There was no doubt she had never stopped eating since she woke up. She was probably sipping on high-energy soup while riding to catch up to him.

"You look better well-fed." He didn't think before he spoke. She was no longer scrawny and had some meat on her bones. She was full-bodied again after eating. Regeneration was one thing, but her digestion to recovery was still far ahead of his Mana Digestion.

"There's a dent on your wok?" He spotted a tiny dent on the bottom of her wok.

"I smashed the guy who stabbed me with it."

"...what happened to your swords?" He prepared himself to hear the worst. When he found her, her swords weren't on her body. He'd assumed she kept it in her mask now that it was stored together with where part of her soul was.

"He stunned the spirits in my swords somehow. If I swung them when the spirits were stunned, I had a bad feeling they would injure beyond recovery. I swung out my wok on instinct."

Swinging a wok a few tons heavy with her strength was a deadly attack. Her swords were relatively light, 30 to 40 kilograms each. It depends on the blood her spirits consume or were attached to.

For the reforged twin swords at their material quality, this was considered lightweight. Not quite the lightest they could be for their durability, but they were meant for speed and not quite power. Her swords weren't high-quality in material. They were reforged by Epic-ranked materials.

This was to match their spirits and the elements she used on them. A growth-type weapon couldn't just jump ranks directly if she wanted her spirits to mature properly. It would be like giving a Grandmaster the body of an Emperor.

"Did it do any damage?" If it did, he might have to consider getting her a heavier wok.

"To his pride, maybe. It did stagger him a little." She nudged him with her backside to get him seated, not allowing him to help with prep work. Eyeing him to be patient and let her cook.

Ebony took Dusk and javelin tossed it back to the Turtle Fort to take care of things there.

"Make it quick, I want your eyes on me." Xin hummed.

'They finally reacted. That took them quite a while for people with portable Eidolons.' So he thought, but not all of these people had the expensive module for speedy communication.

It had been well over half a day since he woke up from his evolution and froze the people surrounding his house solid. Perhaps this reaction could be considered fast as they gathered quite a number of people, found him and could even surround his current location.

Did they know he also went to take a city back in the meantime?

He had a feeling they didn't.

These people were all Kings, none were Demons and no wooden puppets.

"Ah, eat this first." Xin pushed a platter of pan-fried dumplings to him.

He dodged her reflexive backfist whenever anything got close from behind her and landed a peck before Flickering a distance from their outdoor cooking station.

"Well aren't you relaxed, Mr top grade soul---"

"Good evening? Uhm…" When 15 people dressed for battle landed around him, he was ready to talk or fight.

He replied since they started a conversation, so why did all of them freeze up the moment they landed?

Sure, most of them jumped from a long distance away. Similar to how Veronica jumped from mountain to mountain when she kidnapped him.

The others used a different type of movement skill that crossed large distances. One of them was a Blink, extremely similar to his Flicker but more magical in nature. It could be an arcane spell, but more likely, this person had a tiny bit of affinity with the space element.

'No way, what a bummer.' He was disappointed when he figured they got into the range of his overflowing wisdom and stunned themselves mentally. They were probably seeing his simulations where he fought them all. Since he didn't know what they could do, they probably saw him blasting various spells, kicking them to death or just using mana to drown them in mana poisoning.

Ebony used to set a thousand battles as a default for simulation, but he'd just increased it to fifty thousand due to his increase in mental processing ability and current rush to get up to speed with his new capabilities.

He left a Number here and got back to admiring his personal chef at work.

One by one, the Gia-speaking people broke out in gasps. Falling to their knees and shivering before they looked up at the ice statue and scampered back on the ground.

The first move Six did was to Flicker to a congregation of mana. The mage with the blink skill got frightened, but instead of an instinctual defensive spell or offensive counter, he accidentally dropped his staff.

"Please let me go! I won't bother you anymore!"

"…uhm, shall we duel? I want to know what skills you have."

"Ski-what skills I have? I-I'll tell you everything if you let me go!"

