The barrier went down rather quickly, perhaps already drained by the Lord family's efforts before he arrived.

The moment it went down, Ebony could be found standing in front of his wife and friend's dome barrier.

'He's really fast. This one should be real.' Ebony blocked the sharp nails that were thrust at the dome barrier with Dusk. They might as well be claws on human hands with how thick and sharp they were. He was pushed back and hit the barrier, but the force of the attack wasn't dispelled, and Mallory's barrier carved the carve backwards till they broke through every building in the way and hit the city walls.

Relying on the barrier supporting his balance, he kicked out to push the attack back, but even with one arm holding Dusk down the humanoid attacker managed to dodge the kick to the face and even anticipated the Shades that came a moment after.

[Demon of Power / Dominance of Strength]

"Careful Ebony, he uses an Aspect. As long as your effective strength is lower than his, he can exert far more power in any contest of strength." Mallory broke from her concentration to inform him.

'That's why Hector and Xin are in that state? This guy isn't the Ecstasy Lord.

A Strength stat check, using Aspects which were stiff but strong and demonising a loss in Profession for stronger stats. A power specialist.

It wasn't that shocking that it managed to overpower two Grandmasters by leaps, even with their ridiculous elements or augmentations.

The unnatural strength of his opponent pushed Dusk against his chest, and the demon's grin widened as it threatened to impale his robe and chest.

It glared at Ebony for what seemed like a long moment and couldn't find the satisfaction of fear, and failed to elicit any sort of reaction. Only a dead expression. Ignoring its dissatisfaction, it pushed harder and pierced his barely fitted robe before both of them heard a 'chink'

The demon didn't have time to think about it before it noticed the flames that managed to climb onto its mana-dense skin. It wasn't too shocking that a King managed to directly cling mental hold of their mana over his body since it faced many that could do that, but he was slightly surprised he couldn't flick it off.

However, the demon calmed down when the flames didn't manage to dig through his mana before they dissipated into nothing 'What a weak spell! The mana is so pure, yet the strength of the spell is pathetic!'

Ebony fended off dozens of hand thrusts to his vitals while the rest of his upper body and legs were hit. He wasn't sure why using Coreflame of Sequester and sending them into anything touching him was so natural and smoothly done. He wasn't even thinking about it.

He simply let his body and mind go into a trance as they used this pressure to regain control over their new body.

The demon must have activated a different skill than before to draw blood.

'I used all the energy I consumed already...' Yet Ebony did not have the leeway to eat or drink food now.

When his mind and body did their thing and he found them to stop moving all of a sudden, Ebony 'woke up' to see the demon shrieking and burning in flames that exploded from within its body. It struggled and even maintained some calm as it decided that Ebony was the reason for the cold white flames, but at this point, it was already heavily frostbitten and it took another minute before it completely stopped moving.

'Why's my battle trance so deep? I haven't even finished learning how to use my new body properly.' Ebony typically chooses to think in battle, which allows him to gain more insights from training. He let go too much this time and wasn't able to understand why he was using this flame so smoothly. Why and how did he activate his Sequester at this time?

It seemed like the demon had just enough mana in it to cause it to freeze in a seal. The seal was a little different from the Ice-Lightning Respite that he was familiar with. There was no lightning mana in this seal but the moment it stopped moving, Ebony had shot a streak of lightning mana at the frozen figure before he even knew he did.

"Keep the barrier up as long as you can." Ebony didn't turn back to face them.

He swapped Resolve's Cadence from increasing his physical stats to mental and boosted his mana regeneration to cap out his pool and force more to flow out. Unable to control all of it, he used what he could and slammed them over everyone in the city except those who were free from influence.

His mana regeneration was stunted, with his Unique Skill needing an edit to work. His mana chassis burned out from the evolution, and his starved state caused his body to break down for energy.

Mentally knocking out everyone except a singular Imperial Knight who was a King-ranked individual. There were 2 more King ranked individuals, but they were knocked out.

Ebony flickered to the one that was mana resistant…an Elven knight? That was rare, to the point of being unheard of, but he didn't care and sealed the Knight with a touch.

Now, no citizen or soldier was dead and had been temporarily taken out of the picture. The mind control shouldn't matter if they were sealed.

Whoever did this would be forced to appear or go away.

Or so he hoped.

