"Transfer your funds. Be obedient and we might just let you go with your life."

"Boss! That bombshell…"

"Heheheh, of course. And each of us to enjoy your-" The bearded 2-metre tall human added to his demands.

Dusk sensed the change in intentions second. They were ashamed that Xin probably felt the disgusting thought first, but at least Dusk could react before Xin could take action.

Ebony covered his wife's eyes while Dusk froze and shattered every hijacker aboard into ice dust and ejected them out of the vessel.

Looking at his staff, he took the accident as a stroke of good luck now. To think they would return home from their honeymoon to find Dusk almost gone.

Ebony didn't feel any pity, but it was a lie to say he wasn't feeling anything when he got home and found Dusk's main body almost all gone. Lying in its place was the staff he gave Dusk to experiment with.

The old power source, over a meter in diameter, was now housed by a giant Turtle Fort in charge of home defense instead of Dusk. The Frost Elves' present sapling was protected by it. It had three weeks of Will, meant mostly for hibernation until hostility was sensed.

To reduce the Will usage for the Fort, he brought along half the Clones on Elcra within Dusk for his own protection. Two through Eight were with hi,m excluding Number Seven.

So he had 6 Numbers with him while 7 remained on Elcra, with One still missing but somehow alive, even without Will recharge for years on end. Eighteen to Twenty-Two was on protection and research duty.

Seven officially took over the role of an instructor at Tidal Academy. He wondered how that was going.

Dusk tested the almighty staff's ability and almost had its Will fully absorbed and consumed by his new staff. Without any Will, the ice mana that Dusk's body was made of had nothing inhabiting it and was also consumed by the staff.

Although the Will was still present in the staff, it was hard to access any of it in the same way it was hard to access Aegis and the other Clones on Cinderash.

On the bright side, his Domain was now mobile because the staff wasn't heavy even with all the mana in it.

But Dusk was no longer able to support him in the same way it could. At least till Ebony recovered it back to normal, without the staff eating through the Will.

Speaking of Will, after the injection from the Ning ancestor, his Will capacity rose to 907 points. Over 9 times as great as when he first started utilising Will and more than double what he had before the injection.

As its regeneration was linked to the percentage fill of his capacity, healing Dusk should not take nearly as long as it did.

On the spot casts of his Domain would be much stronger now, and he could support more clones or Rimeforged Apparitions if he needed, but he didn't have any plans to increase the Numbers at the moment. Dusk deserved most of his excess Will for its growth.

The improvement to his Will was far from solely quantitative. The Ning Saintess' memories were too prevalent, so there was a bit of a problem with manifesting his Will. There were more memories about a variety of magic and monsters than there were his personal memories, even including every single one of his past battles and skill creation simulations.

Thanks to his Core Skill, he can still differentiate between his memories and the injected ones. The volume of memories couldn't change him into a different person.

His Core Meditation was the sole reason, besides his genetic,s that this method of memory infusion could be stable.

Ebony could place himself in the shoes of every creature the Ning Saintess displayed, with more time spent in each point of view than his own thoughts and memories and still remain with the same personality. That was apparently not normal, but he wouldn't know.

The unfamiliar Will was a bit troublesome and before he purified every memory into something no different from another of his simulated events, he didn't want to recharge Dusk or make new clones. The intention behind the Will would affect them in ways he didn't want.

"Thank you so much, Mr Ebony. Please accept our sincere apologies for the failed security." The dog-eared attendant bowed.

Ebony looked at the two human corpses, "mmm." One had half his body vapourised from the laser-like gun ambush from the hijackers; the other was in better condition and should still be recognisable by family or friends.

Sealing both of them with a tiny bit of Will in his magic, "bring them home."

"..."

"I'll pay." Ebony didn't think about how ridiculous it was for the attendant to be stunned; he knew the poor employee was thinking about the money required to do such a thing. Carrying two dead bodies across space was not cheap.

"Honey, plans changed. We're not making it out of the sector, much less reaching Cinderash." His wife had cycled through 'dear', 'sweetheart', 'darling' and decided on honey. He tried his best to change that from honeypie and succeeded.

"You already knew from the start, didn't you."

"No, my Intuition is furiously changing now. Prepare. You, tell the pilot to shift course there." Her reddening eyes demanded the dog-eared attendant to listen. Instill fear from the rising death threat within her eyes.

It was just a side effect, she had no such intentions against the attendant.

Ebony hastily tapped his staff onto the floor and infused the entire 3km long vessel with his Will and made the oval spaceship his Domain. It took less than a minute but he noticed how tough the vessel should have been.

The recent hijackers sneaked in by taking on the disguise of crew members who were probably dead somewhere by now. Perhaps the stop where Ebony and Xin boarded the vessel.