"Oh…that wasn't a threat. You can go any time, I just wanted a friendly duel."

"N-no duel! Give me a minute, I'll give you all my spell books and write my skill list down…..please, just one minute. I used to be a scribe, I can write fast!"

'It's not like I killed them fifty thousand times….what an exaggeration.' Ebony was watching this through Six's perception in real time. While he just learned what Martial and Simulative Aura did, he doubted how real each of their deaths felt to them.

He wasn't a mind mage, and there was no intent on his part to make his opponents feel this simulation to be as real as possible. The shock of dying shouldn't be any heavier than dying in a dream or nightmare. They shouldn't feel pain either.

It was just imagination. How bad can it be?

Seeing similar reactions from everyone present, this was clearly another one of the times when his 'normal' was not the same as others.

Out of everyone's expectations, he found 15 Kings kneeling and writing on paper a mage shared.

All of them were offered to duel to allow Six to see their skills in action, but every one of them chose to write their skills down and offer their skill books.

They pushed over stacks of paper with their heads facing the ground, unwilling to look at Six's eyes or the cooking station he was at.

While dicing potatoes for the next dish, Xin flicked a metal coin onto the stack of paper.

The coin returned to her after landing, and she did the same for every stack.

"Honey, this one contains lies."

"Wha-No! I didn't! I must have miswritten." A girl in leather armour, an archer, dived for the stack of paper to retrieve it. But Eobny already had in his hands.

With his speed reading, he found a couple of things that stood out already. All of it was mana manipulation technique skills.

'Wow, did she learn that I'm fluent with mana manipulation and adjustable spells and edit only these skills.' He was impressed with her fast thinking. These were mana-based enhancement skills, they enhanced the eyes, forearms and a mana imbuement skill to strengthen bows and arrows or any weapon in general.

Nothing special, but they were all crucial for an archer.

"Interesting, moving mana in this fashion would hurt my eye in the long run and blind me permanently, but very slowly, perhaps decades of constant use. And this would wear down my forearms and cause them to tear if I'm not careful. Impressive." Even for Ebony, these were Tier 5 equivalent skills, and the information was valuable.

Tier 5 skills weren't abundant on the market, and he didn't have many self-created ones himself.

This archer still had fire in her blood and stabbed out with an arrowhead between her fingers. Her charge towards him was exceptional, getting past Six and not even giving the Number a chance to react.

The metal arrowhead chipped when it attempted to pierce his neck.

'A lot stronger than Duke Entras. I suppose they are a notch above even some of the stronger Kings on Elcra.'

There was an ice arrow through the archer's neck, and she was obediently kneeling back where she wrote her skills down with gravity pressing her deep into the earth.

None of them would die with an arrow through their neck, not even if their arteries were ruptured. At least, not within a couple of minutes.

Although she attacked him once her childish ploy was found out, her hands had been trembling while she attacked. Instead of killing intent, she saw the attack as her only chance to escape.

'Her core skills are movement, perception, stealth and a mana augmentation skill. All Tier 5.' This was confirmed when she attacked and not from the stack of papers she wrote for him.

She was ahead of him in skill tiers and even had good skill combinations throughout her classes, but she didn't use a drop of compressed mana. Every skill used base mana as was regenerated. Baseline human, King's mana uncompressed made her augmentation over a hundred times weaker than they could be if she compressed it a hundred times.

Did she never learn a mana compression skill? Even Athena compressed her mana despite her slow mana regeneration.

There was a limit to the quantity of mana a bow or arrow of any material could be imbued with. Mana compression should be crucial to just about any fighter unless they don't use mana at all.

That's when his Mana Discern checked her bow out, and his respect for her skill dropped. The bow helped to compress mana so that she didn't have to do it herself. This would reduce the mental load required from the archer, and it wouldn't require any focus to shoot mana-strengthened arrows. It would make sense for an archer to focus on aiming. Situational awareness was also important but he didn't see any Elven archer who depended on their bows to help them do something they could do. Equipment effects should always be secondary to one's skill.

