Ebony caught a pebble that fell onto his face. It came from beyond his range of senses and had mana from Shi Ling. ‘Check your messages!’

  “Stupid boy! What are you waiting for!”

  “How long are you going to stargaze!! You missed the timing!”

  “That’s where you take her mask off!”

  “It’ll come right off if she accepts you wholeheartedly!”

  “Necklace! Your necklace has a pair of rings, I know you can’t remember them. Just feel around your chest and they should spawn back into your recognition.”

  The long stream of messages from Shi Tao had been going on since their duel ended hours ago.

  Ebony didn’t know how effective it was but he spread ice mist and burning petals once again, refracting their figures so that no peekers could see. He sat up and pulled her to a sitting position before placing his hands on her mask.

  There was no magical glue or latches, the mask seemed to attach itself by its own accord.

  Unlike his punches, kicks and greatswords slamming down on an indestructible surface, it wobbled at the mere touch of his fingers.

  When he did pull it down, her face was covered but both her arms were as if she was lying on the table with her arms crossed.

  “Ah-It’s already dark and I hav-haven’t started dinner. I'm going to get it started!” She zipped out of the crater he made.

  With her being out of combat mode, catching her was an easy task. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her in. If there was anything he learnt about her or Xeng women in general, it was that they preferred when men were confident and took somewhat forceful measures.

  He tapped around his chest feeling nothing there but a few more taps and there it was, a necklace spawned on his neck. To this day, he regularly forgot about its existence but it was supposedly on him even when he was imprisoned on Cinderash. Not even his cell noticed or said anything about it. Now, he didn’t believe Kong Jing made it. She might have been an amazing crafter but it didn't seem like she was capable of making this pair of rings and necklace.

  Xin's right hand held her mask against her face while the left was in his hands. He slid her gloves off and there was no resistance other than loud pulsing of her heart that he bubbled in layers of mana so that it didn’t hurt the environment anymore.

  The Blood Star he froze was sent up high and he let it explode, hoping it would cover the Xeng’s eyes and also as a backdrop.

  He looked at her unaligned mask, “should I take that as a no?”

  “Do-don’t be so passive aggressive. I just feel naked without this. fuu…I’m gonna need half me.” She breathed out and summoned more courage while also bringing back half-states that she said didn’t exist anymore. “Look, I know you don’t care about appearances but I’m confident I’m pretty…”

  “Ebony?” She blinked at him with her large almond eyes.

  “Please say something, you’re making me more nervous than I already am.” Her soft voice tickled his ears.

  “Sorry, but you’re the one who stunned me. I have a very beautiful wife.” He almost went overboard with the compliments, but he sincerely thought she was the most beautiful woman to ever exist. She was right that he never really cared for appearances but he’d admit that people preferred looking at beautiful things and people and as of today, he was also one of them.

  “Wife?!” She was more beautiful-pretty rather than cute-pretty, a traditional girl-next-door oriental beauty as if artificially drawn and as he’d always imagined her, she was facially expressive and as red as a tomato right now. Her nose was tall and straight, a higher nose bridge than he’d expected. She was indeed surprisingly different from her grandmother or the other Nings that he caught sight of.

  It was probably because her grandfather and father both weren’t Xengs at all so her features weren’t fully oriental but heavily since their genes were just too predominant. That might be what she meant when she said he was wrong during dinner with her grandmother.

  Ebony raised the hand he slipped a ring on while she was nervous and he was admiring his partner.

  Elven beauty was overpraised or their racial differences had different standards and norms. Still, he learnt that charm and appearance were indeed an evolutionary boon.

  To be fair, he knew how her lips and eyes looked and he remembered when her ears weren’t covered by her mask. But putting all her features together had a different effect.

  “Let me show you around our home. But first.” Ebony placed her mask back on but it wasn’t quite attaching itself with her cheek puffed out.

  “It’s barely been a minute and you already had enough?”

  “I don’t want anyone else getting charmed.”

  After the lady’s confident and addictive laugh, he pulled her along and walked back to Tidal.

  “You’re not allowed to hurt yourself like that anymore. Why aren’t you healing? That shocked me more than the shade skill.”

  “Mana poisoning. And you? Are you hurt anywhere?” Ebony didn’t feel ashamed of the pathetic victory. While he was fatally injured, she was free of injury. However, he saw this as a victory nonetheless.

  Dusk wasn’t even here.

  Dusk’s presence would do a few things. It would reduce Ebony’s need to use any mental processing power for magic, Dusk could suppress other magics for him. It would reduce mana expenditure from Ebony, though this isn’t a big concern at the moment he had indeed found ways to use his ridiculous mana regeneration rate. Just by compressing a Domain, the mana consumption was still off the charts.

  However, compressing Domains with mana did a lot less to suppress foreign mana.