Despite his precaution, he didn't notice them until they acted and killed the bodyguards who were part of the private security. Ebony and Xin were the only passengers; the rest of the 182 people were crew members.

Going to another sector was considered a short trip for a vessel of this size, but the fact that it was a private trip made this as luxurious as it could get.

"Do you think they were after my bounty?"

"No sir, we weren't aware you had a bounty till we checked. The six of them are gang members who prey on rich offspring. They are masters of disguise and trickery. Our company and competitors have already been used as their way of choosing rich targets. We've lost many bodyguards and crewmembers in the same way…"

"Sounds rough," Xin replied. The luxury flight companies being used by space hijackers to pick targets sounded inevitable.

There was not a hint of lie in her words because, dulled or not in her convalescent state, the fact that her Intuition didn't pick anything up until their bodyguards were blown apart was proof of the hijackers' skill.

"They must have thought we were easy targets being grandmasters," Xin explained. Ebony knew better and trusted her words more than his calculations. "Honey, cast your Mantle of Reservation over the entire ship. But no mana vibrational shield, that'll attract beasts."

"Mmm." Ebony knew that the spaceship had better defenses than all his spells combined, but one could never be too careful.

He wouldn't have bought a ticket for a ship less secure than what his skills could provide. This ship came from the Hex's Regional Station and was one of the most reputable amongst ferrying companies.

Shielding a 3km long oval spaceship in Mantle of Reservations compressed to the limit took a lot of mana. More importantly, it took him some time to cast properly without messing with whatever defenses the ship already had.

Suddenly, his hand was squeezed tight before he recognised the signal she sent him and stopped moving, breathing and his heart from beating.

So did his wife and the dog-eared attendant.

Alarms rang a moment too late but slowly, every crewmember stopped what they were doing and remained as motionless as possible.

After ten full minutes, Ebony sensed something without moving any of his mana or shifting his eyeballs.

He didn't dare Identify or Mana Discern their predicament, not that it would allow him to learn anything about it.

A creature.

One that all of them knew and learned before anyone should journey into space.

The Void Tardigrade.

These creatures were all over the universe and were one of the most lethal yet safest creatures to come across.

They were the safest because as long as one stayed still, they had a high chance of surviving.

They were the most lethal and dangerous because as beings that sauntered out of the void itself, they were pretty much all Higher Beings and nothing tangible and few things intangible could even interact with these creatures.

Space magic of the same tier couldn't translocate or meddle with the void. Although if he said that to certain space mages, they would strongly disagree and prove him wrong.

They were very interesting creatures, despite being common to encounter in space or anywhere a distance away from the presence of a Worldcore, stars, moons or a strong presence of living creatures.

It was hypothesized that to the Void Tardigrade species alone, everything in the physical world was like a void they couldn't see or feel. They only reacted to the physical matter when movement was made.

There was no mention of communication with the Void Tardigrades being possible. It was questionable whether they were mind mages daring enough to attempt reading these creatures' minds. For all they knew, the invaders' mind would be consumed by the void, which was a dead end with no hopes of recovering.

These creatures didn't leak any energy that he could perceive, but visible to the naked eye. The microscopic tardigrades that he knew of looked similar in appearance to these magical ones, but scaled up to a small puppy. Sadly, it didn't share a small puppy's cuteness.

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The wall vibrated with machine noise. The eight-legged creature munched soundlessly, eating redundancies of the ship.

The pipes shivered when alchemical fluids were pumped into the toilets and the propellant system. The Void Tardigrade gulped and gulped. Inaudibly.

Space dust gently slipped through Ebony's Mantle of Reservation over the spaceship two kilometres away from where they were standing, and it disappeared before it touched the ship.

The experienced sailors and prepared Ebony knew that this would pass sooner or later, even if the Void Tardigrade was currently climbing up his leg. Even if its claws nicked his robe, which caused the creature to open wide and send bites of his robe into the void. There was no need to blink, breathe or have his heart beat.

But someone didn't get the message. Someone who had a blood spell cast to stop its heart from beating and was used to hibernating without breathing was waking up at the worst of times.

"Oink?"

Ebony couldn't use his Will or mana to cast any sort of warning magic, even if Miss Wiggles had a Myriad Bracelet with portable Hex, sending any sort of signals would have them noticed.

Not even Hex would be spared from being consumed by the void. According to Hex, anything part of them eaten by the void was considered lost forever and unable to be connected to even through the Spirit Realm unless a Spirit God saved them or a stronger version of themselves was eaten instead.

However, sensing the skin shiver in the soft hands he was holding, he knew that it was already too late, so they took action together.

The Void Tardigrade didn't make any sudden motions when it figured 3 entities were moving.

