“A duel? Sure, hehe. It’s been awhile.” She handled the fish with maximum efficiency but it looked slow and neat.

  The nonchalant reaction cooled him off a bit, “Haha, you misunderstood. I mean the duel.”

  The only training they had together for over a decade was technique or sword exchanges and she likely misunderstood him.

  It took her some time before her hands stopped working. The words sunk in slowly.

  “So. You think you beat me now? Is that why?” She sounded offended.

  “I’m confident of being able to protect you better than you can yourself.”

  “...I need to tell you something.” She got back to dipping the fish slices in batter. “Mastering the Ning Clan skill made me…almost like two people. I don’t have half states anymore.”

  “What’s your point?” He was not in the state of mind to decipher hidden meanings within statements, and neither did he understand what this had to do with his proposal.

  “I’m just a crazy woman.”

  Ebony raised his head reflexively and nodded “I’m not exactly what others would call sane either. There’s no one else but you for me.”

  “Back to my point. I know nothing of battle, but the other me only knows battle. However, she can think and control herself now. She doesn’t know I-err, she probably recognises you but has no good feelings for you. Her Intuition and mine are split and don’t always match.”

  “You don’t have to te- My bad, you were trying to raise my chances. I’m quite happy to hear that you want me to succeed.” Ebony realised how slow he was but saying out loud got the chef jittery and all literal sparks of hot electricity were popping around her.

  “Stop testing my mastery of the skill. Let me finish up.” She wasn’t lying about her mental state.

  “I’ll get ready to go out.” Ebony didn’t lend a hand. He got changed and called to check if the venue he prepared was ready. He wasn’t wearing his robes, it would tear and burn instantly.

  Duelling and training grounds under Quest Halls weren’t going to cut it. Unless Navin was personally there to confirm the integrity of the place, he found it hard to believe the underground construct could withstand a battle.

  There was a mountain range, Skylance Range south of Tidal that many older generation Nobles go to that Hector introduced. It was a famous no-go zone for commoners of the Empire because they might die from misfire or spell ricochet. It was four to five hours out on a casual unaugmented run so that should be sufficiently far away from populated areas.

  Waiting outside, he noticed he was getting nervous. It was quite exciting due to how uncommon it was for him to be nervous.

  ‘Good luck.’ Dusk dropped a plum on his head. It hasn’t been more than two months so it was still in the midst of recovering Will since it had to be shared with the rest of the clones. He might have increased his Will capacity and recovery thanks to their experience but Will recovery was still very limited compared to mana.

  Bloodlust and killing intent spawned beside him. The flatter-chested woman with red hair was ready for battle but didn’t attack him on sight. So it was true that she had control now.

  “I’m in a bad mood. Want to guess if that means it's because I know I’ll beat you and can’t have you or that I’m going to lose a one-on-one?” Although her mask was fully opaque, it was likely a choice or benefit of hers that her eyes seemed to glow through. Whether or not it was an optical illusion, he wasn’t sure but he knew that the piercing bright red glare would have effects on most things it looked at that looked back. Well, it only enraptured him more.

  “...” Ebony didn’t look away from her intentional challenge of a staring contest.

  “Haha! Ease up. But no matter how much I want to be closer with you, I’m not going to lose on purpose.” The unfamiliar lightness in her tone hopped onto his cube and gave his back a strong pat.

  Neither of them won the staring battle.

  His cube gently lifted and burst towards their venue.

  “Not bringing Dusk along?” For someone who said she wouldn’t have positive feelings for him, the locking of arms by her initiative was unexpected.

  “That would defeat the purpose.” He gave the best flight service he could, blocking the wind with mana and having a stable cube. He could make a seat but it was too short a trip to require it.

  “I wouldn’t mind, I have my mask.”

  “I have my cube.”

  Skylance Range had a clear sky, the sun was in their eyes and if Ebony guessed right, Xiaoya was floating in space further than he could see. There were indeed a few battles happening and the mountain range wasn’t as wide as Bubble Hills, but the individual mounds of earth were much bigger and denser.

  He landed on a rockier valley instead of a grassy one.

  “So many busybodies.”

  The red-haired woman’s comment made him look up. For one, Hector was a distance away. He arrived early for such short notice. But her comment was likely for the Xengs.

  “You know we don’t have to do this, you're supposedly a Shi. You can propose normally.”

  “Not ready to lose?”

  “Don’t get cocky. I admit, you’re better than me in battle instinct and stronger in just about any situation. Except for a direct one-on-one. I do have something I always wanted to say if you ever asked me out like this.” The red-haired woman admitted to thinking about him proposing.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m less of a Xeng than you, in terms of bloodline.” She gulped and her fingers twitched in the way to show her rational side coming back but she ultimately gathered enough courage, “I challenge you to a duel. If I win, you’re mine.”

