Laying on the floor with his chassis getting electrically burned by Will-infused lightning zaps, Ebony considered his chances.

'Although he's not fully restrained back to the same strength he was as a Grandmaster, my chances are good with Dusk around. But he's just so much faster than me. Do I need a Tier 5 movement skill to keep up?' Ebony thanked the lightning image that split from Ning Xun's real body elsewhere to come spar with him.

He had greater active resistance against lightning spells now, with gravity being able to push even lightning away, and even his pure mana control had a rudimentary grasp over his opponent's spell. But Ning Xun being known as the fastest man under the third generation was not a lie.

Ebony had a Fortification just for movement speed along with his Tier 4 skill and he still couldn't touch the man if he focussed on evading.

Thankfully, he had to attack in a spar and Ebony could take advantage of those movements to land a counterblow. His success rate of a counter was almost a hundred per cent now, far better than his first spar with the older man.

Forcing the Emperor to use Will already made it a minor victory for him but Ebony felt that there were still some areas for improvement.

'The energy waves could've been disrupted before they got so close to me. My Lightning Tether should be able to redirect some of his mana.' Ebony unsealed his chassis to allow his Mireloom to continue working. The seal was a stop-gap measure to protect his chassis a little better.

It should've been a very effective measure but against the targets he had been choosing, it was close to making no difference.

Shi Ling blabbed about her Auntie getting much stronger in the time he was holed up.

Yet he wasn't able to pry any information about Xin's location out of the biggest mouth of the Shi.

Shi Tao must have returned quietly last night for she was at the meal table in the morning after his morning training.

"Welcome back Aunt Tao." Ebony greeted first. The rest of the younger generation left Sky's Edge for training or returned to Xienor to rest and relax.

"Mmm. No more Life Reapers will come after you. The misfortune on you, you can deal with that yourself. You might end up worse if I got on providences' bad side. Oh, and don't go to the Netherworld, not even I can protect you there." Shi Tao had her eyes closed as usual.

"Thank you," Ebony mentioned without even knowing half of what she was talking about.

"What happened, mother?" Shi Qiang quipped in.

"Some Saint cursed your cousin and set himself up for reincarnation after dying. I went to the Netherworld to catch his soul but he sped his own reincarnation up. Zhao Sui can't find him so he's not any random Saint. He left no tracks, not even being rebirthed by any creature. If Zhao Sui's prediction is not wrong, he mandated a rock to give birth to his flesh, river water to give birth to his blood and mandated luck to bless his regrowth." Shi Tao's words forced Ebony to blink twice and added things for him to check up in a library.

"What did you do in the Netherworld then?" It was a small group today, with only four at the table.

Shi Ling ran off to play on Elcra, possibly disturbing Oplot since they were closer in age.

"Teach the Life Reaper that there are some orders they better not take. I don't smell of death aura anymore, do I?" The Saint sniffed between her elbows.

"Not that I can tell." Shui Feng replied.

Life Reapers seemed to be the Grim Reaper equivalent. They don't usually appear unless a 'natural' death was avoided by someone. A force of nature so to speak, they reaped lives but were not creatures, closer to spirits but not exactly since they were not living beings like spirits were.

They were immortal for they weren't living.

But with Shi Tao keeping quiet on that part, he wouldn't know what she did to them.

"When was I cursed? I have been feeling particularly lucky, not the other way around." Ebony asked honestly.

"That is one of the whimsical nature of luck. It might have been condensed onto you for what's to come. Don't fear misfortune, I'll leave that hurdle for you to overcome." Shi Tao answered without giving him an answer.

When, wasn't important anymore.

"You've capped out? It hasn't been a year since you've exited the dungeon, right?" Shi Tao picked up a soup dumpling with her chopsticks.

"Mmm." To both, he replied in his mind.

"How's your core development?" She further questioned.

"I can do more." His core was developed once after leaving the Dungeon and during that time he used Dusk to better work in his Domain. It didn't increase his soft limit for skill levels by much.

Unless he had a skill level requirement to meet, there was no reason to push the soft limit by a few levels using decades. He would likely have to face that only during his time as a fully levelled Emperor. It was not worth the time to delay his evolution for a couple of skill levels.

"Have you been eating well?"

"Lots."

"Any qualitative improvements to that skill of yours?" She must be referring to his Unique Skill

"Refinement."

"That should get you some potential. Let's see…food, skill, core. Have you gone hunting?"

