"You have power handsome boy but where's your spirit?! Stop running away." Huo Xia of the sixth generation had a barrage of simple fireballs chasing Hector down.

"Give me a break!" Hector patted his butt of the flames.

"I just came here!" Huo Xia countered.

"You're the fifth person I'm fighting today!" Hector screamed.

"The festival's just getting started, where's your fighting spirit!"

Ebony didn't bother with Hector's scream for help. Even with Dusk supporting him, he had his hands full. Dozens of conjured ice hands included.

Swinging out waves of freezing cyan flames at his targets, his body weaved through the floating water droplets.

Every droplet had the Will of a millennial old mage embedded in them.

He learned the hard way that trying to freeze it dehydrated his Will. It felt like he was trying to cool down an ocean with a piece of ice cube.

Shui Feng's Will had the property of washing down or diluting any foreign intervention and energy. Be it mana, Will, physical strength, stamina and even mental capabilities and energy would be instantly 'watered' down the moment he came into contact with his Domain.

Shui Feng was handicapped to only use droplets of water instead of summoning his Domain into place otherwise the old man would just be bullying him into submission. Besides, unlike Ebony, it was apparently rare for Domain mages to cast their Domains at any time or use it as if it was an augmentation spell.

It took time and effort to manifest Will.

For example, Shui Feng's water droplets were taken from the water vapour in his Domain, he didn't cast them on the spot. It had the full strength of an unknown period of accumulation. Ebony could see how in the future, the spells or mana that came from Dusk would have far denser Will than anything he could conjure on the spot but he wasn't anywhere close to that point yet.

He could only have so much Will. Every hasty cast of a Domain didn't exceed the capacity of Will he had. But if Dusk was around or if he took a piece of Dusk out, the situation changed.

Ebony confirmed that Shui Feng was unaware of his Will Relay Buffer. He didn't need to be near Dusk to have the benefits of his Will capacitor. It may be limited to the amount of Will that can pass through these buffers at the moment, but he wasn't the typical territorial-locked mage.

He closed his eyes and raised a forearm to cover them when he saw Shi Ling's telegraphed act of ringing the bell in her hand. He couldn't warn Hector in time and he got blinded by the intense ray of flashing light.

Ebony couldn't dodge the rays of light and the thin rays that spread out haphazardly crystalized anything it touched. Fortunately, he prevented the diamond from getting through his eyeballs and into his brain this time around.

"You have to watch your back, Auntie Shi!" Huo Xia rained down his fireballs on Shi Ling too. Despite being of a younger generation, he was much older than Shi Ling and was an evolution ahead.

Ebony was caught up in the explosions while Hector punched black beams of destructive mass of elemental mana to attack a giant fire upper body summoned by Huo Xia.

Huo Xia was a crafter. The 'summon' was a creation of his and wasn't a conjured spell. Though he claims to be a pure combatant, he spends more time making fighting machines. The fire giant with only an upper body was no living creature, it had no capacity for thought or a spirit.

Just by the dozens of fire-based summons dealing with the others in the training field, he was quite successful even as a combatant.

Ebony sidestepped a knife and planted his kick into the opportunistic attacker. He turned and saw someone he didn't recognize but saw the Clan Emblem of the Guo.

He didn't deal any real damage even with Dusk supporting his sound and gravity magic but his flames stuck onto the woman from the Guo clan successfully. Seeing his success, he thought that she was probably from the sixth generation as well.

"Thanks, Sister Jing." Ebony appreciated the spatial support from his fellow youngin.

He wouldn't have landed the kick without her spatial lock on the Guo fighter. It was brief but Kong Jing locked the Guo lady in space while letting his kick go through in that split second the Emperor was caught off guard.

'I suppose even the Xengs don't have only amazing fighters.' Ebony didn't think he could land a proper hit on any of them even with the help of a King-ranked space mage but the truth was that he landed a good amount of hits on multiple people already.