  “That’s a bit hurtful. I’m no ‘bride’.” Ebony replied seriously.

  “Don’t worry about the little details. You can’t escape me.” She stood merely a hundred metres away from him.

  “Yeah. I knew that from day one.”

  Ebony snapped his Domain into existence. There was no reason to make it wide ranged, they were going to be close and personal.

  They didn’t need a firing gun to know when to start, a glance was enough.

  All augmentations fired up, half a beat after his opponent’s magic. But Ebony moved first.

  In his mind, he had to end this as fast as he could. Whether it was her charge-up of vitality or her sword art, she grew stronger over time till she burned out. Once again, dragging it out till she burned out of energy would defeat the purpose of his challenge.

  Without fancy spells, he punched her right in the face. It wasn’t unexpected that she could react and do a twin swing from the right to push his punch away but he didn’t pull back or swerve. Her swords clanged onto a fist, but the same fist seemed to fade through the first and flew right into her mask and blew it up.

  The mask flew through her head, her upper body turning into flames.

  “AHHH!! YOU KILLED HER!”

  Ebony ignored Hector's obnoxiously loud scream.

  Ebony didn’t see and recall wrong, she could really turn her physical body into pure elemental flames. Something he couldn’t even imagine doing. It was nothing like the types of spells he could do.

  His wrist that had two slashes barely had a skin cut but he already confirmed that her clan skill actually perfected her need for a charge-up. She hit his Phantasmal Shade but still left a mark on his physical body. She must have reacted, hit the first hand, noticed it was just a ‘shade’ and reacted once again to deflect his attack to no avail. Her Core Skill no longer needed a charge up of vitality!

  This was from her advice, “just punch away”. He had the body for it so his style didn’t need to be so evasive and flexible if there was no need to.

  Without letting her headless body regathered, he micro-flickered and back-hooked her midsection. Covering his legs with sharpened ice, he made his body an Armament and the force of his kick carved deep into the mountain below. It forced that part of her to turn into flames as well.

  Realising he wasn’t getting anywhere, Icicle was in his hands and he used Crystalline Avalanche at her solid mask instead. Infernal Cleaver Art from Cinderash was showing through the cold flame slash. The heavy cube helped him greatly here and he didn’t lack any gravitational support. It was hardly surprising that her swords could get through the current Tempestuous Lull Pelt. This defensive gravity spell worked better against blunt attacks or objects with a bigger surface area.

  He didn’t bat an eye to the scary new halo that was easily trapped within a box of Perennial Everfrost Armaments and a cyclical gravitational force. He couldn’t freeze it since it was her blood and fire but it could do nothing to him.

  The mask created a deep crater in the rocky valley but he didn’t let up or so he hoped. She physically stunned him for a fraction with killing intent, he didn’t even know that was possible or effective against him but his body and mind locked up. Her body reformed around the mask and swords in the meantime and his mind woke up in time to stop her blood halo from escaping its seal.

  She burst out flashes of sword thrusts at his eyes, mouth, elbows, under his armpits, in between his ribs as if they were all coming at the same time. Ebony couldn’t take these with his body, slashes were fine but her sword thrusts were backed by at least a tier 4 skill and all her augmentations.

  A pair of long knives formed within his hands while Icicle floated by him. He parried every single thrust with Emberblade Dance Art but it didn’t give him much momentum and the lightning burns intensified through the Perennial Everfrost Armaments he formed. The flames generated by friction burst out but Xin was the one affected by the clash of two flames.

  She attempted to control his blood but it was already clear that she had no way to override his magic resistance or combat his magical supremacy in the surroundings.

  Although he knew it wouldn’t work, he flooded the space around them in flaming petals in hopes of limiting her movements and possibly eating up her focus in trying to keep herself unfrozen. The battlefield turned blue.

  In their speedy clashes, he reformed his right knife into a pick and swung it at her belly. Eruption Pick Art, cutting through her skin-tight bodysuit, his armament was coated in black blood that exploded and blew his arm up while she scattered into flames and reformed herself around her mask again. The lightning zapped throughout his body and gave him internal burns. Her blood infected his body.

  It merely scratched her. She had intentionally let him hit her.

  His eruption of flames and mana on her injury led to a collision of flames as she transmuted her body once more.

