Ebony didn't have any skills that would guarantee the Saint's death even if he used all his Will in one go.

Will doesn't strengthen a spell as directly as compressed mana did.

There was a limit to how much he could use for every spell, depending on mana usage. The thoughts behind the improvement or instructions he wanted his Will to have, and so on.

Woven Frostblaze Melding ran over Icicle. Ebony reconfirmed that these flames should be the Coreflames of Sequester, holding the Will he prepared for this type of flames.

There was no change in colour or appearance of his flames, but Ebony could tell that it properly took in the Will he mentally packed.

At the same speed and strength, the spear cannot damage his body unless it has some kind of active skill backing it, or the spear itself has special enchantments.

Considering his life on the line, he tried to take his mind off training against this opponent to further Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts.

He needed to ensure its death within the unknown time he had.

Ebony let the pinning spear poke at his ankle, whip around to slice his calf as if it were a snake when it was a solid, unbending spine.

Slashing at the large skeleton in exchange.

As expected, the Saint was in a similar situation to Ebony.

Attacks of their strength and speed couldn't damage them at all. Not a single scratch could be found on Ebony's skin, and even pants and boots. The same could be said for the Saint's bones.

Ebony also didn't have the boots that he got as a wedding gift. It seemed like equipment with materials past a certain quality couldn't be replicated for his usage here.

Knockback wasn't even a thing for the two fighters.

Ebony absorbed the momentum and impact with his very body, and he was able to utilise a large fraction of the momentum for himself. He could do it purely through muscular control but having sound magic help increased how much he could absorb and redirect without it dissipating or pushing his body back by a significant amount.

Curiously, he watched his flames touch and latch where Icicle contacted his target. It spread a centimetre or two. At this point, his flames usually starts digging into his opponent, but he watched the flames go out.

The mana it should have contained faded out of existence and the Will of Sequester followed along.

'It's in.' Ebony saw the success of his prototype, Coreflame.

His flames were gone!

He couldn't sense a drop of his mana or his Will that should have been on the skeletal fighter.

And it appeared like his opponent felt the same.

However, in Ebony's mindspace the Prototype Coreflame had a flatscreen appear beside it with a chibi-figure of the skeleton on it and a number beside it.

It replicated the Status screen's interface, if it could even be called an interface.

Ebony ramped up his efforts and traded blow for blow as fast as he could, punching, kicking and slashing as much Coreflame of Sequester into his target as he could.

Although the Saint was confident in his body, he seemed to hate the fact that Ebony was ignoring the attacks and changed his patterns to more pinning moves.

Ebony merely dislocates his joints or lifts the Saint off balance against those moves. The only attacks he couldn't ignore fully were those that targeted his eyes. He might not need eyeballs or vision to fight but it was clear this Saint was using sand elemental magic with his spear.

It would be silly to let foreign mana of a vastly stronger creature into his system, bypassing his magic body.

It didn't even take an hour before the Saint's technique had improved so much that Ebony was having difficulty landing any physical blows.

His Apparitions were getting destroyed so often that they were eating into his mana pool, but they weren't losing much Will as they stored themselves in Dusk fast enough. Moving in and out did take Will, but it was a lot less than getting shattered along with their bodies.

He was lucky he didn't have to spend any mental focus on the battle his Apparitions were conducting with the secondary skeletal beast.

If they were destroyed fast enough, the Numbers' Will might not even escape their containers of mana fast enough. Hence, he cautioned them to retreat or keep a backup memory in a Will Relay Buffer underground or away from their body to survive.

Dusk was busy supporting all of them, including Ebony, to give him an edge over the Saint, purposely using just enough strength and speed to match him.

Ebony already felt his Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts improving, but it was not improving as fast as the Saint was ramping his skill up.

It even copied Ebony's vibrational absorption so that it wouldn't receive knockbacks when taking blows. It did so by flooding all contact point with sand and having sand absorb the blows.

Admittedly, the creature's control over mana was elementary compared to a proper mage. It could be seen that it was mainly a physical fighter before it evolved to its current stage. However, the sheer force of mana and elements was able to do more than one would assume.

Two hours in, it began to increase its power while its technique was already causing Ebony to take hits and reducing the amount of blows he could land to 4 in 10.