"There aren't many Emperor creatures on Elcra." Ebony liked how they talked at this table. Straightforward, to the point.

After all his years of people watching, this seemed to be less common and sometimes seen as rude.

"There are tens of thousands of them. You just don't know where to look. Go hunt a level 1000 Emperor. There should be dozens of those on land but you can find more in the sea or the skies, a few species repopulate fast and birthing a level 1000 Emperor wouldn't take more than a decade." Elcra was a special Worldcore, its fast growth was almost unnatural.

'I'll skip the glades this time. I can place some Relay Buffers where the Numbers failed to do so. Maybe a Turtle Fort is required for those places. Wonder how many power batteries Sister Jing has completed embedding her runes for me.' Ebony had 2 left from the delivery he got.

'I'll go scout the locations for my honeymoon with my own eyes while I hunt.' Ebony descended from Sky's Edge right at the mountain range where the Numbers struggled against a lightning stag once.

Two days later, he found a cave. Home to a species with Emperor-ranked beetle rhino. A rhino with a beetle shell and horns.

He would've liked a good hunt but a swing of blue fire had the rhinos freeze up too easily. The rhino's mana protection was close to non-existent and a near-frozen target, Emperor they may be, was hardly a hunt.

Decapitating the soft fleshy creature, he stored the body after processing it.

'Ting' 'You have killed a [Beetle-back Rhino Level 922]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 400 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.'

'That was very anticlimactic compared to the stygian frost elemental. I guess that's why this mountain isn't some kind of forbidden zone. The Numbers should be able to defeat the monsters here with the current flames of mine. This property was a good investment of time to develop.'

Ebony trained his flames to have the property of searching for the closest source of life force to spread towards. It is manual now and his clones will require a greater usage of Will to do so but it would not be a bad idea to get a Fortification for this property.

His cold flames would be more anti-creature than destructive but it was never a destructive element to begin with.

He also Willed his runic formula on them to violently absorb mana they touch to refuel the flames but it wasn't showing a great effect against any of his recent opponents. With limited Fortifications, he would have to prioritize when the time comes.

Ebony heavily favoured anything that would do with strengthening Will. He hadn't evolved yet, but he was certain that there would be plenty of choices regarding Will when he did evolve. It was simply too flexible and could achieve basically anything he puts his mind to although he wasn't quite there yet.

Four of his Turtle Forts barraged him with the information that their Pigeons had stockpiled.

The sea was even wider than Elva itself but surface information was nearly empty. Information on weather conditions and the occasional monster swimming close to the surface was about all there was.

A dozen or so Wolf Explorers were running across the surface of the ocean, freezing a path for themselves. They could swim and weren't helpless if they were dragged underwater.

'Will capacity is at 379 now. Trying other animal forms has been a great help but mass-producing them has greatly reduced the effect on growth. A proper Will visualization would help here. Pity, Aunt Tao's not letting me into their exclusive dungeon again. I won't be feeling any huge bursts of Will growth anytime soon.'

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Leaving Will Relay Buffers in the sea proved difficult, and more importantly, expensive to maintain in both mana and Will.

Ebony had the Turtle Forts discard the buffers where they found them redundant. Leaving only a few paths that connected them to the continent.

Hector travelled for over a year before he got to Tova. His Turtle Forts were busy exploring the ocean while they made their way forward so they may not be any faster than the ship that Hector took. They were also too heavy to move fast and Ebony wasn't in any rush for them to get to Tova.

"You're all out." Ebony didn't have his mana perception sensing his immediate surroundings. Getting surrounded by the beetle-back rhinos, he greeted them.

They must love his diluted overflowing essence.

Icicle slashed down at the closest neck, blocked by a rhino horn it sliced clean through and a visible tremor shot out, decapitating another head that Ebony aligned. The Quaking Impact continued to fly forward and removed the leg of a third rhino.

The melded sword scattered flames in its wake. Ebony walked past the remaining 4 rhinos that were about to charge at him and started to peel the beetle shell off while the decapitated rhinos were still fresh.

The rhinos stopped shy from touching him, sealed in ice for freshness before he could start preparing their flesh for cooking.

Picking up a message from his Numbers, he noted the 27th bounty hunter that went after his clones was caught.

The Numbers were initially unsure what to do about these bounty hunters.

Using their eye-for-eye logic, they couldn't exactly hunt bounty-less people. And the Clones themselves didn't see themselves as getting targeted for their lives.