He was ready for another one of the demon fighters, but no one had ambushed him yet. Mana Discern didn't find anyone else in the vicinity.

There was a pin-drop silence for a long moment. As if the Imperial couldn't understand what just happened.

"Amazing. A tiny little world has birthed so many high-quality souls. In mere months, I find 2 Transcendent Souls, 1 Incomprehensible and now you…I've never seen a soul of such quality. What a catch, I must have you. Those leaders of your puny Empire have Transcendent souls too, truly a great catch." The voice that echoed over the city moaned loudly after it finished monologuing.

Ebony tried to find the source of the voice but didn't manage to. 'He's not in the city. Or anywhere close. No trace of foreign mana, even on these mentally influenced people. I can't track souls either…'

One Emperor and a few thousand mind-controlled people managed to keep this city captured. The Empire was quite weak.

This would be impossible on Cinderash, no matter which city it was.

It was an unfair comparison, but power has always been relative in the wider world, and it was only a matter of time before the Empire of Ebbing Waves was challenged and taken over or destroyed for its riches or fertile lands. They had been more than ready with several strong people, but their populace's average abilities were simply insufficient.

The Guardian Knights haven't been around for long, about a hundred years or so since Oplot founded them. Their failure in guarding the Lacuna Expanses' portal gate was the breaking point. However, they lost the little trust that the Imperial Citizen had in them.

A hundred years was short, it wasn't enough to train an elite fighter with the Empire's standards.

Ebony Flickered back to the demon he froze. It was about to break free, and he didn't want to let it escape.

He didn't think he could catch up if it decided to escape. It'll be simpler if his Will Relay Buffers were still active around the continent, but not if it escapes to Lacuna Expanse, where he didn't have any reach yet.

Against an unmoving opponent, he didn't need the Will of Sequester and directly flooded ice mana to reinforce the seal.

Yet it kept cracking.

The quantity of mana wasn't helping to strengthen the seal, only ensuring it was constantly refreshed and recast. Making the spell thicker wasn't changing the fact that it could still break out, but Ebony summoned a Number over and had it constantly recast the seal, so the problem was solved temporarily.

'I need time to restrengthen all the Numbers and Dusk. I need time to get used to my new strength. I was lucky this time…. or did this happen because misfortune struck?' Ebony didn't waste a single drop of Potential on the trait called 'luck'.

From what little he knew about luck, having more Potential in luck didn't make him luckier and taking it away didn't make him unluckier. It was a vague thing to begin with.

With no signs of the Esctasy Lord, Mallory couldn't sustain her barrier and released them, but got to calling for help to heal Hector.

Instead of going for an extended embrace, Xin rushed to find Athena.

The close-ranged archer was frozen with an ecstatic expression.

"Can you return her to normal?" She looked at him with eyes softer than he'd ever recall seeing.

He was unable to reply. His mana lost its soothing Fortification but still carried the effect of a lifetime of meditation. However, he was no healer.

Thankfully, a family of healers were around. "Great-grandmother will find a way." Mallory instilled confidence.

Yet it just proved to Ebony that the Crown Princess surprisingly couldn't heal them.

'Is it because an existing skill is still in effect, and she can't remove it?' It was too risky for him to try using Will to remove other mental influences without the training or knowledge of relevant skills. With his mana, he might wipe out more than the foreign influence. Perhaps if he had the Ning Saintess or Mr Guru's abilities, he could attempt something more than brute force of ramming mana into people's heads.

In this regard, his wife should have a better chance of doing something similar. Thinned as it may be, she descended from a clan of mind mages after all.

"Let's go home." Xin entrusted Athena with Mallory before falling asleep then and there.

He caught her and addressed their friend, "What are your plans? It's not safe here."

"…can you help us move these people?"

"Mmm, I can't guarantee a safe trip. My scouts are getting destroyed all over the place." Although he already had many paths where his Pigeons roamed free, that didn't mean they were safe. It just meant no one bothered enough to attack an invisible ice bird holding an Ancient quality crystal within.

The city was not small, but he only froze over ten thousand people. The city was filled with corpses. Although he couldn't tell, he assumed they had their souls removed. Those with bodies that survived the battle between both sides had ghastly expressions before they died.

Even he had never seen hundreds of thousands of dead people. Many within their very homes.

