"Mark, you might want to get the poison out of your system." Ebony reminded the careless fighter.

Alarmed, Mark glared at Sophia who was still cleaning the char of her face while smugly glaring back.

The heat didn't remove the poison, so he chugged another glowing potion that seemed to do the job.

'Nice to have potions that work.' Ebony didn't envy the usage of potions much. They don't work on him well but neither do poisons.

Sophia might have lost the battle but Mark wouldn't have walked away unharmed.

"Meet Sophia, previously my informant and future business partner." Ebony gestured towards Sophia while they sat themselves right in front of each other.

"Meet Mark, he helped me make my runic formula turned skill. We use the same runic language." The gesture was pointed at Mark now. The man gained some height and width from his evolution but at 1.88 metres he was of average height even amongst the mages.

"I'm still going to be your informant aren't I?"

"Hopefully, but that's up to you."

"Hahh." Sophia sighed out loud.

"Still the same as I recall. Long time no see, Ebony." Mark let his aggression die off for a moment.

"Mmm. So Sister Jing told you my address,"

"She said you were doing something interesting and told me to come help."

"I'm going to assume she was referring to this." Ebony conjured a sculpture with his runic enhancement and let Mark delve his attention into it.

"This is an expedited mana consumption symbol, you connected it to an equilibrium scale symbol…ah so the extra mana is linked to this strength, constitution, agility symbol and is this all stat symbol? Inefficient but balanced.

You've placed all of those in a curse brand that enhances all debilitations and then used basic overlaying to circle hundreds of these brands in an overall runic formula in the shape of your body. The curse brand would strengthen the expedited mana consumption which is a debilitation but all the excess mana has to go somewhere and this overcharges the augmentation symbols with energy…but you lack Fortifications and your rune symbols don't have the appropriate stability and strength to properly translate this overcharge of energy into enhancements.

If I were to point out the immediate issue with this, it's your equilibrium scale symbol. It'll break within moments of overcharging since you're using it to empower so many stats and mana can't enhance Intelligence and Wisdom while having a smaller effect on Perception and Agility so this causes some imbalance in mana transfer when it tries to equilibrate the expedited mana amongst all the connected symbols." Mark tossed out jargon at speeds that served to confuse Sophia.

He listed every single function of the complete formula within the next few minutes. Mark was stumped for a few more moments at Ebony's personal creation, the mana poisoning reduction symbol but it didn't take him long to decipher the basic symbolic components of multiple runic languages that the Korun language they both used consists of.

It was a stretch to say it was a never-before-seen creation but it didn't exist in any book they'd seen. Ebony made it to reduce the burden of his mana on his physical body so that he could take a greater augmentation without burning himself into ice dust.

It consisted of Vitality runic symbols and numerous mana offloading symbols that reduced the purity and density of mana to be repackaged into Vitality. It was a roundabout transfer of energy, but it worked marginally to slow down any physical breakdown from mana.

"You got it all." It only took Mark a couple of minutes. Whatever training or studying he did under Kong Jing surely improved his skills.

He could see the internals of the sculpture with his runic skills and Ebony also made it easy since he could make his sculpture transparent. The layers of the body his ice sculpture was made of also made it easy to look at different layers of the runic formula by making the deeper layers opaque at times.

"Have you tried increasing the proportion of equilibrium scale symbols?"

"Doesn't work, if you have more than one they will overload each other by passing mana back and forth till they break apart." Ebony replied.

"Only if you centralise and connect them directly. Place them in between stat symbols, sort of like a backup energy pack. The stat symbols in between will serve as a balancing, taking the direct load of mana from the first equilibrium scale before leaving the leaks to the second." Mark argued.

"Doing that would make a portion of the stats exceedingly stronger while the ones placed after the second equilibrium would only receive a small portion. This defeats the purpose of having balanced stat in the same ratio that I'm using." He had already tested what was suggested.

"What about overlaying a couple of equilibrium subsets instead of using all curse brands."

"I'm experimenting on that now, there are a lot of balancing issues and the curse brands would break apart due to the influence of other subsets."

"Wait…this. What the-how many layers deep does this go? Is this the enchantment's brute force method of overlaying? After 4 overlays the amplification effect is less than a single percent, this is such a waste of effort and don't you use it as an active spell? How long would the cast even take." Mark frowned with some disgust at the thought of forming the formula with mana in the midst of a battle.

"Not more than a quarter of a second, it's like printing an image once you get used to it." Ebony nodded at the man's realisation.

Ebony used the same method to lift Gearhart's island off the volcanic lava. Using a simple symbol, chaining them and then forming the same symbol but a larger version of it using the chained symbol would achieve a power increment of the runic symbol. It usually took a greater mana cost than 1+1 and wasn't worth the mana after 2 to 3 layers due to the diminishing effect it gives but Ebony wasn't bothered by it.