People from the Peng and An Clan were the easiest to get a solid hit on with Kong Jing's support. Coincidentally, they had the highest density of people low on the ranks of the Shi Clan's obstacle course.

With Shui Feng busy being targeted by another third-generation fighter, Ebony managed to slip away from the area of water droplets.

This opened him to a rain of black crystals. They almost got through his repulsion and shot off with more force so he was safe from the necrotic spell.

The rain of crystals were simply ricochets from the main spell exploding on one of his Clan members so he was lucky there wasn't much force behind the ricocheted projectiles. Unlike the Shi ladies, his body was more susceptible to these Emperor-Fortified manas and energies.

When he got back to Dusk, he saw Kong Jing and Mark busy fortifying their runic defences with Hector panting with his back on the ground. He must have dipped into his speed cluster of enhancements to have gone ahead of Ebony.

As part of the newcomers, they were still able to stay out of the battle maniac's line of sight for a short moment.

"You call this a elling festival…" Hector poured water from a water mana ore into his mouth before tossing it into his mouth and chewing the hard ore directly.

Dusk was in a reversed gravity state where all foreign bodies including spells were sent upwards the moment they entered his Domain. Friendlies excluded.

Due to the individual auras in the area, his Domain was barely a hundred metres across when it used to be hundreds of kilometres on Elcra.

The spells had so much force behind them that they could almost touch Dusk before gravity swerved them up or to the side. So Ebony and the younglings sat near the piano he had.

If Ebony was being honest, he had a feeling the older generation was purposefully redirecting some attacks over to him, using Dusk as a fireworks cannon.

Kong Jing's space magic was quite a good match with his repulsion but they could interfere with each other too so there was practice to be done if they wanted to accommodate each other's elements and enhance their combination.

Mark was given the assignment to reinforce Dusk's area of control and operate Kong Jing's weaponry.

He used his personal compound of mana-disrupting gas dispersed by her automatic turrets. It wasn't working that well against any of the Xeng's magic but it was better than nothing.

"Uncle! Please let me in too!" Shi Ling had done well for herself and could hold her own even against Emperors but she came running over after her upper half was crystallized in diamond, her body looking stiff while she ran.

Sadly, she didn't even get close to Dusk before one of the Nings grabbed her by the neck using pure mana and put her to the ground before a human figure spawned where the mana had grabbed her.

"Just helping your mother teach you a lesson, little Ling." She was likely having her mind invaded and also lost control of her body in an instant. But the Shi's weren't so easy to stop.

A large diamond bell dropped over her body and protected her while resounding gongs started to ring through the area. It trapped her attacker in with her.

'She can probably move unconscious too.' Ebony determined that many if not most of the Shi Clan can fight unconscious through muscle memory.

"Open a path for me Hector."

"You're going out? Wasn't she just attacking you earlier?" Hector was surprisingly unharmed by the diamond ray he was hit with earlier.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"She calls me Uncle, I'm not leaving her there to be hurt without attempting to help." Ebony wondered if Hector had diamond elemental affinities.

"Then brace!" Hector caught the attention of everyone in range again.

The Xengs were particularly interested that he could have so many elements running through his body. This interest had them tolerate Hector's presence.

Even Shi Qiang claims to have never seen anyone or any creature use that many elements to nearly the same degree of mastery within their bodies.

Creatures had a limited amount of potential which also meant limited elemental affinities. The more elements they had control over, the weaker control over each element tended to be.

One could wrap, say, earth in mana and chuck it at a target. That was technically enough to consider that individual as an earth mage, broadly speaking.

Hector had shown the ability to conjure twelve elements without them interfering with each other. He had a speed, power and defence cluster of enhancements, using up to 8 elements inside him simultaneously.

Usually, six for the health of his body. The seventh begins to strain his resistance to mana poisoning along with whatever inhibition the specific elements would do to his body.

He adapted to situations using different clusters.

Finally, he had his Terminal cluster.

Facing the same issue with Ebony, he would use more than eight elements simultaneously for a brief moment before he killed himself to fire off a desperate skill. In his case, his 'mega panch'.