Almost every City in the Empire had a population in the millions. But too many bodies were lost. A single wave of the demon that attacked Ebony could easily flatten a large part of the city, and the shockwave of its attacks upon Ebony was enough to blow apart nearby buildings. He hadn't been in a condition to protect property or dead bodies.

Xin must have been held back, unwilling to burn people alive with area of effect spells where her spells could shine. In all likelihood, she wasn't bothered about burning dead bodies and cremating them.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

While she was asleep in his arms, she had a blood lollipop in her mouth. It wasn't made from his blood, so it was probably freshly made from some monster's blood. Unlikely to be from another person or the demons, she wouldn't be able to purify the essence fully.

Taking out a crystal the size of his head, he conjured a new Turtle Fort and placed Xin inside on a spare mattress.

Hit by realisation, he conjured another turtle, but this time one that was kilometres wide and tall.

"Enter, we'll travel invisible as far as we can." He moved the frozen allies, but the rest of the fighters and Lord family members will have to enter on their own feet.

Mana didn't seem to be an issue yet, so he let the people inside settle down and get their bearings while compressing the mobile fort. His mana pool might contain fully compressed mana, but it wasn't big enough to conjure a turtle a few kilometres wide and tall with fully compressed mana.

As he was moulding runes within, more and more ideas for the Turtle Fort kicked in. He was forming and editing them at speeds he never thought possible. His simulations were also expanding laterally and cancelling out failed projections before he moulded them in real life, further speeding up new formulations.

He had so much more brainpower than he'd expected.

While the Imperials rested in the Turtle Fort and his mind was busy strengthening the conjuration, he got to shadow boxing and getting used to his new limb's reach.

Adding Potential to his Class and Class Skills must have affected him more than he assumed. Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts was flowing out a lot differently than before, and it wasn't only because of the change in reach and joint flexibility. He was incorporating Shades a lot better than before, and each move prepared them for a follow-up with a Shade or multiple Shades.

Still, he was getting used to his new evolutionary state at an extreme pace compared to the time he just became a Grandmaster.

The most confusing part was the gravity following in his body.

He did not create a new spell, and this was nothing like any of his previous spell creation experiments. Yet gravity mana was experimenting within his body without his conscious control. He didn't feel much enhancement physically, so it was probably a spell in progress.

The lack of immediate danger gave the healers a chance to volunteer to collect the corpses, led by Mallory. Ebony didn't mind and had his Numbers help.

It was dangerous both in and out of the city. If the place was filled with people or demons as strong as the one he just fought, he needed to be prepared before carelessly moving.

While gathering bodies, he found another one of the demons' bodies with obvious wounds from his wife's swords. As expected, she didn't go down without a fight and could beat one of these demons if she wasn't out of energy.

After 4 hours of downtime, "Get ready to leave," Ebony warned the survivors.

They were not able to collect every corpse.

The healers weren't all Lord family members; many were students of Yvette. Most were young, as Yvette herself wasn't old.

They might have seen corpses before, but there was usually more gore. What they saw now spooked them more as the corpses were pale, without injuries. They were ghastly and not gory.

A few hundred thousand bodies in the same way, all with smiles on their faces before they died, would spook most people. There were many bodies that they couldn't gather in time.

They weren't silly enough to think Ebony would carry millions of dead bodies on their move, but they had their methods. A few of the Lord family members were earth barrier mages and they encased the bodies in earth and mass buried them for the moment. To be handled in future when they weren't on the run to safety. Safety in their Capital City, Tidal.

A special property was mixed in their earth mana, which supposedly slows down decay and rot, preserving the bodies longer.

Ebony didn't add his ice to improve the seal. That would make it obvious to anyone who can sense ice mana that there was a horde of soulless bodies for these people to use right under their feet. Earth magic was better at hiding something within the earth.

These seemed to be the same people who sent the puppet with multiple souls at him. His house had also been surrounded.

They must have known about him, but he could not understand why they didn't kill him while he was evolving and merely camped outside. The soul puppets were there to kill, or they tried to. If they were on the same side, it stood to reason there was no better chance to kill him. They even managed to pull Xin away from him, and Dusk was pretty much as useful as a strong Master with slightly stronger magic control. He was as defenceless as an untended egg.

He didn't believe all they cared about was extracting some mana.