It rolled a few times on the ground after Ebony kicked it away, and his wife dived down to embrace and pick up Miss Wiggles.

His wife was surprised when the spaceship's remaining 2 bodyguards that were near them also sighed and moved between them and the Void creature. From the looks of it, she must have been sensing their anxiety and fear the entire time and was surprised that even so, they moved when their clients did too.

'Very professional, guess I need to give them a good review if we make it out.' Ebony nodded to the two toad-headed bodyguards. They had the body of a toad and wore thick padding that resembled astronaut garb but with their feet and hands exposed, leaking slimy residues everywhere they went.

"Sir, ma'am. I still wanted to see my family ya know? Ribbit." The 1.5 metre tall bodyguard wiped his slimy toad hands over his chest to spread and spread his mana.

"Mmm. I'll see what I can do." Ebony knew that they could've just remained still and survived easily but they didn't. He'd seen enough people abandoning their allies on the warfront to know how difficult a decision to make it was.

"Try to get eaten whole, they say the void never leads to void." The taller of the two Toddium jested lightly.

"Its mouth can't even swallow our heads." The serious red-haired partner of his didn't attack even at this point.

According to her she mutated her Clan Skill to some degree, keeping the best of both worlds and staying sane while having the unbalanced power boost. Of course, if she were to let herself go her Intent would be strengthened exponentially. Otherwise, her personality seemed to have stabilized greatly, especially after they got married.

"Not yet?" He asked.

"Sister Jing's present better work. 2 seconds. Hug." They hoped going back to stillness made them invisible again, but he was ready to act.

They were lucky the Void Tardigrade was an oddity amongst Void creatures. Void creatures usually made it their natural order to erase everything into the void as swiftly as they could; some of them went as far as turning space into void every chance they got. Their territory was currently locked away by God.

The self-invited Void Tardigrade shook its head left to right and…Miss Wiggles hopped out of Xin's embrace. Since she was trying her best to stay still, she wasn't able to keep the piglet to sit tight and let her slip out of her grasp.

The bodyguards gulped when the little piglet rolled the Higher Being across the metal-plated floor by giving it a tap with its front hooves. It was unknown what rank or level this creature was.

Since the void creature was blind to all his mana senses and his eye's Identification wasn't Tier 7 or higher, he wouldn't be able to identify anything. It would be like trying to identify space only this time, the lack of space instead.

Maybe if he had some kind of void element affinity, he wouldn't require such a high Tier perception or deductive skill to identify the creature.

It was a known fact that to have affinity with Void was to have no affinity with every other element, not even the slightest spec of elements, or they would taint the void affinity. Void mages were specifically targeted by laws on most space stations.

'It's very docile but for how long?'

He didn't have to question himself because the answer was not any longer.

Dark fumes were exhaled by the Void Tardigrade "accuuu"

Ebony lunged to hug his partner in advance, disregarding the problems intense motion would cause. He also latched onto the two bodyguards with his mana and brought them close.

Miss Wiggles already spit out a gravity vortex by instinct, much faster than Ebony could because the creature's gravity magic wasn't a fully mental spell, it had an organ densely filled with gravity mana.

This creature was organically capable of gravity magic, which many monsters or those without Classes had an advantage over people.

The fumes just so happened to only cover right in front of the Tardigrade and swallow them up. The floor was gone, and the supplied air was gone. Light was removed.

And they sensed the sensation of having their physical, mental and soul being erased into the void. Ebony had trained both of their souls' tolerance with his Sub-Class Skill. While they couldn't control their soul, both of them were capable of sensing the form of their soul, whenever it took damage and how damaged they were.

By vomiting out disgusting amounts of mana through his skin and Dusk, he managed to encapsulate them by filling up the void mana consuming them. He didn't even know he could empty himself out of mana within 12 seconds till now. Dusk's mana storage was quickly expended.

His wife's measly mana pool took over when even Dusk was close to empty. And the Toddiums felt their tactic and followed through in the same way. The three of them roughly expended mana and life force fast enough to match Ebony's reminder mana, his regeneration. All of them couldn't regenerate while expending mana so his aura was of no use to increase their regeneration.

It felt like years had passed before Kong Jing's present finally activated and ripped them away.

Feeling a gush of freezing cold air against his face, he first checked that the woman in his arms was in one piece before noticing the Toddiums flailing around.

"They can't fly."

Bloody wings sprouted from his wife, boosting them ahead and catching the falling bodyguards of theirs.

"Toxic gas." He informed after taking in a breath. 'my storage of air got eaten by the void, even though my body is intact. Does the void eat up gases faster than it does solid?' Ebony decided his body could go without air for some time, but he melded temporary mana to air conversion runes in his lungs as a precaution.

