the Iron Wagon.

It was extremely comfy but he wanted to get out and find his clones for a situation update. Thanks to the tiger plushie, he wasn’t held down so he could leave rather easily but something stopped him. He just didn’t feel like moving.

Since that was the case, he just asked Dusk to send the signals to all clones in range to get back if they weren’t doing anything crucial or simply send information through Will but distance made it a waste of energy.

Unknowingly raising his hand, he returned the head pats he got while receiving the information in real-time.

‘Perpetual Tranquility Spring made a lot of progress, mental stress is a good way to put pressure on it. My clones made good progress with other skill refinements. Looks like clone me is better at finding a way to reduce mana consumption. Athena came and returned? No wonder Xin is sticking to me. Mallory and Hector are always away so we can’t really talk or work together much. I wonder if she made any other friends besides Athena?’ Ebony did communicate with people but he wasn’t as good at making friends as he grew to believe.

Was it their aura?

People kept a distance but he also understood that he was doing the same. An inherent no-care attitude must be the reason. He had no interest in learning more about other people, outside of combat capabilities but Ebony no longer questioned his humanity. He’ll just let nature take its course.

‘I need to use the bathroom.’ Ebony suddenly felt the urge to cleanse his system that had been put on hold for too long with the help of magic.

“Ehmm!” He didn’t notice when she woke up but she demanded more head rub.