"Your body? The Lancheklet family, Knights specialising in rapiers, Fencers.

Your magical ancestry started 3 generations ago, from body enhancement to external wind elemental, close to mid-range supportive spells. You took on full wind magic mastery, Mage Class instead of a Knight. Musculature shows few signs of training in the ways of a fencer. 6.6% too much fat around the legs, 4.3% too much around the arms.

Pace, stride and walking posture are poor for both a fencer or a mage, tripping hazard. Grandmaster, roughly 800 points in human Strength, but can only exert 400 to 450 points of Strength due to a lack of training. You are in muscular and intellectual degeneration, your mana is laggy when you push it out. Your conditioning Tier is useless if you don't train." Ebony dryly appraised.

Scarlet had her emotion detector feel every bit of honesty in his words as usual.

For some reason, his direct shut down felt so much better than if she were to beat the woman up for the disrespect.

After being happy at how little Ebony thought of this woman's body, Red's mind wandered. 'Why is he looking so intently at another woman's body is what you should be asking. He should only be looking at me."

Her mood dropped back down immediately.

Black didn't lose confidence in him and wasn't as childish as she used to be. She knew it was just a habitual assessment that he does for every creature, living or inanimate.

But what made her feel down, made her feel down.

It felt too petty to complain about it to him, so she had no choice but to deal with it. Or push it to Red to deal with it.

She chose the second choice immediately.

Watching Frey's confidence in her body and power crushed served to soothe her aching jealousy and pettiness.

Scarlet didn't blame and even understood the culture to be fair. The Xengs also find their partner using power as a significant measure after all.

Selective breeding had been done for ages.

It was just hilarious how blind and arrogant Frey was.

She scampered off after covering her flush of embarrassment, but Xin saw it clearly. Before she ran away, there was a sudden intensification of fear right after Ebony gave her a gaze.

'She's that scared? Same with Tikal. Honey's inducing fear in them with an exchange of eye contact without any killing or malicious Intent? Hmm, is this related to his soul roar skill that passively makes him induce mental trauma? Has he gotten strong enough that his small effect can affect creatures of the same or higher evolution?'

Xin's Intuition had her hands clasping his face all of a sudden, and she turned his face towards her to stare into his eyes.

After one long minute she spent in mental acceleration, she blushed slightly and let his face go.

All she could see was herself in those endless depths of darkness.

Despite his elemental affinities, his eyes never seem to change and only get deeper and darker. It was the darkest colour Scarlet had seen anywhere, on anything. It was deeper than any ocean she fell into.

But her heart couldn't take it when all she found in its depths was herself.

Excluding the overflowing, extremely charming violence in his mind, but she overlooked that as all her focus was on the image he had of her.

Sabotaging herself, Black's desire for Ebony only grew.

Unable to stop thinking about it, Red loosened the hold on gluttony to adjust their mood. They needed the energy, so eating was a good idea in preparation for her, for their fun time.

"Hahahaha! That should serve to humble kids these days." A random Noble from a different table laughed.

"Sir Rejuvenator, your wife must be wonderful to earn your appreciation and be by your side." Xin also didn't know or care who the knightly woman who just spoke was.

"Any how, she must be better than those crude Xeng like the Crimson Reaper, Blood Flash. Always bloody, slaughtering like a butcher and serving food to the lower Knights and freelancers like a bar wrench on a street stall." Another male human added on.

Scarlet's hair grew red from the roots. Her back straightened and self-suppression disappeared.

Her Intent pushed away Ebony's Will unintentionally, she didn't even know it was there when she was in her Convalescent state "Haha, is that so? A bar wrench you say?"

Her mask automatically fitted itself over her face, where her soul deemed it to be. 'This Will…so he was hiding my face and figure. No wonder I wasn't getting the usual stares and dirty emotions….He's so cute.'

Red took Ebony's arm and dragged him away from the pool of piss accumulating on the floor.

It was foul.

A loud voice transmitted throughout the hall, signifying the official start of the ball since most, if not all, invited participants had arrived.

It was someone from the Lord Family, one of Navin and Yvette's sons who began to call out the Archduke and Dukes, alongside the biggest contributors against the Tetramyth.

Ebony and her were large contributors, but not for long, compared to the overall duration of the war and the fact that the war only got bad after Saint ranked Tetramyth started to meddle.