  That job fell onto Will, something that Ebony was limited by. He didn’t bring his clones’ Will back from Cinderash because he simply didn’t have enough Will to support so many clones at the same time. Will regeneration and capacity might have increased now that he received his clones’ ‘life experience’ but it wasn’t enough to support 2 separate Domain cores and almost thirty clones. Besides, he needed to keep some Will for emergencies and couldn’t feed and strengthen them all the time.

  It was a shame but he was more wary of the Elven Domains now.

  Their Domain seemed to be something any individual could feed with Will and they had been feeding this Domain of theirs for thousands of years. He might find himself powerless with magic conjuration if he stepped into their home. The only silver lining was that for Elves, only Kings and above would be able to do so and younger members would be using that limited amount for training rather than committing it to their forest.

  “No, I didn't receive any injuries other than the intentional cut since I didn’t know how else to conjure blood near enough that you’re caught off guard. I had to use what was in my body. Your last attack ate a third of my stored life force away but I technically didn’t take physical damage. None of your elements or spells leave damage on my body but you can indeed just run me dry and burn me out if you drag it out.” She spun around with her arms wide open to show her unharmed body.

  Ebony on the other hand, had missing parts all over and within himself. He was running a fever for the past few hours. As was his opponent with the boiling heat she was unintentionally giving off. Apparently, it was a side effect of going into her resting state when she exhausted large amounts of vitality. Her body naturally starts burning the abundant energy in her blood to recover.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ning Xin should have been taken away by her family not long after he defeated her. They weren’t supposed to meet each other until their official marriage or wedding. However, he had already made plans and got permission from the Nings.

  Her Great-grandfather took over the role of her father and fought him but Ebony seemed to have passed the test. It was not easy to hide this visit but he was lucky Ning Xin was out with Athena that week.

  Xin's great-grandfather was mainly a lightning magic user. He was probably where her lightning affinity came from. The man was a Ning born between a Lei that married a Ning. This also made it very likely that Ning Xin’s divination mage Grandmother could use lightning magic too. The explosive temper was also hereditary. So was the intense switch to a calm nature.

  The man wore a bracelet that the Xu made, it brought him back to the time when he was a Grandmaster. Similar to the effect around the Shis obstacle course.

  During the spar with this man, Ebony took note that the lightning magic user used 3 different colours of lightning.

  Yellow-gold bathed his body, it likely represented the pure speed and reactive augmentation it gave him.

  White-blue lightning strikes were used as ranged attacks, they had a mental attack property when coming in contact with them.

  Ebony was fortunately near-immune to these mental attacks. Until his opponent was pleasantly surprised by him shaking off the mental attack and forcefully invaded his mindspace.

  He felt bad for Mr Guru, but the lightning-mind mage invaded his mental core in one go after making sure he wouldn’t break Ebony’s mind. Mr Guru had to spend a few thousand mental years to do that but every white-blue lightning strike that touched his body was a direct explosion of sparks to Ebony’s mental core.

  While the lightning-mind mage caused sparks to go into his mindspace, their bodies were clashing.

  The mind was far harder to injure, and it was also far harder to heal.

  His opponent might have the stats and skills of a Grandmaster again but he still had the experience of a very strong Emperor.

  Furthermore, the yellow-gold enhancement was greater than all of Ebony’s augmentations when it came to speed. Far greater than Ning Xin’s fire and blood enhancement. Pure speed basically equalled power.

  Also, the man was familiar with the formless fighting style that Ebony used. A reactive martial art style mixed with his ability to predict bodily motions.

  Then came the violet lightning the man used as solidified masses, dual swords. It runs in the family.

  It was honestly cheating. There was no blocking, it was energy. Clashing a sword with him would simply allow the violet lightning to slip through any sword or shield it contacted. Mana or ice construct didn’t a thing. The swordsman just had to follow through with all his swings and the lightning would cut or slide through anything, including Ebony’s body.

  There was also no dodging, the lightning swords would turn into a large water-like wave that covered a large space. With the speed advantage the man had, Ebony couldn’t dodge or block. Reactive or predictive, his martial arts did nothing to be able to evade, block, parry or counter this.

  Heat, vitality paralysis, mana instability, continuous and chain cell rupture and muscular spasms were the main effects of touching the violet lightning. Of course, he also made it so that every strike would send white-blue lightning as a mental attack.

  Vitality paralysis stuns any regeneration by life force. Ebony’s life force wasn’t strong enough to overcome the paralysis before it was reapplied to him in battle.

  Mana instability forces the mana in his body to go haywire. It was mostly ineffective against him but he did feel his augmentations being disturbed, it took a sizable amount of mental processing to counter this. At least with his opponent having brought back down to a Grandmaster.

  The chain cell rupture was a normal lightning chain reaction that tears cells asunder. Nothing special for lightning magic but he was certain the man had a Fortification that made it more intense or spread better. Ebony’s frozen but burning cells were a decent protection against this attack.

  Muscular spasm did nothing. Ebony overrides that effect with mana and mental control over his chassis.

  As for heat, it was the easiest to shake off.