Dusk helped with mana purification to further give Ebony space to compress mana, but it was his mind doing the compression, not the staff. He wouldn't complain if the bow compressed mana since most weapons of a certain grade and above did that, it was that the archer didn't even try further compression.

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"I'm surprised there was only one liar amongst fifteen of them." His wife commented as she poured the potatoes into tomato sauce with minced pork and sliced sausages. Very homestyle and nothing fancy. "Can you send them away? Their fear is affecting my cooking."

"How afraid are they?" He repelled all of them and sent them near a City still under Imperial control, and kept them grounded with mana and gravity. Six went to get someone in charge who could imprison them or do whatever the Empire deems. The Number would have to stick with them. It was unlikely that the nearby City had people who could suppress so many Kings. Perhaps their prisons are good enough after extracting stamina and mana to weaken them and stripping them off of any items.

This was already more than he would do for the Empire, but letting them go was not an option. Not when their killings and soul extraction were causing his wife to feel all the raw emotions.

"As intense as it can get, maybe even more than just fearing for their lives. It's like they are afraid you would take away everything they care about before their lives."

"I had no such intentions…just needed to know who they were." Ebony sent a follow-up message to Sophia telling her not to search these people's backgrounds anymore. He was ready to conjure their faces for Sophia once he found her through his new scouts, but he retracted that.

He placed the empty plate of dumplings in the sink. 2 kilos of dumplings were enough for snacking.

All of a sudden, Xin's head snapped back and she glared at him.

"Why aren't you breathing?"

"I removed my lungs. I'll create a generic skill to breathe in air and oxygen throughout my pores or skin cells." In fact, he might consider just removing the need for oxygen altogether during the next evolution. It wouldn't cost much, and he wouldn't need a skill for it. Was it because of his mana-being heritage? Most likely, together with his mother's endurance and his training in low-oxygen environments, he never needed much. After so many evolutions and stat points, the need had almost dropped to zero.

"You haven't done so and already removed your lungs!?" She slammed her wok on the earthy ground and blew up a gust of wind. 'That's not hygienic…she's angry.'

"I don't need much oxygen to begin with." He told the truth. He'd realised after teaching her his breathing technique long ago that she couldn't fully copy him because he simply didn't need as much oxygen.

This was probably a genetic difference by birth that he never noticed when they were both Journeymen. To think it'd been decades since he taught her a breathing technique.

"Tell me…what else did you do?"

"I'll tell you after you evolve."

"Why? Now that you're stronger than me, you're starting to hide things from your wife. Huh? I need to beat it out of you, is that it?"

"I don't want to affect your choices. I don't want us to affect each other's path. Your evolution should be for yourself."

"…fine, but you're telling me everything even if I have to beat it out of you."

"We're going to duel anyway. Are you ready to evolve?"

"Mmm, I've been combat cooking for almost 6 months."

"You cooked monsters while fighting?"

"I made sure they are dead before cooking. The monsters in the Glades are weak to fire. I was using my kitchen knife, and they basically jumped into my wok."

'Poor monsters.' Ebony tried to imagine Xin holding a kitchen knife, zipping past monsters in a flash and appearing with a wok full of meat and a bubble of blood she extracts at lightning speed.

It was surprisingly easy to imagine. Her speed at dismantling organic creatures was scary.

"Does your Fortification of attack speed work on single single-handed knife now?" He asked.

"Hmm? Of course. Wanna see how I hunt and cook?"

"Sure." Ebony hid his mana. There were no monsters in the vicinity earlier due to his mana. He wasn't hiding to prevent monsters and baiting whoever these Lure members were. It would be more convenient if the trespasser was looking for him as well.

Xin stayed dressed with an apron, with her hair in a bun. A chef's knife in her left hand and a cleaver in her right. Her dual-wielding Fortification would work.

The wok was floating…on a blood halo that was producing heat.