He had destructive capabilities that stumped even Xin for he could go from 0 to 100 almost instantly, though he also goes back to 0 just as quickly.

He had power but was lacking in normal fighting ability.

Skill-wise, he probably had Tier 3s with a good possibility of Tier 4 Core Skills.

Technique-wise, he was trained and had passable decision-making amid battle but he was easy to read.

Limited in his methods, he generally punches fast, hard and that was it. Even Apa had better technique due to its naturally advantageous musculature.

His defence cluster was a tougher body and he didn't conjure defensive spells.

His speed cluster was only slower than Ebony in his diluted Domain, but still easily avoided with his telegraphed movements.

His power cluster was clumsy in their eyes but still the most suitable for him.

Ebony probably wouldn't die if he took one of Hector's strongest punches in his compressed domain buffed state but his simulations told him that he wouldn't be far from it either.

The big IF was that it needed to hit him.

A fist-sized sphere was flattened into a five-metre wide disk and unleashed as a beam of annihilation. Ebony rode as close to the end of the beam as he could, quickly escaping the confines of Dusk's tiny foothold in this place.

A casual swing of Icicle sent thousands of flaming petals over to the masked Ning. Shi Ling failed to keep the woman in her summoned diamond bell. The Ning was out of the bell using the same method she spawned with her hands on Shi Ling's neck.

It was a hopeless attempt on Ebony's part. Recognising the mask, this was the lady who took Xin back home. Someone from the third generation.

Ebony had a portion of the petals scatter into smaller particles to fog up the surroundings. He knew how ineffective freezing would be. Even if they didn't use a basic mana skin, he might not freeze so much as the skin of theirs.

This was only true for some individuals or clans but for the Nings, it was just about all of them. For the others, they may require a thin layer of mana to keep his invasive flames out even if they were Emperors.

Ebony's skin crawled and goosebumps were raised when the Ning turned her mask at him. He didn't even see her move before he was staring at a forearm. Inside his head.

Reflexively gulping, even Boundless Serenity Geyser was momentarily stunned. Her hand was going through his head…and it pushed his brain out the back of his skull.

'Is it physical? Is it mana? Is it spirit? What is going on? How much of my brain can I regenerate.' Yet he was calm enough to stay still and question the situation.

Getting his head blown open wouldn't be a new experience but having his skull intact or fingers touching his brain was something he didn't think he would ever feel. He could feel the warm fingers his brain was lying on.

"I'd appreciate it if you keep your hands to yourself." Is what Ebony would have heard but Shi Qiang got into action instead of talking.

"I'm bored of fighting with you, let me have some fun." Is also what Ebony thought he heard from the Ning facing Shi Qiang.

Shi Qiang replied with violence but Ebony couldn't stay focused on them.

The two of them slapped away the flashing bolt but he couldn't. A pair of metal arrows pierced through his bicep and forearm respectively, impaling and nailing him down after dragging his body across the ground. Ebony couldn't even twist his body to disperse the force before he hit the floor.

His brain was back inside his head, now he was questioning whether his physical brain had ever exited his skull.

Was it only his mana chassis that got pushed out?

Could she separate his chassis from his physical body?

Did that mean if his brain got injured and he tried to regenerate, his brain would form outside his head?

As far as he could tell earlier, his physical brain was out but connected to his body through the brain stem. Nothing was cut, though his body was informing him that it was a dire issue.

The arrow bolt in his arm didn't let him ponder about the immediate past when molten lava was excreted into his system.

'A Yang Clan member maybe? Where?' Ebony was worried about a follow-up attack but the flashing bolts were focused on the third-generation pair of Shi and Ning fighting.

They were getting annoyed by the arrows.

Relying on his eyes because mana senses weren't reliable here, he quickly found a large man with a trimmed beard. He had a white beard that gradually darkened up along his head of black hair.

'Chubby? There's a chubby fighter…what is the purpose of that physique? Fat storage would imply energy or that's not fat and he's storing some other energy inside his body.' Ebony hadn't seen a seemingly unfit fighter in a long time.