Although the Saints never came through the portals themselves due to the rules and Nebula Watch overseeing Elcra, they could still affect the battle.

Oplot was once again followed by a team of earth and stone mages who had to repair the floor he walked on.

The man's natural mass was a wonder to her husband who similarly had density issues, but not to the degree of leaving dents in the compressed ground or crafted tiles.

A red hot flush was hidden when she thought about her husband's natural mass with a fully compressed and filled mana chassis pushing down on her.

Luckily, they were not called out for the first dance.

Red tugged on Ebony's arms, "What do we do? Look at Mallory's smile, she's going to call us out. I've never danced before." She whispered into his ears playfully, trying to make him share her feelings by tickling his weak spot with her breath and voice that he loved so much.

"Me neither. It's okay, we'll know what to do once we're out there." They watched the so-called 'dance' together.

It was weird. She was pretty sure he thought so too. Inefficient.

Wasteful movements.

Flawed footwork.

Openings that could lead to death.

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"Why are you peeved?" Red asked curiously, changing the subject from the boring dance.

"Am I?"

"Ahh, is it because I pushed away your cute spell? I won't do it again. But…it's okay this time, no one is looking at me." Red understood immediately with her Intuition.

However, it was true that other than Ebony no one in the hall dared to look in her general direction. Commander Wil was drunk somewhere. Athena ran away to hide from the noblemen who wouldn't leave her alone as she was a beautiful and strong woman who did not have a partner with her.

The Prince and Princesses were busy socialising or handling the event.

Everyone was strong and experienced enough in battle to sense her presence and her not-so-friendly Intent.

"Let's change into something more comfortable."

Ebony surprised her by sweeping her feet off and picking her up, Flickering home.

She chuckled; her husband was a lot cuter than she thought. Then again, this possessiveness was what she liked.

"Once is enough for an experience. I'll wear these only at home next time." She raised the outer transparent layer of her dress and pushed her legs to the slit of the thick inner layer in his direction.

The rock minded husband of hers didn't even glance down, which annoyed her a bi,t but his intense eye contact made her forget that immediately.

They changed into their matching battle gear and were back in the hall in the blink of an eye. She had him carry her again. It was the only way to move fast but quietly. Her movement would cause shockwaves and destroy part of the residential area.

'Coming to this noisy ball with annoying people wasn't such a bad idea after all.' Red could only think of the good things that happened today.

They were called out for the second dance alongside many freelancers and the lower nobles who stood out in battle; this time, the announcer knew of her presence.

With her heart beating loudly, she held onto Ebony's hand and placed the other on his back while his on her waist.

Wondering how to dance, Ebony took a bold step forward to push her off balance, and her Intuition and body understood immediately.

Sparring.

It was another session of martial exchange, and he started the challenge.

Scarlet, without her swords. With both her arms busy, thought, 'bring it on!'

He knew her so well.

❅❅❅

Ebony condensed his Will to tackle the Intent she tackled into his eyes. Their mana and life force burst out to carry their respective Will and Intent to clash.

Her life force burned and sparked, pushing his mana back while he had absolute control, pushing her physical body around. The footwork, pacing and balancing were all under his control despite her greater physical strength,

'Will really can't match Intent. Aunt Tao must have sharpened her Intent in a similar way the Ning Saintess expedited my Will's growth.' Ebony believed in his mana to be stronger than the thinner, weaker life force when it comes to a physical push-off, but Intent changed everything.

They lost track of the music and only had each other's exchange in mind without regard to their surroundings.

Only when Navin stepped in by boxing them up in a barrier did they stop.

"I see that both of you enjoyed the ball, but we didn't really need to have our guest knocked out." He restrained his stern tone.

"….Sorry about that." Xin apologised which he didn't expect.

Looking around, most of the people who danced with them had fainted and were dragged aside with Yvette and some other healers with similar faces and mana signature healing them.

Although they did leak some mana and life force out, he was pretty sure they kept it tamed since it was just a dance and they weren't aiming their Will or Intent at anyone else.

'They are supposed to be the stronger fighters. Not important, what's important is how Navin cast this barrier around us without either of us noticing.' He had to reevaluate the true King of this Empire yet again.

The stronger he got, the more he was able to tell from Navin's capabilities.

