'The house held up well considering the shockwaves from small movements, but I'll refresh the cement with new mana and compress all the bricks over again. That'll do my mana compression training good and there's plenty of bricks to test on.' He also had spare materials if he ever needed to expand or rebuild his house, so his excess mana would have somewhere to go.

There was also an option of completely changing every brick, but there was no additional benefit and it would be a waste of effort.

With the house cleaned up, it was his turn for a cleaning. Planning to invite his wife he went back to the trailer to find her already up and about. Demolishing the ice box of its contents. Like a kid getting caught with their hands in a cookie jar, she got stunned before continuing to dig in.

It must have been weeks since she showered or took a bath. The spare mattress here would be part of their camping gear, but he wasn't negligent as somewhat of a 'clean freak' by some standards.

After a session of passionate body scrubbing, comforting his lonely wife and satisfying each other. Xin fake sniffed and wiped non-existent tears while dragging the covers over her nose. "Taking advantage of me after you got stronger."

He flicked a finger at her forehead, "You're the one with greater strength."

They both noticed that his life force was a lot stronger now. Not just stronger, his control wasn't as rough anymore.

There was no doubt he would be able to learn her vitality-based enhancement soon enough. It'll never be as strong as her Core Skill, but once he got the same passive enhancement that only required his heart to work overtime, an increase in sustenance upkeep, he would also have a base physical body that was stronger than normal. It was crucial for reaction speed for ambushes if he was drained out of Will.

"Look, you drained me dry and made me lose more weight than a death battle."

"Yes yes, now let's get up. It's about time." She was taking the teasing a lot further than usual. Her habit of vampirism got stronger and she was not drained. Every time she did, it was his energy she was draining. Hence, as long as he had energy so did she and her stamina issue was solved.

She learned essence control skills from the best on the planet, the Rabbit Beastmen. Taking one girl as her disciple, she also learned some of their lineage techniques for their night time activities but didn't have any practice till he came back so there was no Skill. Her relation with her disciple was a lot closer than Ebony's with his students. However, both were slightly estranged as they had not interacted with their students in person for many months now. Xin contacts her student through Eidolon. She must like the kid if she gave a portable module to a Journeymen.

The part she was most worried about for her disciple was that the Rabbit Beastmen seem to have weak hearts, physically. That challenged her to modify her Core Skill lower-tier version to be gentler on the heart for her disciple.

As the beneficiary of her techniques, Ebony felt like he had to gift the journeymen a skill too. He'll decide what's suitable after meeting her but universal skills like mana compression will be at the top of the list now. Maybe they had something for men, even if every Rabbit Beastman was a beastwoman. He didn't mind bartering skills.

"Uh…I'm serious, I had the energy but my muscles are worn out."

"Oh." Ebony scratched his cheeks. Stamina wasn't everything. "Bear with me," He gave her a massage to heal the muscles without listening to her denial. They had to go another two rounds after her desires were stirred again.

With a glow on their faces and a belly filled, he got her a short distance away from Plainston to watch a battle he was rushing her to come see, but was too engrossed with each other to catch hours of it.

Flickering near the Elf a hundred metres in the air, he got her mana's approval and Flickered behind the Elf.

The Painter of Animation was at work, and her spells were a sight for sore eyes. Unlike anything he'd seen.

There was a forest of flora on the ground. Their thorny and poisonous vines were trapping every King beneath her. Then there was a pair of 20 metre tall treants in close combat with an Emperor.

All of them were conjurations of mana. But Ebony's Mana Discern was telling him these plant-type creatures were alive. True to her title, it looks like she spawned or painted creatures into existence. He only had to wonder if these were fake or temporary creatures.

Either way, she was painting with her brush-like staff. Painting on nothing but the environment as her canvas. When she painted clouds and lightning, they came to be. When she painted a meteor, those dropped too. When her plants got engulfed in flames, she coated them in her mana-paint.

Whenever her Treants got ahold of a target, she would paint an arrowhead that pierced these bodies.

'Those Treants help to get her through foreign mana bodies and override defences, allowing her to directly paint an attack running through her opponents. It's a little less direct than me punching or slicing flames of frost to dig into my targets.' Whatever the case, it achieved the same purpose of allowing a mage to directly cast a spell inside their target. Or at least, closer to their physical bodies.

