Ebony stepped onto the detached field and instantly got Raika and Umar's attention before Tiha.

As expected, the lightning mages had an incredible perception for living creatures.

Were they sensing the electrical signals his body had?

Once again, Ebony took note that Umar was the first to notice him. Not only that, without even looking at his invisible frame or eyes, the boy was stunned and fainted in fear. 'This kid…what kind of special perception does he have? It's not just reading faint electrical signals or waves.'

His ice spell was subtle, but his mana was not. It was not a surprise a Frost Elf Seven trained could sense him while his control was messy. His stealth skill also dropped from a Tier 5-ish Entity Evanesce to a Tier 2 Waning Presence.

The gravity users, Orvian and Solun never noticed him. He would have to devise a training for their gravitational perception.

For the Journeymen and Master to sense him, he had to give them some praise.

Maybe he could avoid scaring the daylights out of Umar next time.

He didn't remove his invisibility but conjured an Apparition without injecting a Number into it. Instead, he injected a tenth of his current Will and shut his main one down to a dormant state and let his body practice mana control and hide his mana. The excess had to be fed to his bracelet, and the power source Kong Jing made. Dusk was left with his wife.

This method of taking control of a conjured body was less intensive than he recalled. Due to both the short distance and his massive strengthening of his Will.

With a vastly weakened body and limited Will. He shouldn't accidentally kill his students, no matter how bad he considered his control was now.

After an ice sculpture, came runes that gave him the colour of skin. Then heat runes came active to copy his body temperature. They did not have to work as hard, now that his body temperature was near the mundane ice's temperature of 0 degrees Celsius. His runic eye was still not working but he didn't stop experimenting with runes that gave sight to an injection of Will.

It wasn't like the brain he conjured out of ice had nerves to receive optical information. Make no mistake, his Apparitions was a near-perfect copy. Their 'cells' were conjured in the same design as his mana chassis factories and mireloom. Even if they cannot work since he cannot duplicate his chassis for a conjuration.

"Trainer!! You're back!"

The children were a bit more clingy, surprisingly so. He'd imagined the three Unclassed teens did not like him as he was cold and only trained them. A lot of physical and mental pain was involved. Yet two of them ran up to him to grab his icy sleeves.

"Has anyone been slacking?"

"No!" They vehemently shook their heads in tandem. Raika stood at attention as well.

Seven might have made it more militaristic than he assumed if they were showing so much discipline.

"Now that I'm back, I think it's time we take training seriously."

A few gulps here and there, 'We haven't been serious?' was the look they had on their faces.

"It begins next week. Rest and prepare."

"What do we have to prepare?" Masline the fourth questioned.

"Prepare to be considered combat-ready by me. And your lives, we won't bring along healers." There were few to no available healers for the academy right now but he wouldn't have brought one anyway. They were getting reliant on the fact that they could always heal.

Most of them had questions to ask him, be it magic, a movement technique they were having trouble or combat theory.

Ebony answered them all at the same time with sound magic for 2 minutes and got enough. He returned their questions with a fist or a kick and forced them to create an answer. Spell against spell, sword against sword, shield against shield. He would target whatever they asked about in application and repeat that till they found an answer to counter him.

'This doesn't work for everyone.' Having a flaw shown to him through action over and over again while he tested countermeasures was the only…the best way that Ebony learned, but it wasn't the case for many of his students.

Yet he still held the belief they would grow in their direction best once they dived into true combat a few thousand times. For a start.

Ebony then left the group of fainted…sleeping teenagers plus one of his seniors in age in their dorms while he did a bit of research and live scouting of a suitable training destination. Raika needed a different location or group of opponents for sure, so did the Unclassed that remained unclassed till this day.

He didn't have to try very hard. At their stage, he wanted a variety of opponents for each of them, so he didn't have to design a monster specially for each of them.

Low-level dungeons were rare for the current generation. It was why Ordina popping up was an event big enough to make Plainston go from a countryside town to a full scaled City it is today. Even when Ordina had grown, it took Ebony's advice and made the lower levels have weak monsters suitable for Journeymen and a small number of Unclassed.

Within Tidal, there were similar Dungeons.

He doubted these Dungeons could communicate so clearly or listen to the Elcrian nobles if they could, but many lower-ranked – Rare Dungeons were artificially fed to their Nobles design. Such as only having warriors enter one, that would make the Dungeon be warrior-focused. Of course, this was open to Dungeon Divers and Freelancers alike. They knew that if they died in there, it would feed the dungeon.

In the same trend, many dungeons did not allow too many or too strong an individual to enter. If they fed the Dungeon too much or accidentally had a strong person die within, the Dungeon would strengthen.

This led to many artificially designed and controlled Dungeons for Journeymen. Nowadays, it has been extended to be suitable for Masters

They might have been experimenting extensively now that they could obtain research results from others through Eidolon. Dungeons were studied throughout the universe, and they did not lack theoretical research on them compared to Elcra.

