Ebony's first three days as an engaged man were spent renovating their new home. They didn’t have any sleep or awkwardness; it was all about productivity and making the home as comfortable for both of them as possible.

  At the end of the renovation, he brought Xin to the front door again.

  “Come, place some blood on the door. And the gate.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a lock, only we can open it once we register our essence. My clones can come in the gate but not our door. This will be our home from now on.”

  “Take it.” She offered her hand with her palms facing down.

  He took her gloves off, not thinking much about why she didn’t just conjure blood outside her body. To a girl growing up with Elcrian culture as much as Xeng culture, offering her hand to someone showed their relationship or intimacy.

  Pulling his essence out, they made essence spheres of their own and injected them into the door and house it was connected to.

  Ebony had managed to manipulate stamina to a rudimentary level. It was the basis of controlling Ethereal Fluid Blitz to increase and decrease in intensity depending on stamina consumption. This ability slowly allowed him to increase or decrease the output of all physical output to a degree he couldn’t before.

  Stamina was stiffer than life force and mana in certain ways. The limits one’s stamina naturally has were locked tight. The amount of stamina used for a simple punch has a hard limit. That limit was how hard one could punch. This can be increased with better, more efficient muscular control but the limit was still based on the physical output of the body.

  However, not even Hector would finish using up his stamina pool with just 1 punch.

  That’s where the manual manipulation of stamina came into play. Unlike life force and mana, stamina did not flow.

  It was ingrained and embedded wherever it was. Similar to his mana chassis.

  If he were to Flicker for weeks, the stamina embedded in his legs can be exhausted to close to nothing but other parts of his body would have stamina. This was also something his prison cell helped him learn.

  His limbs could go into stamina exhaustion and have a decrease in stamina regeneration, but his vitals would still work normally. His prison cell, now part of his Myriad Bracelet, used to target areas to draw stamina. Exhausting his mind and heart was not something the cell wanted to do for more efficient energy absorption.

  That experience allowed Ebony to feel how stamina worked.

  His current knowledge of it told him it was impossible to pull stamina from one part of his body to another. If his legs were exhausted and went into a state where it has reduced stamina regeneration, he couldn’t pull stamina from his arms to increase his usage of the worn-out muscles in his legs.

  It was, however, possible to further increase his ability to overexert his body. That was how Ethereal Fluid Body worked. Pumping and overexerting these stamina chassis for lack of a better word faster could be done. This added another way for him to exhaust and destroy his body along with his mana and Will getting too strong to augment his body.

  It wasn’t all that bad. Ebony also figured out how to replenish these stamina chassis. The energy came from sustenance, food.

  All his energy comes from sustenance. Life force, stamina and mana. Perhaps even Will.

  It was a pity he didn’t have Xin’s metabolism. Her increased metabolism made her turn food into energy far faster than he could. He also wasn’t able to manually increase his digestion and metabolism. At least not to the degree she could.

  Maybe when he understood the working principles of his body better, he would be capable of inducing his body to undergo different processes at will. Using Will on himself in this manner had brought no notable results so far.

  “How much do we need to inject?”

  “A lot. I used the best materials I could afford. It’s mostly saturated with my mana but the mixture I made for these concrete blocks can take vitality too.”

  “So the house will have your mana and my blood?”

  “You can say that. But we only need a drop of blood, the rest is your life force.”

  “So this is our creation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It won’t break right? Like the countertop.”

  “Not externally. I don’t think even our strongest spells could break it in one go. It’s much too durable. And Dusk will be here. It’s not going to be able to walk or move easily once I refill its Will.” Ebony decided to refer to Dusk as ‘it’ now. It was not a clone and neither was it anything like Ebony. It was more than that.

  The core of a domain had even more collective Will than his main body could.

  He was technically graded as a high-level hazard but that was due to endurance. Spells of that power required a lot more time to cast compared to what he could pull off in a quick and intense battle. Besides the hazard test they underwent had them destroy soil and earth, neither of them did any real damage to the scarecrows they were targeting.

  “Our home…” His wife bubbly opened the door when she decided to continue filling the house another day but he had to stop her this time.

  “Now that we’re done, the time I bought with you has temporarily come to an end.” Ebony could feel her entire body shake through the wrist he held.

  “What do you mean by that?” His temperamental wife switched gears in a flash.