The very first layer of the runic symbols of basic mana conversion was fine and tiny, enough to be engraved into his mana chassis. Smaller than most cells of his.

Nothing showed up on his skin in the past but changing the outer layers to be of the curse brand made it so that his body would look tattooed all over with gentle but dense mana flowing through them.

A Brand was another form of a complete formula. In this case, runic. These types of runic formulas were labelled as Brands because they were usually unerasable and meant to mark one permanently.

Ebony wasn't one for tattoos but the problem wasn't an issue for him. The Brand was something formed from many outer layers of condensed and interlinked basic symbols. It wasn't embedded into his chassis like those basic components.

Hence, deactivating the spell was all it took before his marked body would simply regenerate his Branded flesh back to normal.

Brands were more powerful versions of runic enhancements in a sense. It gave an effect not unlike the difference between a weapon and an enchanted weapon.

Their biggest weakness was that it was permanent, and one couldn't rebrand themselves with a better, updated version, especially on the scale of Ebony's version which took up the space of his entire body.

Ebony did tests beforehand to distinguish between physical brands and more stringent brands like mental and even soul branding. He was inspired by Xin's Inherited Stamp and also the famed Brand Emperor.

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The Brand Emperor sold his Brands which marked someone and vastly increased their power. He had all sorts of Brands and numerous Emperors who'd reached the end of their potential but still wanted power and would look for the Brand Emperor's services for one last significant power boost to their arsenal of skills and powers.

The Brand Emperor could even customise a Brand for the individual's specific skill set, though that came at a premium price and risk giving out too much information about oneself. His skills were still highly sought after.

His name had spread across mere Sectors but on a wider scale so his skills must be the real deal. Ebony knew that this person wasn't even an inhabitant of the Hex Region.

Curse Brands mostly increased the effectiveness of all or a specific debilitation and was usually effective in enhancing illness, plagues, toxins and more. Ebony didn't know how to specify the curse to only worsen the expedited mana consumption so he was using the general one for now.

If he was poisoned while being cursed with this brand, it would likely work on him even better. Even basic ailments like cold and heat's effect on his body would be enhanced by this Brand.

As overconfident as he was with his body, this spell was supposed to be used in battle and it would do him no good if he froze himself off even faster or melted against Xin's flames so it was indeed a flawed formula in many ways.

"I'll be honest, I'll never be using something so complicated. Even on permanently engraved equipment. Too much effort for too little payback."

"It's not that complicated." The spell wouldn't even take 1% of his mental processing capacity to cast.

"I'm guessing this is the reason Master Jing told me to come?"

"I have no idea but I'm planning to do this myself. Your input would be appreciated." Ebony needed to improve his runic skills. He didn't want to delegate it to Mark again.

After all, he used it as an active enhancement spell not for crafting a permanent fixture. He needed to know how to improve. But he knew how to ask for help.

"Exchange?" Ebony posed the question. He would like to observe Mark's personal equipment closer in exchange for the runic formulas he casts on different pieces of conjured Perennial Everfrost Armament.

The man hasn't even seen Ebony's greatest yet simplest runic work on Dusk. That was what Ebony would call complicated and something he could not cast in the midst of an intense battle.

Luckily for him, Dusk had greater capabilities than him now in terms of mundane and mechanical work of overlaying. It also had the size and girth to incorporate so much more runes, so much more complexity.

Dusk's improvements had been vast over the months that Ebony had returned. It was incorporating all of his new ideas and skills that had improved over the decade he hadn't been around. The copy of Dusk in this home was just an image.

Dusk was already situated at his new home but was close by and well within mental reach.

Ebony didn't know how the power source Kong Jing made with his mana so many years ago was so freakishly huge in capacity but it just couldn't fill up. He knew the math if it was purely a large mana ore of a certain quality or rank but it was just ridiculous which was good for him.

This meant all the extra mana capacity excluding the base material was from a highly specialised runic formula, backed by who knows how many Fortifications, how many skills at an unknown tier and level. And Ebony couldn't even decipher it because it was compounded by space magic.

At this point, he wasn't even sure if Kong Jing returned to Elcra at some point in time to refresh her runic work on it because it sure felt like he vastly underestimated the capacity of his personal safe for money. This safe didn't have any mana conversion inefficiencies like his public bank account with Eidolon Hex.

Ebony was even tempted to order a mana conversion facility like the bank of Hex, but according to the friendly internet provider Hex, it was apparently proprietary technology and vastly out of his budget

"Hey hey hey, I'm still here." Sophia cut Mark's concentration and their conversation.

"Yes, you thieving woman! Return my manuscript!"