None of the Elcrian bounty hunters had a method to kill any of them Numbers for good.

But they learned. They couldn't let the bounty hunters go, it wouldn't be equal.

So they came up with a solution that they saw as 'equal'. Every one of the bounty hunters came for money, so they should go after the bounty hunters for the same thing.

His old house's front yard was used to display over 20 ice sculptures. They were sealed bounty hunters only to be bailed by family members for the same price as Ebony's current bounty.

And, they weren't sealed forever. As long as his runic mana absorption collected their overflowing wisdom to equal the 🜋20 million.

Most of their mana was unsuitable and not pure so after his poor runic absorption they still had to be converted to universal standard.

Considering the non-mages Wisdom, their prison terms were high.

In their sealed state, a cheap nutrient potion was enough to sustain them for weeks if not more. On the bright side, the non-mages had better Constitution and their food costs were lower.

Sophia was caught off guard by this and she was worried about how it looked like he was selling people but all they needed to do was put some rules down.

From the looks of it, the Quest Hall and Noble in charge of his old home's district didn't publicly go after him yet. But he would be surprised if Navin haven't already heard of it.

None of the bounty hunters had anybody who could afford to bail them out of their sentence.

Neither did any but one had someone stepping forward to question their husband. The wife of one of the bounty hunters wasn't a combatant of any sort, but a one-armed jeweler.

Seeing her low level despite her advanced age, there was no doubt that the lady couldn't do her job, her Class anymore unless she developed very good control of mana.

He could tell from a glance that her mana was too weak to materialize a physical form that could affect the surroundings that much so that wasn't likely the case.

Ebony…Number Seven, for some reason, conjured a Perennial Frost Armament for her as an arm. There was no Will imbued, but he left large but empty mana pathways inside for the lady to haphazardly push mana through.

The only runes on them were to resist melting and absorb a scant amount of ambient mana to maintain its construct. If the lady practiced, she could move the fingers though making it as nimble as her original wasn't going to be likely if she couldn't manipulate ice mana.

'The Numbers development is diverging more obviously now.' Although he had made every Clone with a slightly different Will according to what he wanted them to do, all of them still embodied who Ebony was.

Some Numbers were becoming more reticent and only wanted to do their runic experiments indoors.

Others couldn't stop staying outdoors, trying to map out areas where monsters or man-made interference was stopping them from having Will Relay Buffers work nearby. They embodied Ebony's love for travel and seem to have grown to dislike places where they weren't 'allowed' to go. Most likely, it was just them feeling challenged by the monsters and they couldn't back down.

Then there was the group of fighters. All they did was fight; they were always the first to 'teleport' to anywhere another Number had trouble with combat.

At the moment, they weren't much different in combat power to any other Number. Even though they no longer share memories, they could still communicate and Ebony's mindspace had a board for sharing notes.

Since they were all constantly strengthened at the same rate, their learning ability was also the same.

The group that interacts most with people could hardly be called a group due to how little of them there were. Most of them were hibernating on Cinderash.

But they gave Ebony the greatest impact to his Will growth. They carried out actions that may never have occurred to him.

'Is it pity or practicality to have her start working to earn money to bail her husband…I got all the Will back from Seven but it feels like the decision is diluted after it mixes back with me and all the other Number's Will. No…Seven has part of my belief in karma. He-I must have imagined if Xin was in that position, I'd hope she would have a way out. Maybe.' Rather than Karma, Ebony believes in cause and effect.

Sowing seeds, reaping the harvest. Training hard, getting stronger.

Killing. He always expected the same chance of getting killed.

Xin understands that as well as he does, as both a murderer and a chef.

But that wouldn't change the bounty hunter's fate.

Seven had been watching the lady come and go every day, to wipe the bounty hunter's frozen figure down. Chatting about how she was able to care for herself better with an arm now.

Freezing the man's tears without damaging his eyeballs, the Numbers coldly kept the couple separated.

'If I continue doing this, do I have to expect people to keep me separated from Xin?' Ebony carved the last rhino's skin, thinking that this has already happened.

Either none of the bounty hunters have a meditation skill, or they couldn't activate it consistently while being sealed.

With their average level at 380, and a Wisdom stat around 500 to 800. Without a Fortification, their regeneration averaged at 650 points of mana per hour. They needed around 364 years to pay off the equivalent bounty value on his head.