Excluding the Dwarves but they usually just looked stocky, not fat.

There was not a single thought that considered the man being lazy and out of shape.

Ebony's mana chassis was being scorched, his Unique Skill partially breaking down. Trying to pull the arrows up leads to futility.

'Will--no, it's Intent. The life force in this arrow is ridiculous.' Ebony flash froze his bones and muscles with a burst of flames.

Successfully solidifying the lava, it made his arm heavy and caused the arrow to blast life force converted into the special lava again.

'It has to be some kind of Fortification…but how many, and what specific functions?' It hadn't even been two seconds since he was shot so he could only thank the archer for leaving him to study and find countermeasures.

There were too many dangers around so he couldn't study it intently, Ebony summoned his fully compressed mana and purged the energy in the arrow.

His calculations told him it took roughly 12,000 points of fully compressed mana to wash away a single point of this life force being converted into the weird mana. With his compression, he was spending literal millions of mana to disperse a fraction of this energy.

But Dusk was around and Ebony didn't care for the expenditure of mana. It wasn't a waste if he could wash away the effects of an Emperor's attack.

The intense rush of mana from Dusk to Ebony got a few bats of eyes and a couple of mutters. Something along the lines of 'as expected of the Shi' and whatnot.

After a couple billion points of mana were used to wash out a fraction of this life force, Shui Feng's water droplet touched the arrows and helped Ebony release it from his body and mana chassis.

'The life force was so pure and intense; my mana gets overwhelmed and destroyed the moment it comes into contact with this energy even at maximum density.' Energy aside, the biggest contender to fight against his resistance had to be the Intent.

Not unlike Will, it is manifested and powered by life force instead of mana.

Exerting one's Will was usually to change the surrounding conditions to fit their desires. These conditions would bend to one's Will if they were weaker or they did not resist.

Exerting one's Intent was to influence these said conditions but in a more forceful manner. There was no asking, Intent would bend these conditions by force.

The biggest difference he could find out now was that if Will wasn't strong enough to bend these conditions, say, lowering the temperature, then the effect on the temperature would just be weaker.

If Intent was used, the temperature would either lower to the desired degree or not lower even a little bit, there was no fallback in between.

And, if the Intent user failed to affect their target conditions, they would receive a greater recoil when Will users may not even face recoil in most situations.

He could see why there were more Intent users over Will users amongst the Xengs. Their all-or-nothing personality made Intent far more suitable and also stronger.

Weirdly enough, he hadn't seen anyone that uses both. He himself wasn't able to use both so it should be a specialization issue.

Ebony could use this information against future Intent users.

As long as the Intent was potent enough, no amount of Will would weaken them even by a bit, he needed Will potent enough to directly shatter the Intent. Once broken, the arrow or whatever attack was filled with Intent would be no more than a life-force imbued attack, easy to wash down.

The Shis were primarily Intent users while the Nings were primarily Will users with a few exceptions amongst each of them.

Basically every ranged fighter here had Intent infused projectiles. This was another limitation of Intent in comparison with Will, rather than affecting the environment, most used it by infusing an object, action or themselves.

Shi Qiang's damage to his chassis couldn't heal fast because of her Intent.

When an Intent user invades a Domain, they would be completely unaffected by the Domain's rules unless their Intent was a lot weaker than the Will present and broke under pressure. That would leave them very susceptible and most likely powerless against the owner of the Domain.

Shui Feng fetched Shi Ling's entirely diamond-fied body and got Ebony to return to Dusk with a diamond statue in his arms.

'Ting' 'Class Skill Blossoms of Smouldering Frost refined.'

'Ting' 'Class Skill Frigid Distorted Refraction refined.'

'Ting' 'Sub-Class Skill Tempestuous Lull Pelt mutated into Mantle of Reservation.

'Ting' 'Sub-Class Skill Quake Kick mutated into Quaking Impact.'

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.