  But if there was any consolation, he was not disadvantaged when it comes to strength. If this was indeed her Core Skill no longer needing a charge up and she was at her peak physical state whenever she was in this state, he was stronger with his body enhancements within his Domain for once. Only her reactions and arms were faster than him, he was faster in overall movements.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  With her loss of control in her blood spell, he froze it and expelled every drop of blood while he took the thrusts from a distance for momentum. He could regenerate an arm extremely fast, just not faster or as aggressively as she got back on the offence.

  Ebony’s eyelids raised a bit at the sight of something new, six slashes flew at his blown-up arm. It seemed like she got a new active sword skill other than her piercing thrust skill. When he blocked with his regenerated arm, he was pushed back and wounds exploded across his ribs and chest.

  ‘My regenerated arm has no strength in it…her blood spell infected my vitality somehow, so even if I regenerate my limbs they can’t get back to strength in a short time.’ He didn’t let it get to him, melding his weak arm in blazing flames he controlled it like a model. The loss in power was countered rather easily when the power of his mind and magic was greater but this kind of weakness was very easily targeted by his opponent.

  In his Domain and with the presence of plentiful gravity mana in his cube of a weapon, he forcefully pushed and redirected her around the air, smashing her into as many flame petals as he could.

  She countered every change in gravitational direction with her fiery blood wings and wind magic. Her ability to move in 3-dimensional space was surprising since the amount of practice she could have on Teheil should have been close to nil. A flap of her wings scattered all of his petals but it took just a thought from him to spawn more as near to her magic body as he could.

  Icicle back in hand, Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art continued to blend deeper with Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts. Leaving a shade of his art, as the skill description said, was actually scarily consistent and similar to his mother’s delayed strikes. He gained enough time to get his arm and bearings back to charge back into close combat.

  Phantasmal Shade was only an illusion right now, as long as he was augmented he would leave shades. Shades were like afterimages that could affect the physical world. However, it was ineffective against Xin, even if he kicked once and she saw five kicks, she could simply parry all five without an issue. More often than not, the first one she parried was the real one anyway. Intuition that bordered foresight countered reactive formlessness by a great degree.

  Ethereal Fluid Blitz grew and stacked his momentum and strikes.

  Any decisive blows he would’ve landed made her transmute into flames. Her swords must have been reforged some time ago or they would’ve shattered with their current powers, just like Icicle requiring a few moments to recover after a single swing. Albeit a swing on mana and elemental steroids.

  When he successfully forced her arms to transmute into flames to knock her swords out, her swords spawned as an image on her mask. Side by side, they were vertically cutting her mask in two. Right side is red, the other black. Currently, it was shining bright red.

  The gears of Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge spun faster and faster.

  ‘At this rate, her sword art would allow her to grow beyond me. I am still not desperate and determined enough. How pathetic of me.’ He shut the simulations off, shut his mireloom factory off and fully compressed his Domain, Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment turned his skin to ice glitters shattering into the air.

  It was cold.

  His muscles and bones were the next to freeze and be blown into smithereens but his vitality constantly regenerated them around his mana chassis. He was a light blue glow stick on fire right now.

  Then the same was happening to his chassis.

  But he calmly took her fierce strikes to the heart, neck and head. His momentum reached his new limit extremely fast whenever she was his opponent, and this time, she couldn’t use brute force to break his momentum. His arms and legs were coated in ice and that was enough for his skill Perennial Everfrost Armament to recognise it as an armament. Emberblade Dance Art worked great when he used his body to gather the momentum he needed.

  He wrapped his Domain and mental hold over his opponent. He was banking on a classic Elcrian warrior with mana usage ‘Dispel’ should work to hold her transmuted flames form in place or even force her materialisation.

  Mana alone might not work, but the real magic could be worked with Will.

  The censored Pseudo-Imitation Roar was unleashed as an additional precaution to stun her flame transition when he faked out the sky fall of Crystalline Avalanche with Icicle.

  ‘What is?’ He saw a cloudy flicker in her gaze before her single sword thrust aimed to snap Icicle’s handle shot out. He was caught lacking when she met his sudden surge in augmentation by killing himself with a spell stronger than his body could contain with a similar surge.

  Did she have an additional form of augmentation he didn’t know about?

  Icicle snapped, a few times over. Intensified mana augmented physical movements strengthened the so-called traces of mana and Phantasmal Shade. The effect translated over for Icicle.

  Prepared for this, Icicle had long been Melded with Frostblaze and it was also a flexible Perennial Everfrost Armament. All the gravity mana he could control from his cube supported the Crystalline Avalanche, it will fall regardless.

  And it did.