What Ebony couldn't analyse was her defensive spell. Most of her opponents cannot fly despite being Kings. Even the Emperor present was not capable of flight. But she was well within reach for these fighters.

Nothing got through her.

He did not notice any spatial painting, he could see and feel her presence. She should be connected in this space. Yet, she wasn't getting hurt by the shockwaves, ranged projectiles or targeted spells.

The mana surrounding her body was one of the most complex spells he'd witnessed at work.

With Xin's intense stare at the Painter of Animation, he knew something was up that she couldn't immediately tell either.

His analysis got results when a King slipped free from her plants and barrage of painted attacks and leapt directly at her, ignoring invisible Ebony and his wife.

The clash of the King's brass knuckles and the Elf's mana gave him some answers.

"This isn't her body!" Xin verified with him through their mana sound thread.

"Mmm…She painted this body and made it move. She might be having tea in her forest for all we know." Ebony knew some of the Elves had clone-type spells, but this wasn't one of the ones he was aware of.

More importantly, this clone could produce a lot of power and seemed real enough to deceive his Mana Discern without looking closely. He noticed when the Elf was just an empty shell of mana. Xin probably had her Intuition or perception for living creatures to understand that this was not a living creature.

The defensive spell he saw was the mana-paint animated Elf and not an actual body. The external layer of mana used to block was not reacting but absorbing blows. Through the questionable magical means, she appears to have converted kinetic energy and any mana wastage from her opponents into more mana-paint. The attacks against this shell of hers were generating mana-paint for her, causing her mana usage thus far to be almost net neutral.

Ebony was truly stumped, this Elf was using vast quantities of mana, but she was actually spending a very small amount from her pool. They truly were mana efficiency monsters. The one thing Ebony had a small concern over the efficiency of.

By the looks of it, her opponents don't even know they were fueling her spells and animated plants against them. He could learn a thing or two, and her silence was consent to them watching her fight.

There was not much technique to learn from her animations' direct combat. The plant vine movements were swift, accurate, but stiff in his eyes.

It was not noticeable for her opponents as they were outnumbered by the sheer number of roots and vines tangling and stabbing at them but he saw the stiffness as the limitations of an animated spell rather than manual control or something imbued with Will. Purely beating her targets by outnumbering their limbs and overwhelming them with all sorts of piercing and slashing vines and roots. Even if her opponents had a Tier 5 Mastery to adeptly manoeuvre, parry and counter vine attacks, or had strong active skills that tore hundreds of these plant fibres apart they would just get overwhelmed by new offshoots that the Painter cast just by a flick of her wrist to paint more into existence.

This excluded the literal thunderstorm and small meteors she was simultaneously painting

The meteors did not lack power. Better yet, the Elven Painter didn't want to damage the environment. He could sense the spell 'Manifestation of Natural Preservation' in place, the meteors would land within her forest of flora and plants. After the meteor impact did its determined job, it would melt back into mana-paint and reinforce her painted forest.

It was beautifully energy efficient at slaughtering her targets.

She did not keep prisoners like Ebony. The dead only served as fertiliser for her plants.

Directly feeding these painted and animated plants with their blood. The organic body fed the carnivorous plants.

The weapon and armour fed the soil and empowered the toughness of the treant with a layer of metal-enriched wood. Ebony could not find many wastages of energy.

The Elven Painter must have dealt with their mages already and the couple was too busy satisfying their lust to watch the earlier part of the battle. The warriors who couldn't even reach the Painter of Animation were just sitting ducks as they couldn't even escape from the forest she painted.

Ebony regretted nothing, of course.

If it ended within a few hours, it was clear that the Painter of Animation dominated when her mana pool was barely reduced.

He was not too impressed. This animated Painter of Animation cannot speak or communicate with him.

When the battle was over, she melted into rainbow paint along with her entire forest and nothing was left over. Like a fleeting dream, her targets had nothing left of them either. Nature was restored to what it was before any supernatural fight happened.

'That lump of mana, it's turned itself to some….nutrient to nurture the soil.' If only for how environmentally friendly, he held a tinge of respect for the Painter of Animation.