'The Lord Family probably has a Physique or baseline that's far above the rest, specialising in arcane manipulation. High base Intelligence effect, a few times higher than most mage descent. Unnatural casting speed. Wisdom stat has a base effect with higher capacity and regeneration, a lot higher than baseline humans.'

The royal family had elemental users all over the place, from fire to obsidian elemental. However, they were pure mages.

Not all healers, but all barrier mages. The healer descent only started from Yvette.

He could see why Hector used to be and still was a bit of an outcast. He had zero ability with barrier magic or good external mana manipulation.

People probably thought he was adopted or, in a harsher light, that his mother who didn't have Lord blood had a child with someone else.

That sounded rough, but Ebony wouldn't know. He didn't understand big families that well.

Taking Navin and Oplot into account, he could see how they managed to keep natural Emperors off the planet till this day. Excluding the invasion by the Tetramyth.

The event after his admittedly fun dance was boring for him. He'd rather be back at his training field experimenting with the Prime Rate or helping Xin push her Conditioning to a Priming. The strengthening was significant after all.

As she said during their vows, Xin helped him communicate his emotions.

"Go away." She sweetly translated his feelings.

Ebony only didn't understand why people were taken aback by his gentle, gorgeous wife. He could smell their fear.

How rude and blind.

Taking the glass of alcohol that a fellow freelancer they had once saved on the battlefield passed to Xin, he downed the drink. He wasn't about to let her have alcohol even if she was in combat mode and would burn the alcohol before it entered her system.

As he drank, he felt Xin twitch and something entered his mana's range.

The moment the foreign object entered his range, he and his wife knew they couldn't move in time.

Passing through hundreds of kilometres and the glass window was a small metallic cylinder.

Ebony's wine glass blew up before the metallic cylinder landed on his skull and detonated.

Xin's swords only swung up halfway to the bullet. She didn't have her Art built up.

'What a fast bullet.' Ebony felt his Mantle of Reservation pierced through.

A simple bullet managed to hit him. That was a bit surprising.

It was so fast, he wasn't able to suppress the blast radius with mana and his immediate surroundings and people he was just talking with had been caught up in the explosion.

However, they were not dead.

Ebony saw the barrier around them and identified Navin's mana. Then came Yvette who healed the charred bodies since the explosive contained immense heat that passed through Navin's barrier.

He watched them practically revive in a second, back to their original condition as if they barely had time to feel the pain of the explosion or the shrapnel.

'Reactive mana sure is useful, it's faster than my Will by a large margin 250% Fortifications till King, so 1000% mana reactive speed?' Ebony plucked the sharp metal that tore into his skin before flicking it away. Navin's defensive magic casting was way too fast to be unfortified.

"Ebony! Are you okay!?" Navin rushed over with his wife, who had her mana ready to heal him.

Ebony waited and waited "…Mmm." before he finally mumbled a reply when his wife's voice didn't reply for him.

It was a pity but, his wife already got ahead of him after claiming that this was her fight.

'Outside my mental perception range. Invisible to my Will Relay Buffer's occasional scan. Bullets faster than we can react to. And me as the target. Decent bounty hunters arrived?' Ebony hadn't seen a gun powerful enough to shoot such fast bullets if he excluded Cinderashian Aether-lava or sulphuric-powered guns.

This bullet felt propelled only by physical means, hardly any mana was stuck onto the bullet.

Aether was much stronger, with more defence penetration. But this gun and the bullet itself were very well made.

It was beyond Cinderash's gun technology at the very least.

"Sorry about that." Ebony patted the shoulders of the freelancers he recognised since he housed them in Dusk. Xin also cooked for them during their time against the Tetramyth.

They were here to thank him and Xin and to make small talk, but got caught up, blasted, burned to a crisp and healed back to normal just because he was targeted. Though it only pierced his skin and didn't draw blood,

'Why now? Just random timing, not caring for the people around and the occasion?' Ebony didn't want to think about the whys and hows.

He would've moved to counterattack if his wife hadn't called dibs because his attackers this time had pretty clear-cut killing intent.

They weren't blinded by money when they shot that bullet.

'A duo.' Ebony's mana was on Xin's robe, and so was a crystal of his Will Relay Buffer attached to her Myriad Bracelet.

"Follow us if you don't want destruction in your city," Ebony warned before Flickering out of the hall.

Mana Discern got to work

[???]

[???]

His perception couldn't get through their items or their stealth skill.

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