Ebony secretly entered them, illegally. Ten Dungeons at a time.

'Won't work…the spawned monsters aren't hungry for essence or flesh.' The creatures in these dungeons lacked a certain edge. It was as if the dungeons themselves knew they would never starve to death like a dungeon with no living creature around them. Even if they couldn't reap a life, they could just sustain themselves on the energy the Empire feeds them. Through people's overflowing essence or targeted material feeding.

Domesticated Dungeons seemed an apt way to describe them.

There were even a few that had their monsters flinch when they were about to deal a killing blow to one of the children. Did the Noble in charge of this Quest Hall, and in turn in charge of raising this Dungeon starve it when it killed someone?

Ebony had to ponder hard. In a sense, even the largest and non-controlled Dungeons were adjusted to some extent. They were not what he was looking for and not what he wanted to teach his students.

That meant he needed wild monsters. Living breathing ones, not spawned.

Ebony could bring them out of the City but he couldn't even guarantee his own life. There was an order to things. He did not feel good bringing them out from a perfectly safe place to get them killed by the random spell or shockwave from an Emperor. It wasn't like Ebony thought only Emperors were his match or too much for him to protect his students from, but from what he'd seen from this group and the people he'd frozen since he woke up. Their Kings weren't that special. A lot of them felt like mercenaries more so than workers under a directive.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The ones that felt like they followed orders were those who carried the effigy of the religious figure.

Ebony did not want to bring his students out only for them to step on a spell that removes their soul from their bodies. If he wasn't prepared for that, he was not worthy of training his students to be prepared for the same. Only, his soul would likely not fall prey to such traps. He wasn't sure how strong his soul was, but he was under the assumption that even an Emperor specialising in souls couldn't just rip his soul out.

He found his wife, with his real body. At a large public park.

The Quest Hall in this area was managed by an Elven Noble. A lively park was expected. 'Lively' in the sense of plants and had nothing to do with the traffic of the park.

Holding a bull's heart in her hand, she was explaining life force, blood and muscular control to a rabbit beastman that was small in stature. They were squatting against a tree wide enough to require 3 men to hug it completely.

Ebony already knew about this disciple of hers and what Classes she had. Not that he would fall for a weak act of coyness. It required a lot more to fool his people watching experience. In terms of acting skills, this girl's physical performance could rival a Master ranked actor. Yet her eyes betrayed her coy act.

His wife introduced them and blocked her sight when the younger girl acted entranced by his face. His wife protected her disciple from feeling his martial and simulative aura in full force. She was spared from seeing her death a few hundred times. This subconscious aura was also not 100% in his control yet.

Ebony conjured a beating heart out of ice, including icy blood that slowly warmed up by vibrations and let her use the ice heart for her explanation. She shook his mana out and filled the heart with conjured blood before continuing her explanation of how she wanted her disciple to train and take manual control over her heart's muscles. This was quite deadly in the early stages, and she warned her disciple not to start training till Xin had time to be around her.

There was a chance her disciple picked up manual control over her heart muscles, and once asleep, her automatic heartbeat may not restart. Dying in her sleep.

Xin was naturally trained with full body muscular control since she was a kid, Unclassed. And it was as easy as breathing for her, but she was aware that wasn't the case for normal people.

Once she finished explaining and let her disciple practice sensing her vitality to manipulate in future, she wondered what he wanted.

After hearing that he was here for advice, she took a few steps to the right and picked up a stick on the floor before dropping it.

It stabbed into the ground with surprising force, considering all she did was let the stick go.

"You can search underground. I'll use the Academy's kitchen. Don't be late for dinner." She beckoned him towards her.

After a light peck, he Flickered away.

'Under Tidal? There is nothing to fight here….are the Tetramyths still around?'

With that hypothesis, he used an old route down. Not the one used by the Guardian Knights.

His stealth would probably fail him right now. Hence, he blitz his way through with invisibility. Guards would merely feel a passing cold wind. It was hard to imagine a Grandmaster who could see him in mid-Flicker. They would just see him disappear on the spot or appear at his destination, if they could see through his refraction.

The trip was short even without Kong Jing.

'They are here. Navin's pretty sneaky. This spell. The Elves are the sneaky ones, huh.'

Unbelievably, there was a small-scale battle here.

Hundreds of thousands of Tetramyth were very small-scale for the race of ants with divine descent.

Observing the battle, he knew someone noticed his presence but they ignored him so he did the same.

'They are not quite sane.' Ebony understood what was going on. This was a treaty or a deal they made with the Tetramyth. The groups of different subspecies were training their ant-formation and increasing individual skill levels. The Empire was doing the same.