While her mana was overwhelmingly vast compared to her targets, it was but a 'lump' to him.

'It was less pure than mine. Finally, I bridged the purity gap.' Ebony nodded. Not satisfied but convinced that he shouldn't lack mana purity.

Interestingly enough, the Painter of Animation used mana more dense than his own. This already confirms she had mana density fortifications just like he does and her Skill for compression must be far more refined than his. Chances were, it was a Tier 5 mana compression at a higher level.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

His estimation of her mana signature when he met her in person was that she was easily two thousand years old. It was not unexpected that her mana capacities, which all mages grow over time,e would be humongous. She was also a respected figure in the Elven Society. That told him she had a strong family background. They would not lack high-tier skills. With her lineage and age included, chances were she had the chance of visiting or browsing their main repository for knowledge, skills and spells.

He would not put it beyond older Elves to have Tier 6 Core Skills, maybe even Tier 6 Class Skills. By the ranks of a King, it was theoretically possible to output the requirements for a Tier 6 skill. The only question was the individual's potential, or the training and opportunities.

It was doubtful that that was the case. None of them felt that strong. Their strongest point would be their racial Domain, the accumulated power of numerous Kings and thousands of years. It would be interesting if they had an individual of Vent's calibre.

That would be getting ahead of himself.

Ebony hadn't simulated a way to outspeed Vent or have any spell work. He still didn't know how to avoid Vent's perception, spatial mist portals that transferred damage from range.

At range, he was no doubt not a match for the hunter. He had far more options if he could get close to Vent, but he probably couldn't close the distance. Freezing a Frost Elf was funny enough as a joke. He could do that to less evolved Frost Elves, but Vent was a different beast altogether.

'If I could land a couple of blows with Sequester….over time.' Ebony simulated that as he imagined. If he stayed on the defensive, he wouldn't be able to transmit any of his flames to touch Vent. As long as he could get closer

'Elcra's populace's average strength is too low, but it has more than a handful of elites.' If they had a couple of dozen people with the Painter of Animation's capabilities, they wouldn't have lost multiple cities.

Ebony's Scout Pigeons had faced some difficulties. There were a couple of individuals who actively shot them down whenever one of his Pigeons got in range. And these people had wide perceptive ranges. He was pretty sure, this had alerted those perceptive enough and gave them his mana and Will signature. He had reason to believe they were either more informed about him or more cautious as no one had started tracking him or his network down.

It almost felt like they were controlling where his network could go. If they had any measure of cooperation, chances are that they truly were controlling where he had any reach. There was a high chance this was the case because a lot of his previous Will Relay Buffers were destroyed. They had people with the capabilities to search for the crystals with remnant mana. His Will should've been dormant, evolving with him.

"She's not our match."

"Mmm."

With that assessment, they moved on.

It looked bad for Hector this time. He hasn't woken up.

Almost half the time he found Hector, it would be him suffering the consequences of mana poisoning.

The poor man trained his mana poisoning resistance and Fortifications for it, with a suitable Physique for it, and yet he was always on death's door due to the chaotic elements of his enhancements. His specialisation brought him far in terms of power, his destructive output now proven to exceed Xin's. Yet he was not a threat as a fighter.

Unless he had support, that enhancement or punch of his had no chance of hitting either of them.

Xin mentioned that he was able to adjust his aim once with his movement skill. So after his charge up and aim, he had time to activate his explosive movement skill once to readjust his aim. With Mallory's support, they were able to catch the Demon Emperors off guard and he wiped them off the face of the planet. Then he was left in his current half-dead state.

'As long as he doesn't die to mana poisoning, he can give us a good fight due to his enhancements, though his fighting sense needs work. Hmm….' Ebony was at a loss at what natural ingredient would help Hector's Physique. If he didn't face such severe mana poisoning, he could easily be a good opponent if not a deadly one. Technique and fighting sense could be overcome with pure power and speed, which he specialises in.

Nothing elemental would be good for him, there was too much imbalance it would cause if any one of his elemental tolerances weren't as they were now.

Ebony could obtain materials of 12 elements with ease, but 12 elemental materials that were on the same energy levels and were similarly compatible with Hector's existing body?