Another 30 minutes in, and Ebony was beginning to think it might be over. His mana drain for himself and Dusk was high enough that he was already halfway into his mana pool. Not to mention the vast amounts of Will he needed to pump into his Coreflame.

Ebony didn't like that he had to drop his Will to 70% of its cap; it lowered his regeneration, but he had to hurry. He was already taking hits that dealt damage to his chassis, further reducing his mana regeneration.

This sand element had some weird properties. Once contacted, the sand particles start to grind and drill at everything, including his mana chassis.

Ebony watched his mental counter – 196,888,593,157

That was how much mana he had pumped into his flames and into his target up to this point.

It might not have been long since he first connected to Hex Eidolon, but with the evolution of his Resonant Battle Hymn into Resolve's Cadence, Ebony's mana regeneration had skyrocketed. It was incomparable to him from merely a year ago.

So much so that his mana chassis had been unable to take his Skill or the amounts of mana it was forcing his chassis to produce.

The debt that Sophia got for him was hardly a problem with how fast he was growing his mana regeneration and capacity.

Resolve's Cadence had quickly sat right in the centre of how strong he was in both physical and magical combat. By itself, it was a Skill capable of increasing all his stats by 10,000 or roughly 150% of his Intelligence stat, which currently sat at 3506, but Priming increased it further.

Not all that impressive when Xin's Inherited Stamp had a similar buff value.

But with mana compression?

It was outrageously powerful.

Ebony had newfound esteem for support mages.

If any of them could sustain mana compression to over a hundred times like he can, and their target could take that compressed mana without dying. It made all the difference.

His current mana regeneration was around 21,530,843 per second with compressed Resolve Cadence.

He couldn't sustain this rate forever, as Resolve's Cadence chewed through his Will fast. Not only that, his mana chassis actually couldn't take it. Neither could his internal factories made by his Unique Skill.

If he was a baseline human, his brain would've melted. Instead, he was melting all over as his mana chassis was all over. This wasn't even a problem of heat; his mental processes were just going into overdrive.

Hence, he had to dip into his mana pool to speed things up.

That's where he was having trouble. He couldn't dish out mana as fast as he'd like. He was producing too much without enough brainpower to dish it all at once.

Resolve's Cadence was going on and off. Only coming on to refill his mana pool from near empty to full in short bursts. There was no need to have it on at full capacity when he couldn't dish out 20 million mana per second.

Without Resolve's Cadence, his mana regeneration was only about 264,784 per second

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'Short duration endurance tests are certainly unfamiliar to me.' He knew he was very close to getting killed.

There was not much fanfare. Dusk couldn't properly form spells that would hit the Soldier because of its ridiculous magic body. Vent wasn't around with his mist space portals that helped to transfer damage and energy.

All ice constructs might as well be made of cardboard, except Dusk itself. The tree was durable but was lacking in the Will department as it was spending a good portion to support Ebony with Augmentation and defensive magic.

'I'm improving my martial techniques too slowly compared to how fast it's getting stronger. I wonder if the trial is supposed to show me what it's like to improve slower than my peers, that won't exactly be a new experience.' Objectively, he knew he improved and got stronger faster than most, but it wasn't the first time something or someone improved faster than he did.

His wife was one example. She was keeping up even when he had over a dozen clones levelling up some skills.

He didn't train any less than her, much more to be honest. He was always studying or training some skill in the background. While she could relax during her rest times, cook, eat and rest properly.

It was condensed into a few hours right now, but when all his spells were promptly doing nothing, not even annoying his target, and his augmented close combat was also getting suppressed he would've felt a little helpless.

He was now landing 1 in 100 hits or so. Gravity wasn't doing much against his opponent, but it helped massively in supporting his kinetic force. It also helped him defensively and was just about the only thing helping him land any hits at all.

Gravitationally anchoring Icicle to the Saint wasn't easy, even upon physical contact. His mana had a tough time connecting onto the fake Saint's magic body.

Anchoring made it so that Icicle was always attracted to his opponent; it made performing Crystalline Avalanche at the same time close to impossible, but Ebony could perform that with his kicks.

In any case, it wasn't like he was dealing any sort of damage with his magically enhanced attacks and Skills.