'When I put that in perspective…' Even if his meditative aura could increase their mana and stamina regeneration by more than 20%, it wouldn't make a big dent in the overall situation.

It was merely a sealing spell, not a pause in life.

Ebony had no data to prove that his seal could slow ageing down to the point of pausing it. His skill no longer has the 70%+0.05% effect on slowing activity, merely a line stating that all activity besides the movement of life force and mana had almost ceased. Almost was vague.

Regardless, he wasn't planning on letting any of the bounty hunters go without an equivalent exchange.

Sophia was right, so far all of them had been Elcrians who didn't know better or were desperate for money. There were eyes on some of his clones, from people who spoke Gia with a different accent.

Dusk had a record of all those less skilled than Dusk's perception or those careless enough to get too close.

He had to say that it was rather surprising to find over a hundred people in Tidal who were spying on him in some way. But all were skilled enough to tell that his Clones were just ice copies not worth the effort to trace down to his original. Most of them were aware of the public display of the failed attempts at him by now.

None of those profiled by Dusk seemed to be any threat, his Clones and Dusk alone should be able to take all of them on if they decided to group up. Not all of them trusted the information on the bounty so they have been doing their homework, only to be discouraged to attack him.

He did wonder how much they were able to find out about him such as him being a semi-effective Will user despite being a Grandmaster.

Putting the situation on the other side of the continent aside, Ebony returned to his quest for a level 1000 monster hunt.

And although he was not proud of it, he learned from his future partner and kept his mouth and stomach full by stuffing it with food the Xengs got him. They may not increase his stats directly as it would to Xin but they should increase his Potential.

Every bit counts, no matter how insignificant it is at the moment.

Using a brand-new skill of his to enhance his metabolism was a great idea as it was working better than he'd expected. Will may have been very flexible and useful but mana wasn't too shabby either with sufficient control. He didn't expect to fill up his last Profession Skill slot with a skill with an out-of-the-pocket function but the more he used it, the more crucial it seemed.

For the sake of efficiency.

Mana Metabolismic Circulation - Complex manipulation of mana is used to actively break down food to its base components. Manually transporting base component nutrients to their destination to speed up one's metabolism to any degree one desires. The speed of mana breaking down base components for physiological processes and metabolism can be sped up to 350% + 5.0% per level. Mental power required for Mana Digestion is reduced by 5% + 0.05% per level.

When did he get the skill?

Mere moments ago, but the 'Skill' had long been activated within his body. It was merely formalized into a Skill with a description now.

He had a good grasp of the basic requirements that differentiated Tier 1 to 4 skills. It was much easier for a Grandmaster to directly acquire a Tier 3 skill through the sheer advantage they had in stats and capability in control, be it mana, physical or otherwise compared to a Journeymen.

He should have had this skill since he was in the Xeng exclusive dungeon.

Having it formalized so late pushed his expected schedule back but the skill should rise through the levels with ease all the way up to 500 to 600. Then he would need to train it normally and no longer have the experience from the Xeng exclusive dungeon helping.

The accurate grasp of his skill was nice to have. He predicted that he didn't need many years to train the easy skill to the required level. It didn't require a taxing amount of mental processing ability, and he would hardly call the mana manipulation for the skill to be complicated.

If it was a Tier 1 or 2 skill, Ebony might be able to train the skill from 1 to 1000 in a single year. Being more evolved certainly helped.

'Could a Saint learn a new Tier 5 or 6 skill and level it to a thousand or two under a year? Feels very possible.' Judging purely by his current experience, he didn't see why that wouldn't be the case.

No matter the complexity, people only get better at what they do for their Classes.

Picking up a new ice elemental spell wouldn't get any easier, the caster would just be so much more familiar and capable of controlling ice mana.

Higher stats, more refined Physique and generally higher baseline traits as one evolved made any evolved creature pick new skills up with far more ease than before.

Contradictorily, the purpose of pushing his skill levels and tiers now rather than later was also because learning and training skills to the limit and beyond significantly impacted his Natural Potential. It wasn't different from the gains he supposedly had developing his Unique Skill.

The uneventful hunt would have been the end of the day if it wasn't for the people he found inside the cave home to the beetle-back rhinos. He didn't sense them till he entered the cave.

Instead of what was beyond the bubble of mana that was hidden, he was more intrigued that the bubble of mana was hidden from his perception until he passed through it.

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