"It's been years, I don't have it! And don't you lie to me, I know that's not yours! I merely returned it to its owner."

"Horsepudding! You sold it to Zaya. Do you really think Z&Z or Zenin created my potion storage design? Do you know how much you cost me!"

"That-is not my problem." Sophia faltered.

Ebony listened in their civil argument. It seemed like Sophia picked up an inconspicuous job regarding taking back a manuscript that was said to have been stolen by Mark Rost.

It was more of a runic blueprint for better storage of potions and other high-energy fluids. Sophia checked all the proof of the unknown client since she wasn't exactly an unlawful Imperial even though she was part of the Jaded Parasites.

There was proof that the glass crystal mixture used in Mark's blueprint was an alchemic secret recipe of the client.

Months after Mark's blueprint was stolen, Z&Z firm released a new line of potion glasses but the runic formula was his.

Or so they both claimed.

What Sophia didn't find out was that the so-called secret recipe was the most basic glass crystal used by the majority of the potion makers and alchemists of the Empire. She simply matched 1 to 1 and as a non-crafter, didn't check that it was a normal vial material she could find everywhere.

It probably hurt her ego as an informant to miss out on something so obvious.

Ebony sipped on his tea while they settled their differences. The younger woman who lost on reason admitted her wrongs only after an hour of lecture.

Dusk reported the drain on their mana resources from Eighteen to Twenty. They were constantly destroyed and needed a new body every few seconds.

'An abandoned facility with such defenses…' Ebony received the delayed reports in real-time.

Twenty-Two was underground where the topaz homunculi were, but he was handling the topaz aura well since he was made of ice. He was attacked, and after hours of futile attempts, homunculi ignored it and judged the ice golem as a visitor entity. Exploring underground wasn't so easy for the clone so that was still a work in progress.

The abandoned facility was one for mana slaves of old, before Oplot made it illegal. It was quite close to Tidal and was surprisingly manned.

'I'll go take a look if they can't handle it in a week.' Ebony allowed his clones to pester the facility regardless of the mana cost. They just need a reminder to update their Will memory as frequently as possible.

None of his clones wore his face these days. They had a smooth featureless mask even though he could just make the head featureless. They also wore layered scale ice armour so they didn't resemble his usual garb.

Ebony had little business with a mana prison facility, he didn't choose to attack them. It was the other way around when they noticed the Will Relay Buffers and somehow hunted Nineteen down. Currently, his clones swapped tactics of taking on magical blasts to freeze the air in the surroundings.

Freezing the entire facility down is only a matter of time, they would wear down the opponent's energy source sooner or later.

They took apart all the Will Relay Buffers in a certain radius of their facility so the 'spawning' of his clones was a distance away but 3 of them were enough to make sure none of them broke out of their shell.

"Still no trace of One?" He questioned everyone in the mindspace call.

"None." They all replied.

The missing clone of his was pretty amazing but it should be hibernating somewhere or that tiny bit of Will he had should've long dispersed.

"We're being probed again," Dusk reported.

"Mmm, it's the Elves again." Ebony noticed it for a couple of months now. The Elves in Tidal had been taking note of the scant amount of Will Relay Buffer but only those more sensitive Kings and there weren't many of them.

As for the Elves in their home forest outside of Tidal, it was hard to say. There was no movement from them.

"Still no sign of the person who extracted Nine." Seven's featureless mask twitched as if it tried to form an expression.

Ebony took note of Seven who visually expressed emotion. The clones' differences were subtly different since they hadn't received a full refresh of themselves anymore. He was the only one getting all the updates and growth while the clones grew separately and experienced different situations. They only communicated verbally instead of sharing Will.

Dusk was the accumulation of Ebony while Ebony, his clones.

"Ah!! I knew you were home! Could've sworn the aura around these parts get quieter whenever you're back." Hector popped his head past his gate with a barrel on his shoulder. The smell of potent alcohol drifted about.

"It's been a while Ebony," The Crown Princess pushed Hector aside and greeted. She walked in before stopping in place and staring at the lecturing man with greyed orange hair.

'Hmm…maybe this is the reason Sister Jing got Mark to come instead.' Ebony put his tea set aside. There was more than one reunion meeting tonight. 'I haven't finished going through some options I had about farmers with Sophia…whatever, I won't see returns for decades anyway.'

While he stood up to welcome his guests and greet them, he turned his head to the side.

'What happened?' Ebony's connection with eastern Elcra was cut off, Three and Five were no longer contactable as dozens of his Will Relay Buffers were destroyed at the same time.

With how far apart each buffer was, it was quite unthinkable. Since the area scanning wasn't always on, he didn't know what exactly happened and would have to wait for his clones to get back to him. They just had to make new buffers fast enough, if they weren't already dead.

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