That was a tall task and was assuming he 'only' used 12 elements. More likely, his body would implode or digest the energy as sustenance rather than use it as physique refining energy.

Money wasn't the problem, the Lord Family had that in spades. Even if none of that wealth was allocated to Hector, the Prince wasn't poor. Not using Ebony's current scale of wealth.

'How does Tuffock deal with that? He has extremely dense mana augmentation as well. Did they maybe use a very good body to contain 3 souls to begin with?' Ebony and the stone mage had fewer issues. In the end, only 1 to 3 elements ran inside their bodies.

Xin only uses Vitality, blood and fire. Wind and lighting were all external enhancements for her.

Ebony was pure ice and arcane, sound and runic both. And gravity is his external enhancement.

The healers and Prince himself probably knew better than him so he put it to the back of his mind on the possible solutions Hector required. As long as they got him to Yvette, he wasn't going to die.

The area around Tidal was quiet. No trace of Lure or battles could be found.

It was peaceful till a gigantic icy turtle turned dark blue from its invisible state right in front of one of their southern gates. He had to make a detour and go to a different entrance to avoid one of the Cities that were taken over. This was one of their main bases as well for their proximity with Tidal.

The Rime couple arrived at the same time as the Turtle Fort, since the Fort was far slower.

Ebony greeted his friends but the Royal member had duties to attend and one of them had a healer to be carried to. Xin waved him goodbye and zapped away to find her student.

He felt that he had neglected his students, and Flickered in. Not going through the entry process since he was technically banished. He hid his presence as best he could and felt something about consciously committing a 'crime' without regard for Yvette's reputation. Mischievous were the limits of what he felt.

The punishment might as well have been a pat on the back of his hand after all.

'Eidolon, place an order for this bank module. Higher rank or multiple of whatever the highest rank you can deliver within a month or two." Ebony had to rely on the bracelet to absorb his mana. He wasn't even converting mana to money fast enough. It was being stored instead. To convert it faster, he needed more of these modules or something more efficient.

"…"

"Surely I have enough reputation to buy a Legendary or higher-ranked module made by your crafters."

"That is true. We believe you can afford something so simple. It would not be within Hex but from the Co-evolutionary Web Supercluster but that would take a few centuries by any normal mode of delivery."

This universe was split into 10 superclusters. Each contained 10 to 15 Clusters. Each Cluster contained anywhere from 10 to 100 or more Regions. Regions could be considered galaxy groups with sectors being varying-sized galaxies. A sector was sometimes as small as a stellar system though. The range was a bit different from what Ebony knew about space classifications, but he never read much about space back on Earth anyway.

Hex Region located within the Symbiotic Union Supercluster. The names for the rest of the supercluster were not important at the moment. He wouldn't be able to leave the one he was in, even if he Flickered for hundreds of years straight, assuming he could do that without burning out.

The superclusters were definitively ranked in terms of technological, biological advancement and how dangerous each of them were. Within that ranking, the Symbiotic Union Supercluster was eighth.

The known 'centre' of the universe referred to the Specialisation Bloom Supercluster, ranked fourth on this universally known advancement ranking.

The first and second ranked superclusters could be considered deserted. In the past, Gods fought there often enough that not much was left of that area of space. That wasn't to say that there weren't any living beings there. There still were, and even without outside interference, they were said to be more incomprehensible than technologically advanced. Nowadays, rumours were that Gods unanimously decide to fight somewhere in these two superclusters if they ever were to fight for real.

The scale of their battles was not something a mere mortal like him could imagine. Not even the Ning Saintess' injected memories had anything close to that scale.

It was almost a legend whether civilisation existed within these two superclusters because Eidolon did not link to anyone or any group of beings from these two places.

The third-highest-ranked supercluster, the Co-evolutionary Web Supercluster, was known to be the most comprehensibly-advanced occupied space. However, it was home to many Gods and their people. Society there was…tight, and information flow even tighter. They either didn't interact with each other or were highly hostile. Cooperative Gods were rare here due to how secretive each of them were with their technology, magical or biological advancements.

Eidolon had core facilities there and it was common knowledge that the God of Knowledge resides there.

With the knowledge of a limited pool of 'concepts', there was probably a resource war for power.