Ebony was only burning so 'little' mana because he couldn't output them any faster.

He needed firepower, a lot of firepower. It would make sense with his abundance of mana regeneration and constantly growing capacity.

Because he regenerated fast and did not have an excessively sized capacity, it was unsurprising that many of his spells were channelled or able to change the amount of mana they required by vast quantities.

That gave plum bombs more power as long as he had charging time.

Unevolved to King, he still can't output his mana as he'd like.

Otherwise, he would've charged his fists, legs and sword with enough mana to do what he was doing in one shot and not drag it out for the past few hours. Although it was hard to call it a weakness, the fact that his body was almost always saturated with mana meant that it was hard to charge them with more mana for a spell or Skill.

Hence why Icicle, despite being a low-quality weapon, was able to transmit more flames than his punches and kicks could.

As for how he punched while swinging a sword, it was easy enough when you could spawn fists and Shades that were physical manifestations of his mana being delayed. Ebony literally let go of his sword to punch before grabbing his sword again.

He wouldn't do that against Xin or any good swordsmen, but he wasn't fighting a swordsmen. He was quite sure the Soldier's lance was using a spear style that was very similar to his mother's.

Against a spear, he was comfortable with or without his sword. With gravity anchoring, it wasn't like he would lose his sword unless his opponent grabbed onto it with extreme strength.

Ebony smashed the Saint's skull with his gravity cube but it was smacked away like a toy and he didn't want to risk the cube destroyed, even if it wasn't the real cube just a generated one. Losing it will cause all his gravity spells to weaken significantly.

He was slightly unsure how far he needed to go with his Coreflame of Sequester.

So far, step 1 should be a success. Hitting flames that shouldn't be able to be sensed through mana or Will detection into his target.

It was supposed not to exist, so much so that his target shouldn't even feel mana poisoning, even if enough mana was pumped into them. His flames themselves shouldn't even know each other exists, and 'imagines' that only a small portion of themselves was there. He was hoping this would trick the target's body into thinking there wasn't any foreign energy inside them. It also made his flames ignore the fact that they are more compressed together than they should be.

Since the Soldier hadn't burst into flames, Ebony believed that he succeeded in tricking his flames, his target's magic body and physical reaction to mana and even tricked his own Will as it was disconnected.

The flames should be hiding so well, they didn't even know they existed themselves.

Of course, Ebony felt like he hadn't achieved that last step fully. It was a work in progress.

This allowed him to stack and combine far more mana into his target than he normally could.

So much more, he was becoming unsure whether or not his flames were actually inside the Saint. The number in his mind was calculated by him, keeping track of how much mana they sent into which target.

Because the Coreflame of Sequester also contained the same Will as the Coreflame of Preservation, his mana could preserve itself in a foreign body a lot longer than normal, sort of like they were hibernating.

It was the Coreflame that took thrice as much Will and effort in keeping the Will together since it also encompasses part of the Coreflame of Preservation.

However, he was only mentally keeping track. There was a possibility that Soldier's body had long erased all his mana upon contact.

He wouldn't know.

The Will was disconnected so that it wouldn't be found out or traced back to him.

He would only know when he used Will to reconnect. The Coreflame of Sequester had a mental puzzle, an activator of sorts that he set.

At the moment, he had already surpassed the amount of mana his plum bombs could store.

This was without a Gravity Vortex, and no fluctuations of mana were present, no destruction of the environment.

Thanks to his complete success….he wasn't sure if it was a complete failure.

He never tested it on a Saint target or any target at all.

He was getting his mana chassis torn as his opponent's spear thrust was getting illusory and leaving extremely sharp sand spikes in its wake.

His eyes and mana perception weren't tricked by the sand spears, but his body wasn't keeping up to the free flowing spear thrusts and sweeps. They might as well all be real since all did damage to him. Even his mental simulations weren't learning about the sand's properties that were breaking his chassis down fast enough. He was using an abundance of mana to block the sand tearing his chassis up, but it was actively breaking him down faster.

Ice-Lightning Respite and runic scales over his skin were constantly eaten through. The sand seemed corrosive, but it was simply grinding him down molecularly.

The Trial was pushing his martial ability past his limits.

