Ebony didn't activate any magnified gravity and Icicle…liked his wife more than him, so the weapon played nice.
While it was true that Icicle contained gravity mana equivalent to the mass of continents. It was a magical construct of magical properties. The cube itself doesn't weigh as much as its mass and sotis floats in different natural gravitational fields.
Now, a certain half-sleeping, half-growing baby spirit is in control of this gravity mana and mass. It had definite mass but variable weight.
Still, the cubic rings weighed down on her imnsely.
Enough to slow her down below the Grandmaster.
Kade started strong with a charging knee to the face.
'Hmm…'
The style he created for his wife was a mixture of her sword art, boxing and fencing. Unard.
Both fighters were offence-focused so he quickly saw a lot of similarities with Kade's fighting style. For soone with Jet propelled gauntlets, he used his knees and elbows for fatal strikes to the face, joints, solar plexus and more soft spots.
'A mix of Muay Thai and whatever they developed it into for arenas.' The moves were a bit showy but not enough to allow most fighters to take advantage.
"Say sothing in your native tongue." He prodded Julian.
"Uhm. Sure, I'll reintroduce myself." Julian Victor then awkwardly did as asked.
While Ebony wasn't a linguist and never learned Thai, he heard bits and pieces of it. Their native tongue held similarities. It was hard to say if the owners from ancient tis were from Thailand on Earth or, the other way around and this owner went to ancient Earth. Either way, it didn't matter to him which it was or it was just a pure coincidence.
This art should not trouble Xin.
'Still not quite Tier 5, what is the problem…' Her unard proficiency was trained up to the peak of Tier 4. She had the physical ability, flexibility, battle instinct, stamina to power conversion control and the Art by design was already Tier 5 so he had trouble reconciling why she couldn't display the power of a Tier 5 Art.
The amount of stamina she could push into active skills could easily force a normal skill to Tier 5. But arts and masteries needed more than just power or energy output.
Kade probably had an augntative Core Skill centring around strength, constitution and agility. The steaming body and breath control didn't completely hide his weaker endurance.
It was rather irkso that the gladiator's focus was also on them, the rest of the audience. He even took a hit that he could obviously dodge when the 'crowd' was cold.
An entertainer fighter flowed deep in his veins.
Ebony could respect how far the man was willing to go to warm up the crowd but not so much of making fun of a proper duel. Kade slowly realised none of his propelled punches were landing and even then, his focus was split.
The two of them got faster and faster. He managed to counter a punch with one of his own, knuckle on knuckle. And he succeeded in duplicating that against an opponent speeding up.
It was an interesting skill.
So form of technical mimicry.
'He's using that eye skill that I can't detect again.' while it was going surprisingly well for Kade all of a sudden, he also got brought to his knees quickly after.
Not only did he mimic her every physical move, but he managed to mimic her strength after it rose up. His greatest mistake was thinking that he could handle mimicking her physical prowess once her Art and combo kicks in. His mana pool also emptied out to raise his stats that intensely.
"So close! You're an amazing fighter!" Kade got dragged forward by his gauntlet and almost fell. He was more confident with that one strike.
That trip was all that it took for a hand thrust to be placed behind his neck. Xin stopped her blow which caused the shockwave and air to blow her student back. The rest of them weren't phased by a tiny little wind, Muse included.
He wasn't limited to complete mimicking and was able to mimic just her power while gauging her next move to counter. From the two missed hits, Ebony can see that Kade's mimic and counter was not deducible by Xin's foresight.
It was simply too bad copying her stats, or Physique was just a poor move on his part.
Other than that, it was rather impressive that he dodged two attacks and almost got one in.
While Xin gave a subtle praise and the audience, the ladies at least, clapped for the lesser evolved fighter. Xin was obviously curious how the weaker opponent could fool her foresight to almost land a blow.
Ebony on the other hand got alard.
'That mana is moving…I've never felt it move that way before.' Ever since Ebony was evolved to Master, he could perceive another mana type.