  “Ah, your family has been waiting to pick you up. We weren’t supposed to meet until the ceremony. I wanted to prepare the house with you so I had them give us some time.” They were not very approving but Ebony managed to convince them that neither of them grew up with much Xeng culture ingrained into them.

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you mine?”

  Ebony liked her straightforwardness, the overbearing intensity in her eyes right now was something he hadn’t been able to see for the past three days. Her pupils burned and the collarette and ciliary zone surrounding them undulated outwards of her pupils, spreading bright orange ripples across her iris.

  Now that he had a better look, he was sure her eyes were weaponized to send her Intent into the target she looked at. It might be how her killing intent was so unadulterated it froze his body up during their duel. She doesn’t seem to be aware that her eyes were being used as the conduit for her Intent the way his clones and Domains were a conduit for his Will.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “You have a superstitious grandmother, ask her when her ‘stars align’. I have waited for so long, I can wait a while more.” Ebony’s patient personality would probably never change.

  “I cannot.”

  ‘Didn’t she say her fighting mode only knows how to fight? She’s holding a conversation well but…her attention is all around us not on me alone. I guess there is still a silver of sense in her.’ Ebony might be the only one who thinks that two words are equal to holding a conversation well.

  It didn’t take long before the twitchy woman’s swords swung out beside her. Her captor…family member have come to pick her up. It was a woman Ebony had never seen but shared many features with the Nings. Black hair, resting face not too dissimilar to the Shi clan but colder.

  While the Shi’s expression in their eyes looked dead, inanimate and indifferent, the Ning’s radiated something more alien. Their minds were more twisted than any other clan as their mind elemental nature made them that way.

  Ebony knew people who would call that a mental disorder but he only saw practicality with the Ning’s clan skill of having two mental states. One for day-to-day life, another for the law of the jungle.

  It was redundant for him but it would give a person some mental relief to be able to separate some stuff in their heads.

  “Come back with me.” The woman gave Ebony a look before addressing her younger clan member.

  Ebony recognised the Intent in Xin’s eyes. She didn’t recognise the woman, only seeing a fierce battle before her.

  But the woman tapped Xin’s head and knocked her out. The younger woman went limp in an instant.

  “There was no need to do that, was there?” Ebony felt that he had to say something even though he knew this was the gentle method for a mind mage of higher skill.

  “Cousin, Clan Leader Shi called for you. Are you coming with or by yourself?”

  ‘Third generation Ning, pure combatant.’ Ebony realised the next moment. This person was exceedingly dangerous, every bone in his body was screaming that. She wasn’t hiding her aura as well or producing an accepting one like the Shis. “With, I’ll carry her.”

  “Ah no you don’t. Please keep your indecent hands off, I’ve heard of you. Touching an innocent young girls bare belly is not something I find admirable. But I applaud you for taking the proper procedures with a duel. Even so, I’m not letting you touch my descendant before you’re officially married.”

  “That’s a misunderstanding. I was putting on banda-”

  “Naive. The reason does not matter. You were trapped by this one’s senior. She divined your visit to the Ning compounds, got the seventh-generation Kong to be nearby, and purposely timed the bandaging to be incomplete by your arrival. She left the door open and curtains drawn open to allow eyes in. She used this one’s Intuition to want to trap you, to touch her. But that doesn’t change the fact that it happened.”

  Ebony had to think for a short moment. The entire facade was guided by Xin’s grandmother. From the visit to the bandaging to the Nings and the Shis so conveniently watching and catching them in the act. Even Xin’s actions of intentional hesitation when he offered to bandage her was to give the Nings and Shis to catch them together at the right moment.

  “She was forcing me to take action faster.”

  “Yes, very pushy. Divination magic must have gotten to her head. That kid needs another beating.”

  ‘I didn’t get any divination resistance increase. Her divination magic works on the astral body, no increase in resistance means my astral body was either overpowered to the point where it can’t build resistance, or it never sensed any harm and intervention.’ Ebony didn’t feel that bad for Xin’s grandmother at the moment. He didn’t know much about divination magic but Xin knew some basic working principles that her grandmother used.

  There was a good chance Xin could start using or manipulating her astral body by the time she evolved once or twice more through her genetics. Needless to say, her astral body is naturally more durable and resistant thanks to her heritage but Ebony probably didn’t lack much in that department. Since his base physical and mental stats are so close to an average baseline human, all his baseline traits had to go somewhere else.