The undead didn't use sight, and Ebony's Shades couldn't trick it; neither could light refraction. He was focusing most of his mana and Will on his Coreflame of Sequester and didn't freeze the Saint to weaken or slow it down as he would any other opponent stronger and faster than him.

Ebony found himself…excited.

The fight against the Soldier in the real world never felt so alive. He didn't feel like there was a threat to his life with Vent there.

When was the last time his opponent truly pushed him, in a battle to the death?

He didn't pick fights with random people to the death, and people after him so far, mostly wanted him alive. That took away a certain edge that he needed to sharpen himself.

As for fights with monsters to the death, there were plenty, but not many pushed him to the edge and it all ended in their death with much ease. He could list down maybe a few dozen. That was too few for his liking. It was stunting his progress.

Icicle, his trusty sword, was more of a boon than a liability. Finally, training with a sword had borne fruit.

His opponent had better martial technique, better positioning, and more formless strikes than he did. With the size disadvantage, Ebony had a tough time closing in and reaching with his kicks or punches, much less more lethal knees and elbows. Icicle gave him reach, and did a good job transferring his flames upon contact.

Perhaps the Soldier started to recognise something weird. Ebony was dishing out so much mana, but it wasn't getting hurt in any way. Yet the swordsmen didn't stop flashing around cold, bright flames.

The increasingly lethal blows had Ebony barely tossing his limbs in sacrifice to guard his head and heart. Explosively regenerating limbs like never before.

He was probably regrowing 3-5 legs and arms every second at this rate. Their weakness made them useless pieces of flesh that only had the toughness of mana that was used for him to push his vitals out of the way.

Only once the Saint lunged for a spear thrust through his heart that he couldn't avoid did Ebony finally link his Will and tried to activate his Coreflame of Sequester that should be sleeping within his target.

With his heart stabbed completely through and his eyes long slashed with sand already destroyed the chassis in his eyes. Ebony couldn't see any flames.

His senses also didn't feel any of his ice mana bursting out of his target.

He extricated himself from the spear with a Chassis Implosion and Flickered backwards. Smashing into Dusk and having it consume him while he manually pushed all his regenerating life force into his already regenerated heart.

'My Will is having trouble reconnecting….point, magic body also interrupts Will and not just mana. That makes sense.' Ebony was free from the vibrational shocks from the Soldier who was stabbing into Dusk's trunk.

It took half a minute of a battle of Will before he finally found his puzzle. His Will was the key, and he opened the lock to the flames of sequester without trouble.

Ebony felt the blast of flames and chill wash over his house and he felt it through Dusk's bark and trunk.

Light cyan flames burst out from the joints and eye sockets of the Soldier.

'Ting' 'Combat Ascendancy Trial Script 1 Threshold exceeded.'

'Ting' 'Generic Skill Adamant Mental Tolerance Potential infusing...'

'Ting' 'Generating Script 1 Aggregate Trial.'

'Ting' 'Combat Ascendancy Trial Script 2 Commencing.'

Ebony saw the Soldier in the midst of breaking down suddenly recover and reshape itself once more.

The Stygian-Frost Elementals respawned, and so did the Jetfins and a couple of Emperor-ranked creatures that Ebony didn't have much special to remember them for.

No horde of monsters was spawned, only the strongest few of before.

Ebony sensed his latest Generic Skill, Adamant Mental Tolerance, loosen. It could level faster, more easily now.

'I see where this is going. Endurance, training repetition. Potential fed into 1 skill. Aggregate based on previous fight…it's updating according to how I succeeded before. I have to fight for my Potential for every skill, fortification, stat, class, monolith, trait.'

Ebony noted his mana pool at less than 30%, his regenerated parts still fill up with life force.

Then back out at the Soldier who was pushing all of his flames out while his Numbers got back to taking on the Jetfins that shot high-pressure slicing water at Dusk and his house.

The water pressure spell was slightly stronger than before, but still couldn't get through the Mantle of Reservation.

The Stygian-Frost Elemental can't directly override his conjured Apparitions' body

Confirming both, Ebony remained within his tree shelter and healed while Soldier was healing.

He fell asleep in a mere moment and left his Domain and Apparitions to do the job while he did his best to heal as fast as he could.

"MOUNTAIN REND!!"

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