His sensitivity to this unmoving mana barely changes with evolution but that was also due to the little Natural Potential he leaves to his baseline outside of all other manual choices.
Until a few years ago when his gravity magic was strong enough that he felt this unmoving mana shift. The unmoving mana couldn't be interacted with pretty much all of his other spells or elental manas.
Besides sensitivity to this foreign mana type, the growth in strength of his gravity magic, his perception increasing by leaps and bounds from his years as a Master probably played a bigger part.
This unmoving mana seems to be stuck in space, never to interact with the physical world and even solid mana passes through it.
This information was so useless that he'd not noticed it all this ti. Even after he created Rhythmgrav Establishnt, he didn't notice the movent imdiately.
Watching the Scion of the Luna'Myrr House manipulate space also didn't wake him up to this unmoving foreign mana shifting.
Ebony only noticed this unmoving mana after Icicle was reforged into what it is today. When he used Icicle like a wand, allowing all cubes to circle around to facilitate a more compressed gravity vortex in his attempts to cast a true black hole.
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It didn't change much for him since he couldn't manipulate this foreign mana but he opened his senses to their movents.
It was very obvious whenever he cast Rhythmgrav Establishnt so he wondered what took him so long to notice this again. It was like the fact that one can see their nose at all tis but never notices it.
Other than that, it also moves ever so slightly whenever he uses any spatial storage equipnt.
It shifts when Xin fully augnted Intent carves the sky.
So Ebony linked its movent to space. It was always locked in space so this wasn't a big revelation. The foreign mana had different properties down here and up in space.
Xin can carve the Will out of Dusk, creating localised spaces where Dusk would lose all Will embedded in that space. Space would be torn but the foreign mana would remain.
This removes all Domain buffs he would get within that area. They stopped doing that on a large scale since it was hurting Dusk's growth.
But the advantage of Intent over on-the-spot Domain casts by Ebony was extrely obvious now.
She could also cut Will Relay Buffers, and they couldn't reconnect through the sa space till they overwheld the manifested Intent. So far, they have not found a way to wear out Intent. They can pour 0.1 Will per minute for weeks and the Intent wouldn't go away. But they just had to overwhelm it with 3 points of Will in an instant and it would be removed completely.
Relay Buffer connections weren't important within Dusk since Will was fully saturated all around within his Domain. Though fully saturated, her Intent can still cut into his Domain.
The only exception was within their ho walls where their combined Rite wouldn't even allow her Intent to manifest.
Hence, Ebony had been studying how to increase the saturation limit of Will into mana. The stronger it was, the more suppressive it would be against strong warriors and other Intent users.
This foreign mana's movent with space was usually simple. When space gets torn, it would go away with space.
Rhythmgrav Establishnts makes it move completely out of whack. He could make no head or tail of it.
Now, this foreign mana was moving oddly around Kade.
Dusk recorded every minute flow and shift for their studies. They were lucky to be within Dusk, the all-ti scanner caught the peculiarity. It only happened for a fraction of a second before it settled.
For a show fighter, Kade was much too happy to lose even if he expected the loss.
His curiosity was piqued, exceeding that of Strike of Cataclysm's potential capabilities.
Icicle's rings flew back to rest on his arms, mischievously trying to trip Xin when they loosen from her ankles.
'Heavy…' They completed their daily Priming a few hours ago and his entire body was already torn up within. Going past muscular and mana chassis endurance, he wasn't healing fast.
Icicle didn't play nice with him and his farmwork had been tireso.
'Let's test if it's conscious.' Ebony found an established movent near Kade. He rembered walking there an hour ago.
He brought forward the gravitational delay and activated the movent.
Kade felt a gust of wind but didn't notice the gravitational replay of motion.
Either he can suppress his reflexive muscles or he didn't notice anything. 'Not conscious then.'
This place wasn't built for hospitality but Dusk completed a small cabin for the guests. Sophia could sleep with Muse and Mira tonight.
It was getting late and they weren't free from getting fed. A good ti for Xin to get a new perspective and test her recipes on alien tastebuds.