'Maybe the soul puppets can take my soul, but these people can't? And they want my soul more than my mana?' Ebony tried to contact Sophia but faced the same connectivity issue. She removed her portable module, or her bracelet was taken off her wrists.

Surrounding him must be very recent, and they had no time to get a person who had skills to deal with souls. They might not have had the time to find a way to get him out of his house.

He wasn't that unlucky and woke up just in time.

'Unlucky? Don't tell me this is because they said misfortune was targeting me? And it affected the people and things around me instead of me.' Ebony didn't think much about luck as he never depended on or blamed luck for anything.

He never dismissed that luck was real. It was just another word for probabilities. However, in this world of magic, it would do him good to believe that there were people or items capable of affecting luck. After all, there were Misfortune spirits that he couldn't see, touch, hear or sense that were supposedly targeting him.

There was also an Agony spirit. No one told him much other than the fact that it was usually paired with misfortune. Shi Tao dismissed it altogether.

Ebony didn't think his invisibility spell would keep his Turtle Fort and all the people inside hidden from the mana signatures moving towards them. Waning Presence was a tier 2 Skill, and his mana was currently blinding to anyone with mana perception. No amount of physical invisibility would help if his mana were a blaring alarm.

In fact, now that he was looking at his compressed Turtle Fort. The dust in the air around it was visibly curving around his mobile fortress.

'Is this the radiative effect of warping? The soil touching my conjuration is acting weird. The range of radiative effect seems to be very short, almost requiring physical contact. It's weak without any conscious control, not that I know how to control this effect right now….'

Complete stealth was out of the options, so he got them on the move the moment they boarded. Still invisible, as it never hurt to increase their odds.

Listening to Mallory's succinct reports, the main 'army' that Lure had was split between the soul puppets, these demons that were exceedingly strong individual fighters and the normal people, mostly humans.

Fewer than 30 of the Soul Puppets have been spotted and recorded so far. They were all under no one's particular control as far as their intelligence could tell. These puppets target the elites, ambushing in large groups against a single person. So far, they've targeted a couple of Elves, Duke Truewater, Yvette, Navin, one of the Mage Association's leaders, the human Domain Mage and a couple of others that Ebony heard titles of but never met or sensed as they were hermits.

The human Domain Mage, one of the leaders of the Mage Association, was already dead, along with the Archduchess of the Elves.

Duke Truewater was completely unharmed by the ambush and captured all 6 puppets that ganged up on him.

Yvette purified the soul puppets when she tried to heal them, sending their souls where they should go. The Netherworld.

One of the things Ebony had learned from general reading was that Hell and the Netherworld, although often spoken together, were not referring to the same place. Hell was a place within the Netherworld and was a common misconception to think they were one and the same, one that Ebony was also prey to.

The Netherworld was the biggest known realm in existence, more encompassing than the Spirit Realm, as it encompassed every dungeon on every Worldcore known to man and Gods alike.

If one's soul were weak, it would 'die' after leaving one's body in short moments. Dead souls turn into some kind of energy, commonly termed as soul matter.

Soul matter was handled by nature in the Netherworld, mixed in a figurative melting pot and a new living soul would be spit out and sent into a random realm, world into a random pregnant creature of a random race.

Strong souls can survive an out-of-body experience for a longer period, and even stronger souls can carry most of one's mind, memory and all. Usually souls beyond a 'mortal'. Meaning Saints and above.

The only other person shown to be able to mess with souls should be the Esctasy Lord. The Empire currently linked the soul puppets' movements to his orders, but there was no proof of that.

The Demons, on the other hand, had a more obvious relation with the Esctasy lord as they were demonised people. They were stronger than the soul puppets in direct combat, but dumber and easier to deal with.

As for the people, quite a number were notable, but their general populace was the weakest.

'Weakest' had been enough to deal with Grand Imperial Knights and the Guardian Knights. These 'weakest' were all Kings.

Amongst the Imperial Knights, a very small percentage were King-ranked. Perhaps 1 in 20,000 Grandmasters. And they were all old. These people probably only evolved near the end of their lifespans, with not the best evolution, as they never had the potential to evolve into a proper King.

1 in 20,000 might sound like a small number, but the Empire's biggest advantage was how overwhelming their population was. They had a ridiculous population of billions stuffed into one megacity that Ebony hasn't seen work anywhere else. The Imperial Army had at least a few hundred million people as combat strength against dungeon breaks everywhere on the continent used to be commonplace.