'I forgot about that blood halo. She's using it as her stove and to control her wok.'

She conjured her wings and flew to hunt for food.

'She's faster again. Her lightning step refined, her wind manipulation improved, and did her flight get a proper Skill to back it up? No, not yet. Her Intelligence stat increased a little.' Ebony guessed that monsters in the Glades that were more magically attuned gave her more mentally focused stats.

If her lifespan limitation wasn't so tight, pushing back her evolution as much as possible would benefit her greatly, since she can continue raising her stats and Potential by eating.

Ebony might not get stats from eating, but he also gained Potential. There was no confirmation anywhere, but he was assuming she gains less Potential from eating the same thing because she got stats directly. By his understanding, energy had to come from somewhere. Either that, or her Physique was just more efficient with digestion and could digest something he couldn't.

Whatever the case was, her ability to gain stats by eating was not strong at the moment. After half a year, she probably gained around 50 to 60 points in stats. This was including Ancient rarity meat and blood he bought for her to consume. That was equivalent to around 3 to 4 levels worth of stats, hardly worth mentioning if it wasn't for her skill multipliers. It wasn't weak by any measure, just that there were many ways to overcome her constant but slow stat growth.

His Domain core, Will and mana accumulation was his method and hers was eating. Her Physique needed to improve for it to exceed his Domain's growth since his Will and mana had increased and strengthened a lot. 50 measly stat points wouldn't change under a few billion points of mana.

There was no suspense when they finally found a bull-like monster. She landed far away, dispersed her wings and lightning zapped past the bull. Her wok caught the dismantled bull. The organs and bones were wrapped up in their blood but they were separated clean, without a morsel of meat on them.

'That lightning step…not refined, evolved.' She probably took inspiration from her great-grandfather. The fastest man under the 2nd generation.

He dared say, she very recently evolved this lightning-based movement skill. It was so tough on the body she needed to transmute part of her upper body to withstand her speed.

She might even have depended on this to keep up with the Demons or the one who assaulted her. As for the Power Demon, he was rather certain Xin could use her 'limitless' scaling Art to increase her strength beyond his. It would explain how she burned out all the energy in her body before he found her.

She didn't stop there and sliced down a variety of monsters while her wok was already stir-frying.

What he didn't expect was to find that there was seasoning stored in her blood halo.

"Emergency combat ration served. Ah, the taste isn't the best since I can't marinate them okay…" She confidently presented her wok of stir-fried mixed meats and then shyly scratched her cheek twice with her index finger, worried about the taste.

He didn't see when she got the vegetables. These were wild and fresh but her storage could keep vegetables fresh so it wasn't an indicator that she picked fresh wild vegetables faster than he could see. He had been more focused on her than her wok.

The emergency combat rations increased his stamina and health recovery by a little.

"Your essence control has vastly improved. Uncommon and Rare meat can give me buffs."

"Heheh, my student shared with me their lineage essence control techniques, and I've been incorporating and improving them. I can completely retain Journeyman and Master ranked monster essence with less than 1% loss, the fresher and faster I can turn them from monster to meal, the more I can retain, so it fits my combat cooking."

Absorbed in watching her perform, she finally got enough and shyly asked him not to stare so hard while she was busy cooking.

With her back turned, "This evolution of yours…changed you a lot this time."

"How so? Is it a bad change?"

"No, it's a wonderful change. I love it…a lot stronger, I can finally feel a connection." She kept her flame and hands steady, but he easily noticed her trembling. And a streak of tears ran down her cheeks.

Ebony almost fumbled his teacup, unsure what to do when his supposedly happy wife, knowing both of them were alive and well suddenly broke into tears. He'd long known she had drastic emotional shifts, crying was on the rare side.

'She could sense emotional attachment all this time? Has she always known that I had been trained-brainwashed into thinking I cared?' Fortunately, he didn't have to copy any human actions he'd observed to know that a simple hug wouldn't be the wrong answer.

Except he got elbowed, "I'm trying to cook here." And her tears ran dry after being evaporated by her rising body heat.