There were very few deaths on both sides. This took away the experience they could gain from killing, but kept the experience they would gain for skills, and also gave both a chance to improve teamwork and test tactics.

Saint-ranked Tetramyths were unable to come through their portal, but they were intelligent to a degree. After begging for their lives against the Xeng, they must have thought this place wasn't worth the effort anymore. That's where the Empire swooped in to negotiate a deal to have a controlled battlefield for both sides to train.

It would help the Tetramyth grow a small group of elites while increasing the Empire's average strength. Not all Saints took up the offer. Ebony only saw 3 subspecies. The others might have had their Saints killed, or they just didn't think it was worth the effort keeping the portal open for an extended period when they could no longer reap lives, experience and food.

Food was their biggest issue. They number billions – with just the army they delegated to Elva.

The subspecies still present must have quite a steady resource stream for food to feed hundreds of thousands that weren't providing their army food. Millions, if this number was cycled, and it likely was.

The Imperials' specialised elite team was present, and they've improved vastly. This was the team with teamwork and a whole set of skills meant for them to work together and strengthen themselves enough to take on 1 super unit. With a team large enough, they could handle Navin. They needed a smaller team to take Ebony on.

He wanted to test that again, but they looked busy with this training.

The rest of the army was hard at work. Ebony didn't spot a single Freelancer or anyone unrelated to the Imperial Army. Except for a couple of Elves. This deal must have originated from the Elves. They must have known that it was possible to reach a deal with the Tetramyth, and this was the bite of pie they obtained for themselves.

Nowhere else could they find so many Emperors weak enough for them to train with.

More importantly, amongst the dozen Elves present. All of them were unknown to him. And strong.

They finally came out of their forest and were hiding underground. How much more power have they been secretly accumulating?

'Purely based on overflowing essence, every single one of them are above Korta, Christy and Nutash.' It wasn't too surprising. Their mana signatures were also significantly older than the 3 Frost Elven Kings that move around.

Every one of them was over a thousand years old for sure. Their mana pools were blindingly deep to Ebony's senses. All of them combined did not match his regeneration, but their pools were like an ocean in comparison. Did they have to meditate for months to fill up their mana pools or something?

'Is their forest undefended, or do they have more people at this level or power just tending their little garden of a domain?' Reviewing the 'short' history of Elva in his mind, there weren't many battles with notable Elven deaths. They might have been holed up for as long as they were alive.

He couldn't imagine getting his mana pool so big that his regeneration fell behind and required more than hours, if not days, to fill up. Unless he was injured, lacking sustenance in his body or affected by external influence.

'I suppose Dusk and the power source are technically my extended mana pool.' With that line of thought, Ebony reminded himself to teach his students that people may carry external mana sources within spatial storage items they carry around and not to drop their guard against a mage with an empty mana pool.

The individual Grand Knights on the battlefield were between Grade 3 to 4 of their evolutionary rank by his estimate. This was wholly insufficient. If, normal Kings had a tenth of the Potential that Ebony evolved with. A Grade 4 Grandmaster may barely match a Grade 1 or 2 King in terms of pure oomph they can output. Excluding all their skills.

The Grading system was such a scam.

On the bright side, their commanders with Leadership-type Classes were relatively effective, and they made a significant difference. They might have learned more from the Tetramyth because when it came to commanding large-scale battles, the Tetramyth were not shabby on any scale. The small number of sub-species also meant less infighting for food and experience, allowing both sides to train their skills.

They sent a runner towards him. A runner who had a tier 2 version of his footwork. It was either edited significantly or was personally modified. Not in a good way, but it made it far less intensive on the calf muscles.

Ebony taught a few of the soldiers his footwork in the past, but without guidance and no one who truly understood the mechanics and required muscular control that was the Shi Clan skill, diluted many times over, they had to work around to modify the skill to be usable for a baseline human without significant…talent.

It was hard to watch. The skill he was made to practice since he was a kid has been butchered to the current state. They might as well use their movement skills, but this version was still superior when it came to crossing distances and moving through uneven terrain. Perfect for a runner, no longer suited for close combat.

The Grandmaster did not look dissatisfied about being used as a runner. He looked around and shouted out when he was unable to find Ebony. "Excuse me! Mr Rejuvenator? Are you there? Duke Lucretius invites you into the fortress."

"Mmm, I'll be going." Being recognised by either the Elves or just the nobles in general was expected. As low-profile as he believed he was, he flaunted his powers on a few occasions.

If these were the Elves hiding within their Forest, they were sure to have recognised his Will snooping around their Forest edges in the past.

There was also a good chance they didn't notice it was him specifically. Their Domain was a mixture of many Elven Kings' Will, and their Matriarch, a bona fide Emperor would likely be the most dominant. He might be overestimating the amount of perception they can feel from their Domain due to the mixture. He had no idea how multiple Will Domains worked for the individuals who feed it.

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