  According to Shi Tao, most likely, the most expensive ‘upgrade’ he got was to his soul and genetic resistance and tolerance. Even his Will was considered to be a cheap trait compared to these two. There were creatures, higher beings, that could alter other creatures' genetic traits against their will. This trait made it harder for him to refine his physique but also far more resistant against foreign intervention.

  His soul might be resistant enough to completely ignore some races specialised in soul magic at Emperor ranks and even Saints. Otherwise, he shouldn’t have such a fragile or weak body in comparison to his parents. Even without any sort of training or passive skill to toughen it up at the moment. Not to mention, Ebony had a skill for that. He didn’t have to worry about having his soul plucked out of his body, torn apart and mixed with or consumed by some other creatures to power them up.

  Ebony followed his ‘cousin’ in name. He might not be able to resist her if she had any bad intentions with Xin but he couldn’t just leave his unconscious wife to be taken away by someone who was almost a stranger.

  “What do the Nings really think about Xin?”

  “She’s our clan member, we worry about her thinned blood. While her father was not weak and genetically developed, her grandfather wasn’t all that special. The Nings are said to be emotionally and mentally unstable, with her parents out of the picture through a large part of her childhood…there was little guidance she received. And the others…well, we have our own families and advancements to make. Xiaoya is usually more desolate, each of us lives where we think we can advance more efficiently. Xiaoya can be said to be a gathering, or ancestral home some might say.”

  “Her parents, I wanted to ask about them. Her grandmother believes they are alive, is that true?” Ebony wanted to ask for her parent’s blessings to be honest but his last meeting with the Nings didn’t give him any answers about this.

  “They are alive, and we know where they are.”

  “What’s the holdup? It’s been decades.”

  “They cannot come back. At the moment, only The First can help reach them.”

  Ebony wasn’t the type to ask for people to continue speaking, he had a habit of waiting with a stare to allow people to finish their words.

  “I heard you’re from Earth. Her parents disappeared in a dungeon here on Elva, in Fragadal’s Sea. They fell into another dimension. It’s a one-way trip. If they were to come back through a path that The First can open, they would age to death in an instant, souls and everything. They have decided to stay there.”

  “Did they have anything to say to Xin? Does she know this?”

  “She doesn’t. My descendant, this child's grandmother, thinks that this child won’t be able to understand and choose to go find them. If she goes, she’s not going to be able to come back either. None of us are, not even my mother or your Aunt can go and return in one piece. Every Dimension has its own rules, like Earth that removes most powers. This particular one is harsh when it comes to an exit but they all are, that is the nature of most Dimensions. It’s similar to your exit from Earth’s Dimension, except that one has kind rules. You did not age, there was merely a time discrepancy between your entry here.” The woman explained, possibly giving more information because he was about to become an in-law.

  “No one found a way to protect them through this interdimensional travel?” Ebony knew she was right. If he heard his parents were trapped in some place, he would choose to go even if it meant not being able to come back unless it was a choice of theirs.

  But he also knew Xin. She would probably choose to go even if it was against her parent’s wishes. Unlike him, her parents left her by accident. It wasn’t a plan of theirs to permanently leave her childhood.

  “It’s complicated but it’s not like we don’t know of a method.”

  “And that is?” Ebony didn’t wait for her this time.

  “Request God to bring them back.”

  “God, as in the God of Nature.” Ebony thought it was better to speak with some caution but that didn’t seem to be a priority for the Xeng.

  “Indeed, They could supposedly rewrite the rules of any Dimension. But who are we to make such a request?” The Ning scoffed with self-contempt.

  “Can you erase my memory of this conversation? The part about her parents.” Ebony was enlightened, these unimaginably strong people were still hungering for more power over their fate. Xin’s strong desire was more than just a genetic trait but she had reason to want to grow stronger even before they met. Unlike Ebony, he was getting stronger just for the sake of getting stronger.

  The woman copied him and waited for him to continue speaking, he was not familiar with the same thing being done to him and assumed she would ask why.

  “I don’t think I can lie and she can feel if I hide anything, it would be better if I never heard this.”

  She snapped her fingers.

  Ebony’s head tilted ever so slightly, ‘itchy. My mind is itchy, what an odd sensation. Why am I staring at her fingers?’

  “Be nice to your wife.”

  “U-” Ebony tried to utter a reply only to find himself in front of the Shi Clan gate without anyone beside him.