He didn't worry so much about the Toddiums when helmets crawled over their heads from their suits. They were ready for spatial travel, and their equipment surely told the same story. As a luxury service and employees of said company, the minimum standards for their company's bodyguards were Emperors and they were no slouch.

After he caught them and they got their bearings, they descended themselves.

"Are those jetpacks?" His wife surprisingly put her red hair away. Knowing that that meant her Intuition was telling her against hostility or that she was so exhausted by the void she needed recovery faster, he had his Will focused on recovering the human, pig and toad people.

"Hover packs, ma'am. They are made for us Toddiums only and are fueled by the slime we produce through our skin. Our entire spatial travel suit is customized for us Toddiums."

"Sir, ma'am. Thanks for saving us when you didn't have to. Now it's our turn to do our jobs."

"I see we're sent 4 sectors away from where we were."

"What are your names? I'm Scarlet and my husband over here is Ebony."

"We're the Atelopus brothers. I'm the 4149th son. My brother over here is the 4582th son. You can call me Athelopus the 4149th of the 22nd and him 4582th of the 22nd." The 4149th introduced

"That's a lot of brothers," Xin commented.

"Hahaha, I know right. For you humans and the Gia language, we go by Azeloth and Aethel. Both of us are 22nd-born. I hear our mother has recently given birth to her 59th born and she hit a record of 50,333 eggs. I wonder if all of our latest 50,333 brothers and sisters managed to be born safe and healthy." Aethel helped to clear things up.

Ebony and Scarlet blinked, their human notions took a moment to understand that these two brothers, hundreds of sons apart, were the same age.

"Are you all Emperors?" Ebony questioned seriously.

"We average about 400 years to get to Emperor rank, but pretty much all of us are capable of evolving into an Emperor sooner or later, if we don't die young. Our great mother is a Grade 6 Emperor after all. Some of our lazier brothers only barely evolve with the worst credentials. Fear not, the two of us are proud and proper Toddiums and we'll complete the job we're paid for."

'Credentials…I suppose they mean evolving with 25% fortifications, maybe less if that's possible but 10% was only for journeyman and apprentice classes.' There was no guarantee his knowledge was correct, especially not for a different race of creatures. They may work with weirder subsets of percentages for all he knew.

Evolving from King to Emperor with only an increment of 25% in all of their Fortifications seemed inconsequential, considering how a single level in a Tier 5 skill can give such a boost to a certain stat or ability but if they've always evolved with 100% or a couple of 250% in their younger evolutions, 25% was still a sizable boost and there were many other benefits to evolving from the refinement or mutation in one's physique to a direct skill refinement or evolution by the act of directing Natural Potential to them.

The boost to physique was the most crucial, with mana or all essence in general increasing in purity.

Base stats increased efficacy, making every single stat point worth more than they were before one evolved. And if the creature could modify itself consciously, it could do whatever it wanted with its genetics. But only the craziest, most desperate or the well-informed and cautious do manual editing so they don't make themselves weaker than what natural selection decides.

"As your bodyguards, we have bad news for you young couple." Azeloth didn't fiddle with anything however, the human couple can sense his attention placed within his helmet instead of looking around them.

"What is it?" Xin seemed to like these brothers. Something in his gut told him it wasn't because they willingly stepped forward with their lives on the line but because they called the two of them 'young couple' without her stating the fact.

"Our sensors are picking up that the Worldcore we're being dragged into has a strong essence. Legendary. We're being dragged onto a Legendary Worldcore." Azeloth continued.

"Out of the pan and into the fire….what level brother? Ribbit." Aethel articulated ribbit as if he had a speech impediment.

"Analysing. Hex only has 3 known Legendary Worldcores. 4 sectors away…hmm, we are in known space Hex Sector L-12 if my sensor isn't broken, but… Sector L-12 doesn't have a Legendary Worldcore."

"Stay close, our suits have active camouflage but its effectiveness is questionable on a Worldcore with these readings. And…are both of you fine? I'm reading high levels of toxicity and radiation."

"It's alright," Ebony replied. He'd tasted the ambient conditions for the past two minutes and determined that neither of them would feel anything as long as the conditions didn't get any worse.

The only issue was that it was indeed getting worse as they descended, and he couldn't stop their descent with gravity.

There was something actively cancelling or resisting his gravity mana control.

He even knows what this something was. The Worldcore-planet-celestial body itself was talking to him after all.

Ebony never felt such clear mutterings from a celestial body before; they were usually inane murmurs with a few clear words or will from time to time.

"HOLYBLOODOFTHESHICLANANDNINGCLAN.PLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEAVEPLEASEDON'TLEVE. PLEASELETMEHAVEATASTE.JUST.ONE.BITE."

"I suppose clear never meant sane." He muttered.

"Hmm?" His wife cocked her head adorably.

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