  Her swords seemed to be everywhere after she broke Icicle’s handle that reconnected, spawn right back in front of her. His blow connected, pushed them both down and smashed right down the middle of her mask. The reflexive transmutation had nowhere to go, packed into a ball by vibrations, gravity and Will.

  When the resistance was gone, he let his Will go and watched her mask and bundle of extremely hot black blood hit the ground.

  Ebony’s chassis was a quarter gone, he didn’t have control over how much it burned and his augmentation was balanced all around his body so the degradation from mana poisoning was also balanced.

  And he still stayed in this form and up in the air.

  The mental output made him too tired to waste any additional spells if he could help it. He let it rest for a short moment in case she wasn’t down for the count.

  ‘So much for being able to fight for months.’ He had never exhausted himself so badly in such a short time. His mana was still good to go but the Will required for this was intense.

  His internal clock caught up and told him two and a half minutes had passed since their exchange had begun. He had hoped to end it within a minute but she still pushed him.

  There were many subtle skills they didn’t use against each other but they weren’t holding anything back. He suppressed just about all her magic simply with control of his Domain and Will. Other than internal augmentations and those contact spells she could still activate close range within her magic body's range. She might not be as magically inclined as him, but she was no slouch compared to any other mage on the planet.

  He had prepared for some kind of Intent Domain, but there was none unless he counted the fact she could stop or affect his vitality flow. Just intensified and manifested a killing intent that stopped him of all creatures. The transmutation that made his blows hit nothing but air dragged it out immensely but it was her ridiculous sword art that shined most. The speed and strength of her blows scale a few times higher in just a couple of seconds, and it only accelerates.

  Her body doesn’t appear to have the limits that he has under intense augmentations, nor was it showing signs of wear and tear as her sword combos stacked. He noticed that he couldn’t break her combinations like he used to, allowing her technique to shine.

  ‘Learning from masters and fighting against them and more warriors for ten years just isn’t the same. Practical combat is still the best.’ Ebony understood the limitations of having his clones learn information, and his body incorporating it.

  Her blood explosions were deadly enough to kill him even in his compressed and Domain-buffed augmentations. And he was only inflicted with a small amount of her blood.

  Her blood was spread across her swords and he had some on him but she couldn’t keep them on him with gravity repulsion and frost flames. The most they did was burn away the cold flaming petals in her immediate surroundings.

  When he saw her body reform and the red in her hair fading, he didn’t let the compressed Domain go. A black ball formed from her mask.

  She was conjuring blood in his domain. However, it was expected. His Will was not strong enough to prevent her conjuration of elements completely. Her mask likely helped in some form. Nothing shocking when Grandmasters don’t usually start using Domains. Compressed mana didn’t equate to condensed Will after all.

  ‘She fainted but her mask hasn’t taken the loss. Well. This should keep those above happy.’ Ebony stopped casting all his augmentations and commanded the flaming petals around the air to fly towards them. They formed a tornado 50 metres in diameter to match the expanding ball that grew hotter and brighter white.

  He never used this much bursting ice mana at once before. In the eye of the tornado was his gravitation path, the tornado was the body of the flamethrower he unleashed at the blood ball that was melting the rocks around and under her.

  The cold flames that hammered against the blood fireball sizzled and the leftovers froze the ground before Ebony took the remaining back to cycle back into his flamethrower. There was no need for mass destruction of the environment and the mana had better places for use, such as freezing this impending blood ball.

  He underestimated the amount of mental power this one spell took but the first glint in light from the freezing of blood encouraged his attempt. The pure force of mere blue flames jetting out of his flamethrower and cycloning back into itself was enough to shake the air and earth.

  When the resistance fell, the blood ball was controlled by him since it was frozen.

  Landing on a knee because he had no legs below the knees anymore. With his chassis broken too, there was no regenerating them for at least a week.

  So he formed a pair of ice legs instead. His internal organs were more troublesome, he could do nothing about the lost functions there and would have to tough it out with pure vitality till he recovered. There was no medicine for a partial mana-being available here or anywhere the Xengs could access either. Fortunately, most of his brain was intact.

  Weakly, Ning Xin patted the ground without raising an arm. She woke up amid her unconscious casting.

  He laid beside her and watched the frozen blue sky with a now untrapped burning blood halo in the middle.

  Ebony was certain he wasn’t in a trance but the moon started to show itself before he realised. They lay down for a long time.

  His Myriad Bracelet had been beeping a lot but he hadn’t wanted to check the messages that were sent through Eidolon. Having an ‘online’ account had no limits to the number of contacts, unlike a callstone.

  “What happened at the end there?” He referred to the moment she gained a surge of strength. Her aim failed, she wasn’t supposed to aim for Icicle’s handle but had to change at the last moment. She got distracted which was…quite improbable.