'Still too slow even after evolving.' He chided himself for the split second of uncertainty.

"What happened? I feel like you've seen death countless times. Although clunky, the way you fought those Demons was very different. Was your evolution that dangerous?"

"What? Other than being overloaded by the Mythic material and almost dying, not really." Ebony answered truthfully. He only almost died once during the evolution.

As expected, his wife had seen the terribly shameful control he had over both body and mind right after waking up from a 7-month evolution.

"Really?" She eyed him suspiciously.

"Mmm. What's the difference?"

Her lie detector senses didn't catch anything, and she had to accept that he only almost died once.

"When you fought, you didn't think of it as training that much. No longer thinking of new skills or techniques you can learn. You were a little bit more focused, taking fights a little more seriously."

"…" He wanted to reply that he took every fight seriously. In hindsight, she wasn't wrong.

Not many people wanted him dead and acted upon it. For those who did, he was usually obviously more powerful. In that sense, whether he was kidnapped or wanted dead, he treated all fights as a form of training, to learn new skills and techniques. He would be observing not just himself for new ways to use a skill or spell, but he would also analyse and break down his opponents' skills.

He claims to be focused, yet his mind was the opposite of clear during these battles. It felt like a waste not to analyse. Hyperlucid Atelier also take up mental processes, how could his mind be clear if he was simulating thousands of battles occurring at the same time.

He recalled the battle a while back. There was a small difference.

"It almost feels like how you fight whenever you sleep fight, more efficient." She added on while putting her wok aside and taking her apron off.

That tickled his brain a little, more efficient?

'I'll have to train my slumber fighting skill one of these days. Or learn to treat battles not as training so that I don't overthink."

She asserted her claim over her seat in his lap and squeezed terribly close. "I need to recharge."

"It's hard to eat like this."

She ignored him and fed him, sneaking a bite for herself every two bites for him. It would've been a long meal if she wasn't dual-wielding chopsticks and using wind magic to keep food, including sauces, from flying all over the place.

Stretching his stomach was not an exercise he planned for.

"What do you think about all this?" Xin asked in general.

"I think we should take an active role this time."

"You want to help the Empire more actively? Why?"

"They're already aiming for our souls as far as we know. You're affected by people's emotions. If they are happy, you can feel that too."

"For me?"

"I was too passive." He dodged the question. It wasn't just for her. It was for Hector who protected her. It was for Apa. It was for his students. "How did that armoured man get past your foresight?"

"His stealth armour also has anti-divination. I learned from Sophia that the Jaded Parasites have an anti-divination perfume but from the little she showed me, the perfume is not that strong. These people have a necklace that prevents the Fox Seers from divining them, including other types of tracking skills, from physical to magical traces. I heard they found out that the higher-ranking members all have this necklace. It contains the soul of an Astral creature, most likely made by the Saint they pray to or are subservient to."

"We have some fancy opponents this time." The soul of an astral creature packed into a necklace to prevent divination.

That sounded extravagant.

Astral creatures did not seem as rare as they sounded because astral bodies were everywhere. The only problem was how to interact with the Astral Realm. It was less common to find people who could do that than people who could interact with the Spirit Realm.

Xin burped all of a sudden.

"Your complexion… It's turning purple."

"Heheh…my abusive husband just mana poisoned me."

He activated Eidolon's module to quickly absorb his mana. He had been pushing as much as he could through his active Scout Pigeons and towards Dusk to continue building the moving Turtle Fort, but he was limited by the transfer rate that the crystals could handle. He was also letting loose to scare monsters and people away.

It never occurred to him that she could be mana poisoned. Her tolerance was so high that she was the only one who was able to take fully compressed mana from him as a buff. Overflowing mana was not compressed, it shouldn't have harmed her even with the vast increase in purity.

"Relax…it's not that bad, I'll just treat it as resistance training. Can you stay here? I haven't slept properly in months."

"Thanks for worrying."

"Mmm."

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