He invited them to their house, but their panic was unmistakable once they stepped past the gates.
They lost all their powers except so baseline physique. For example, Ebony might be returned to Unclassed stats but he still had the 20% increase in strength and endurance by design. However, he didn't have the 9 tis stat multiplier from his evolution. Still close to human levels of strength.
"I-I can't hear the Voice!"
"Relax." He suggested that this was supposed to happen in attempts to calm them down.
But Muse and Sophia just looked at him weirdly.
'Whatever…' He let the ladies calm the visitors down. They were clearly stressed, especially Julian. He was looking ready to fight his way out.
Various Worldcore and their inhabitants referred to the notification in their minds differently. The 'Voice' was one of them. In their ho, this is cut off. There is no 'notification'. They didn't cut the Ubiquitous Providence off. They did not have that ability. But they did manage to temporarily mute one's senses to it.
It wasn't perfect either. Out of everyone here, one of them was excluded.
Muse can still receive notifications. Thanks to her, he managed to learn it was thanks to her usage and proficiency with soul magic.
Ebony brought out the outdoor dining tables and barbecue equipnt. The chef already hinted at the cuisine she was preparing tonight.
This was probably suitable according to her foresight or astral palate senses.
Over the next three days, their guests followed their daily schedule. A cultural exchange of sorts.
They joined, observed their morning spars. Helped with farmwork. Talk about books to find a common topic. Ate their als together. And he even got forging and material advice from Julian since it was one of his daily research activities recently.
They weren't allowed to watch the couple's Priming, it was too dangerous for them to be anywhere near that when the training field was in operation to put enough pressure on him that can wear him out in hours. And they would probably burn into nothing if they were to be in Xin's location.
They also weren't allowed to watch when Ebony did testing with Muse.
Ebony learned a lot about his soul not just from Muse but a sword. The dullanhan's green soul fire sword. It rests near their shoe rack, collecting dust along with the soul puppet's sniper rifle for long enough.
Thanks to an example, it expedited his self-deconstruction into Will. With the help of Muse, he can outline his soul better, and they know the result of a fire with the properties of a soul.
Partial deconstruction of the soul was taken care of within half a year. Muse was faint of heart and couldn't help but see it as him killing himself. The exercises couldn't be replicated daily.
Although he only tests himself on very small scales, the soul is hard to heal. On that note, Muse no longer detects any damage to his soul from before.
That brought them to their next and bigger issue. Having the piece of deconstructed soul to survive, then reconstructing the sa piece to its original state.
Once a piece was cut off from him, no matter how tiny, they start to die. It was nearly instant but he thought it might be due to the small size he cut off. Regardless, this is not important as he doesn't cut parts of his soul.
He used Will to deconstruct them. This is stored in Will. It should be safely stored in Will, like all his bodily and mana chassis information. Except it wasn't and he was lucky to have Muse around to watch over him.
Proper deconstruction was painless when done at the necessary speeds. He didn't even know that the deconstructed parts were just gone, not stored in his Will.
Thanks to the green fire sword, Ebony made use of the Fortifications of Frostblaze and Will along with Frostblaze Will Bastion to create a fla that could store his soul without degradation for a longer period.
As of today, they managed to safely deconstruct and reconstruct 30% of his soul back to himself, not separately since that would require him to move his body and doing it in portions wasn't a good idea.
The white fla above his palm now held 30% of his soul. His body felt an odd weakness no amount of soul damage made him feel.
'Ting' 'Your soul is undergoing soul decay.'
There was no more information but he knew all his stats were drastically reduced and his essence would leak out of his body.
While the notification pops up every ti, it also goes away much faster after he successfully stores it in soul fla.
Muse was still a bit of an unknown. They'd been having als together at least once every two days but she rarely shares about herself and he didn't probe.
This experint of theirs was mutually beneficial.
She didn't say it, but it was obvious that observing another's soul in such close examination was improving her skills. Before she was a user of soul magic, she was the Empire of Ebbing Wave's foremost soul healer.
He was her greatest patient these days.
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