Excluding the young members, almost 65% of the Army consists of Grandmasters. Operational. Of course, a large portion of this was thanks to the Tetramythian slaughter, and numerous freshly evolved Grandmasters were found within their ranks.

They generally weren't comparable to the noble families with their education, training and lineage skill sets.

Overall, the Empire was in an overwhelming disadvantage in power.

Duke Truewater had shown himself to be the strongest human mage, and he should've been King if Navin wasn't more suitable as a ruler. The Barrier King had nothing on Duke Truewater when it came to power on the battlefield.

The Elves were furious and gave the full support their forest could. Heading the Elves was the Painter of Animation, who was venting her anger not for the dead archduchess but because her inspiration for a good canvas was interrupted by the invaders. She painted a forest alive and extended the Elven Domain over multiple cities, heavily reducing the load on Navin to defend the cities under the Imperial rule.

'No wonder my Will can't extend into so many places now, the Elves extended the reach of their Domain.' Ebony understood why his Scout Pigeons were having so much trouble besides getting shot down. The Elven Domain was an accumulation of every King ranked and above Elves' Will over thousands of years. While the Domain doesn't strengthen an individual to the limit since it was the Domain of the race, their foundation was strong enough to extend their Will over cities and not weaken their Domain noticeably.

The plants within their Domain were the ones that were strengthened more than the Elves received the effects of their Domain.

No matter how many roots and trees Lure cut down, the sheer outgrowth of plants kept them out.

Slowed down by sheer mass, his mobile turtle fortress didn't get far before the people he sensed arrived.

They found his invisible fortress instantly.

6 Demons.

All of them were small in stature, none taller than 1.5 metres. They were lanky despite their height, their ribs were protruding, but their aura was the opposite of a malnourished child. They didn't wear armour or a shirt, only ragged pants. Some had dark red skin, others had light purple skin. Their sunken faces did not express any eagerness like the Demon Ebony was keeping sealed.

One wielded a large sword for their size, but it was just a two-handed sword for an average Imperial Knight. The rest had curved blades made of a black material. All were enchanted in some fashion as far as he could tell.

They didn't even attack on sight, just closing the distance and watching from afar. Deciding what to do with a giant invisible ice turtle.

Ebony was sitting against the standard tree he conjured on the shell of this Turtle Fort. He wasn't inside but should still be invisible to the naked eye.

Although he recovered control over his body in record time. 6 of these Demons might prove more than a challenge if they were as strong as the one he is keeping sealed.

They started to speak, but not in any language Ebony knew.

When he sensed the first intention to attack and they moved, his mind had gravity mana strengthen as fast as it could. Bringing the cube over while they were in the city was a good idea.

Unexpectedly, he saw the Emperors sink and slow down. The increase in base Intelligence helped his gravity spells a lot more than he imagined.

Thanks to the distance of over a hundred kilometres, he had enough time to test the effects of his overflowing Wisdom and check how effective it was against the Emperors. He didn't hope for much, Demonised creatures lost their Profession for an abundance of stats; they must have far wider resource pools along with regeneration should they evolve properly and have high base stat effectiveness.

When he saw the light in their eyes dim for a fraction of a second, he quickly Flickered over and poured out mana faster and pushed Dusk to help him seal all of them at the same time.

They were mentally stunted for a fraction of a second. He blamed himself for not closing the distance earlier, and they managed to slip free before he could wrap them up in his Will and encase them in mana.

They shook their heads furiously.

'They're still affected?' The windfall gave Ebony greater confidence. Their minds could be slowed down. That was enough to let ice and cold take part in weakening them physically.

Their magic bodies were extremely tough, and he didn't hesitate to get on the offensive to bathe them in Coreflames of Preservation. He wanted to see them panic from a visible white flame rather than stay calm about a disappearing flame. It shook their minds more and allowed overflowing Wisdom to act more effectively.

'Not enough Will to keep all of them sealed.' Ebony released two of them and maintained Coreflame of Preservation over 5 Ice-Lightning Respite. These Demons had less physical strength than the first one he contained and took slightly less effort to keep them encased.

He rolled the shoulders carrying Dusk and Icicle; the other two will have to be knocked out the old-fashioned way.

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