  The worst part was that Ebony’s reflection of vibrations did nothing to a blade of energy. The reflection didn’t translate well over.

  As for his gravity cube, Ebony was stunned to find out that the man could disrupt the formation and movement of gravity mana with a mixture of his lightning. The man noticed the gravitational effects to be strong enough to affect him and struck the cube with combined lightning strikes at irregular intervals.

  After the battle, Ebony summed it up as an advanced form of mana disruption, magic dispel that mages could use to disrupt other mana or elements.

  Ebony brought a few of his clones but they couldn’t do anything for this pace of fighting. They were beginning to be quite a bit weaker than the main body due to their limitations in Will and body. They did however, cast sound magic and runic spells to enhance him.

  However, Great-grandfather Ning couldn’t put him down in an instant. Ebony was left half dead but the man stopped. Typically, Ebony should have run the lightning mage dry of mana.

  It was a victory where Ebony didn’t manage to land more than 10 hits on his opponent in the 2-hour fight. 6 kicks, 2 sword slashes, a headbutt and an elbow to the chest. Those were hard-fought hits he landed, he couldn’t even say it was due to his martial arts. He had to do sacrificial feints to land those attacks at a larger cost.

  As for Ebony’s spells…they couldn’t catch up. The man had a far greater magic body, even in his Domain, Ebony had to conjure his elements at least two hundred metres away from the man’s body. With that kind of distance, the pure lightning-augmented fighter could dodge with his legs tied together.

  As for spells Ebony could cast near his body and near range, the lightning mage blinked.

  The eye blink was a spell, a dispel to be specific. He would cast the same combined lightning that he cast on Ebony’s gravity cube to snuff out any combustive ice mana or ice construct. Although Ebony’s Will was able to push the insanely quick but tiny blast of lightning mana, that instant was all it took for the lightning mage to snuff out his spells.

  Ebony tried casting every second. He tried multicasting 12 casts at a time using his ‘superior’ mental delegation. He tried using them as distractions. He tried casting overly large spells since he had the mana to do so.

  But he was made to realise that his opponent was not just a lightning mage, but also a mind mage. And one of the best around. Ebony did not necessarily have greater mental capacity than a Ning, he probably lost in that regard.

  They were better multicasters than him.

  That had been a first.

  He met stronger, better mages. But someone who can multicast as well or even better than him hasn’t been found, even amongst the Frost Elven fighters.

  For such mana-expensive spells and skills, his opponent lasted an incredible amount of time. Turning back to a Grandmaster didn’t take away his ability to fight, he might have a tier 7 mastery for all Ebony knew. But it didn’t seem like it. The man was more of a spell caster than a pure technique fighter. However, Ebony was more durable than the man’s destructive capabilities. It was close though, Ebony couldn’t recover as fast with the vitality paralysis which made the battle of attrition, his forte, a gamble.

  Despite the result, Ebony was relieved to find out that the almighty image of Xengs wasn’t that undefeatable. Despite the baseline traits difference in stats that are most closely tied to battle. He saw that a direct victory in battle was a possibility. He could find ways to counter the dispel which is the most troublesome part. Ways to defend or get around the undodgeable lightning strikes and spells. Perhaps with a few more months simulating battles with him, Ebony could raise his victory rate to 5%.

  Shi Qiang, his cousin called Xin’s Great-grandfather, Ning Xun from the fourth generation, a delivery boy.

  But it was a start.

  The man might have held back some more strength to account for his experience as an Emperor or some skills that couldn’t be held back to the same state as his old Grandmaster self but he was supposedly the fastest man of the Xeng. Excluding the second generation but including the Kongs who were space mages.

  If Shi Qiang wasn’t lying, even in terms of traversal Ning Xun was said to be faster than space magic or at least, any space user of the Xengs from the third generation onwards. Ebony couldn’t see how that was possible but he was looking at it from the perspective of a Grandmaster.

  “You better bet I’ll be there if you make my girl cry.”

  Ebony walked away with a painful shoulder pat that day. Fully aware that the man could use mind magic to mentally induce him to cry physically if he wanted to. “You didn’t exactly leave her a happy memory of you.”

  He also left with an additional char inside his head that mentally stunted him for a week. Ebony felt…normal here, more so than with any other group of people. Ning Xun didn’t hit him in anger, he was happy when Ebony retorted in Ning Xin’s defence.

  The mental charring of lightning was controlled, it was also a gift.

  A gift that strengthened his mindspace. He wasn’t sure how Ning Xun did it, but the mix of lightning and mind magic toughened the bubble around his mental core where there was colour and where his clones would convene for a meeting. It didn’t prompt a notification but Ebony roughly estimated it to be almost 3% tougher to enter or leave for a foreign mind.

  All in all, even if he didn't immediately see the Shi clan members as family he thought that having Ning Xun as family wasn’t that bad or strange to him.

  They were all outwardly harder than steel but as soft as tofu when it came to their loved ones.

  Every single one of them.