Hence, the fourth-ranked supercluster was widely accepted as the 'centre' of the universe.

Of course, this was just a rough guideline. It wasn't like there didn't exist Worldcores in the eighth-ranked supercluster that were more advanced than a Worldcore in the sixth-ranked one.

This ranking also gives a rough outline of the skill advancement of the average individual from each supercluster but this had the widest range and was the least reliable piece of information. This information was derived from the publicly available skill books one could obtain by trade. The best skills were not made public. That was common sense even Ebony picked up.

When Hex said it would take centuries for any mode of delivery, they already accounted for how much money Ebony could spend. This included travel by Spirit Realm. For the cluster of Spirits known as Eidolon, it was one of the fastest ways to transport anything. Hex did not contain all the information Eidolon has. They were like the little brother of the community. At large volumes, even information needed a lot of time to be transported.

A few centuries were too long.

Legendary ranked items were about the best quality he could buy using 'mortal' currency. Mana ores also changed qualitatively as they go up in rarity, and no one sold Mythical-Quality items or materials for anything less than mana ores that were Legendary and above. It went beyond mere purity.

'Concept of mana, maybe? It would make sense.' Ebony didn't ponder on this any longer than a single thought. It was useless to think about it.

He placed a bulk order of Ancient-ranked Modules, the exact one he had, along with a handful of Legendary-ranked ones from the same Supercluster he was in, Regions away. Once again, the delivery could rival the price of the item, and there was no confirmation that it would reach him in one piece. The good note was that the items were small and light, so it would be easier to spatially transport them with magic over and over again.

The Ancient ones would arrive in one to three weeks and be a stopgap measure for him. The seller informed him about the minor lockdown on Elcra, and they would only deliver them to the station where Ebony used a scroll to get back down to Elcra. News of Lure's presence on Elcra, going by a different name in Gia was already public. The group that took this delivery job didn't want to come into any contact with Lure.

As a job poster, Ebony's reputation was increasing at a steady pace. He made a lot of delivery requests, and he paid up every time, as confirmed by Hex.

His company, run by Sophia, made bigger transactions. As a merchant group, reputation increased at a different rate with a different scale so it was growing slower in comparison. However, just being the owner of a Worldcore gave them a bit more credence in terms of their financial ability. Not enough to let the dwarven engineer race sell them a large number of agriculture robots without much discussion, but enough to open up discussion.

One of Eidolon's tiny rules was that all merchant groups with debt had to declare that they borrowed money from Eidolon before they do any other transaction. A fair bit of transparency informing other groups that 'hey, they already owe me money are you sure you want to trade with them?' Instead of a declaration, they would have a mark by Eidolon that anyone can check.

It wasn't a bad or negative mark. Plenty of debtors around that were reputable.

Still, Ebony's company hasn't even made the mark to be considered the smallest classified group of merchants. They have sufficient trade volume in purchase, but their sales or production were nonexistent, showing that they may not have the capabilities to earn money to pay any debt or pay for their purchases. It wasn't like these people knew that his company was funded by his mana regeneration and that it surpassed most mana production facilities that purified ambient mana and compressed them into mana ores.

With the minor purchase order complete, Ebony found himself looking at his students without a teacher. Seven had been gone for half a year, seven months here.

Some of his students sat in on other lessons, some were open lectures, and others needed to sign up for. But every single one of them continued to meet up as they were doing today, training with each other in the field. Raika took charge; she had experience with teaching children as an instructor at an Academy herself.

Their training did not lose intensity. That was a good sign to him.

The bad sign was that it was clear how their improvements lagged without Seven around. Some even degenerated their mind-body connection, and their bodies moved after their mind worked.

Ebony's initial training was to get them used to moving their bodies and mana before their mind could think, to have them increase their survivability in case of an ambush. This was extremely difficult if they didn't learn to do so from young. Hence, it took a lot of time, a lot of injuries and healing for them to get close to a passable state. It was the difference between reactive and reflexive that he was trying to help them bridge

Learning spells, focusing on casting, but standing still. That was what he was seeing some of the mages do.

The warriors taking deep breaths off-beat with their attacks and movements?

They practically got weaker to him despite the improvements to their skill levels and power.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.