  “My Sword Art evolved. My core developed.”

  Ebony smiled, perhaps wryly.

  His core also developed, but only after the battle and not right at the end.

  “Did you get another enhancement ability? It was weird, I didn’t feel any mana nor did I feel your burst of vitality for the buff.”

  “Haha…I also just learned that not long ago. Why did you think I didn’t leave the Altarbound Kin immediately, or even kill them? At least, the high priestess for taking over my body.”

  “I know the priestess fed you when you were starving to death when your gluttony overrode part of your mind. You said she fed you her flesh to wake you up from that ordeal since her flesh was special.” Ebony replied. This was something he learned only after they left the Altarbound Kin. When they were working for the money for their ticket off the planet of Teheil.

  “That is part of it. But it is also because my Intuition stopped me. The entire reason my Intution made me walk in their direction was for this. I didn’t know at the time until I got this skill. Ebony, you already know. On their Altar of Might…I am the Symbol.”

  “...That makes sense. But, you aren’t an altarbound kin. Nor do you have their horns to draw power from their faith.”

  “I was drinking the High Priestesses blood. After many years, it’s not just stats that my body took. There is also a remnant of their abilities. I purified most of it with my mask since it would likely mutate my body in all the wrong ways but I created something new. It took me 7 years. Letting her take over my body in a moment of folly was also something my Intuition made me do…I used the experience of her taking over my body, using part of her skills with mine to…using your words, enlighten myself about some working principles of her alien skills.”

  “Is it a…never before seen skill?” Ebony wanted to ask if it was a Unique Skill but she already stopped him twice.

  She shook his head even though they might not be talking about the same thing. “It’s called Inherited Stamp. A type of vitality-based blood magic. Their physique, I learned enough about and conjured blood with that ability and stamped it on myself to use the same abilities. Part of it. Oh I meant I stamped it inside my mask! Not my body!” She panicked at the end of her sentence.

  He didn’t get why she panicked but he pulled her back to lie beside him to calm her down.

  ‘Physique can also mean genes…she reads some genetic traits and can copy it for herself? So she copied their horn’s ability to draw power from faith and those altars of theirs. No, it can also be because she is the Symbol of Might itself, not because of the horn or the altar. I wonder if elemental affinities are a genetic trait? Can she copy that? Can she copy my mana regenerative abilities?’

  “Back to you, what was that? It was like you phased through my swords but there was also resistance.”

  “Already Sovereign Arts, Phantasmal Shade. Traces of mana give these 'shades' a more materialised form, I'm still learning how to leave these particular traces manually. What did you not use?”

  “Vitality Pilfer. You didn’t use your vortex either…and your attacks don’t have the impact they used to have.”

  “I didn’t overuse vibrational energy, don’t want to break your swords. What spell is that?”

  “The blood I splashed on you, it contacted your blood when it burst your arm up. I can drain your vitality and the vitality will be cleansed and purified by my mask before I can use it like my own. As for the last spell, Blood Star, I can transmute during the blasts effectively taking no damage from my flames and blood. I was wary of your gravitational vortex because I doubt I could resist the pull if I was a bundle of bloody fire.”

  He was secretly worried of the same problem, this was a duel, not manslaughter. “How do you do that anyway, transmutation.”

  “Transmutation is my father’s ability. He’s not a baseline human. I mean, I didn’t know that until recently. So they keep calling me weak only in terms of baseline strength and speed. However, they tested that my overall traits were not more than 30% lower than the average Ning, salvageable with a few evolutions. I don’t understand those lectures.”

  “I can summarise. Humans equal a jug of water, they can be juiced in different ways but their total volume is always a cup. Dwarves equal a bucket, most likely stronger physically but whatever is inside the bucket can change. Elves are like a bathtub and we are halfway between a bucket and a bathtub. This vessel size depends on genetics, its contents are likely similar and a mixture of direct biological parents.” He realised this was the physical manifestation of their evolution process.

  “We’re smaller than the Elves? Don’t seem like it.” She frowned audibly.

  “Traits don’t equate to fighting strength. For example, I heard a few direct-line Tetramyths have even greater baseline traits than the Elves but for them, increasing their strength is more evolutionarily expensive compared to other traits, their breeding ability for one, and maybe even the ease of levelling up. The Elves might be a bathtub of vegetable juice, but we might be buckets full of plum juice.” Ebony explained the topic in a way she would understand.

  “Is plum juice stronger?”

  “It’s tastier.”

  “That is true…” She gulped, drinking water from her mask. “Um…what now?”