Three hours were too short for most people but the others had been conserving their strength. Ebony's mana regeneration hasn't gotten back to normal and his mana pool could only reach up to 78% before it started leaking out from him. He didn't expect the self-inflicted harm to be that bad.
"Boy, can ya do that again?" Commander Wil asked him a short moment ago.
He wanted to rush the new skill he got but it seems it was better to take overdrafting a little slower.
"We can still do the same thing, I have something else."
"No! Leave me out of this plan!" Ayla denied it vehemently.
"Your shadow binding skill is pretty awesome though, it saved me quite a few times." Ebony praised. The lady could step on a Troll's shadow and restrict their movements. It even worked when multiple shadows overlapped. The Grandmaster Trolls break free with sheer strength but it took them a few seconds.
"What kind of 'something else' are you talking about?" Cap Dwarf was drinking nearby.
"Stronger but much smaller range." He replied, referring to Icicle Drop. A spell he named himself but isn't exactly a skill. 'But really, what's required to make an action a skill? I didn't expect mana overdraft to be a skill while fully desiring Icicle Drop to be a skill and not getting it.'
"Maybe once or twice more…" The older men whispered amongst themselves.
"What?" Ebony wanted to know what they were talking about.
"Sound mages are pretty annoying huh?"
'....anybody could hear you.' Ebony knew they were just joking.
"They have poor communication which has never changed since the previous wars. We can easily reuse plans but even that has a limit. If we push them too much they would no longer be on the defensive. They had a full-scale battle with our army just 2 days ago hence their sluggishness." Ayla informed.
The same Troll that fought Commander Wil will not move unless really necessary. The weak 'king' would be dead if he didn't have a backup from his squad or so the older men were saying. No one was capable of supporting Commander Wil while the man self-proclaimed to be able to fight off squads of weaker King-Classed Trolls by himself. They were just too good at keeping each other alive and their physical regeneration abilities increased drastically with every evolution.
It was time to move out again before the Trolls could ready too much of their forces. Ebony didn't know where the floating bows with spirits hid but they never really showed themselves until necessary. This time, they were included in the plan. Ayla begrudgingly accepted to follow him again.
"You better be able to bring us out this time." She repeatedly warned.
"Scarlet, we're moving." He didn't expose her for snacking inside her tent. It already felt weird calling her Scarlet again but she insisted he changed it back for now.
The militia moved towards the Imperial's base before heading for their enemies' base. Ebony separated from them again. They understood what to expect this time. Ayla was able to hide them again. Until Icicle became brighter than a glowstick.
"Not something weird again."
"How is this weird?" Ebony let go of his sword when he had about 20% of his mana left. It accelerated downwards as gravity pulled it. It caught the Troll's attention and two of them jumped to smack his sword away but only shifted Icicle's path a tiny bit.
The greatsword buried itself into the ground, Ebony's mana pulsed out with the help of repulsion and shattered the earth with vibrations. There was a momentary lag before the cracks deep under ignited and flames poured out.
Now that Ebony wasn't helpless as he had been earlier, he set his domain up and had a conjured ice arm grab onto Ayla. In his domain, while his Will was working he could prevent anyone from being harmed by his magic. He didn't have to worry about her screaming her lungs out either. He had already missed out on 2 battles and he wasn't about to miss another. Icicle rose into the sky as it repelled itself from its grave and found its way back into Ebony's hands.
A dozen Glacial Models were pulled out of his bag as they went to do their thing. Commander Wil was going on a joint attack with the older veterans this time around, it gave them the freedom to attack as they pleased. They were supposed to go around throwing ice spells to disturb the Trolls not to cause any real damage but Ebony hadn't been listening.
Ayla didn't have the strength to pull him away so Ebony wreaked havoc everywhere he went. Destroying important-looking structures everywhere his feet brought him. He was unstoppable, the Trolls were mostly closed-ranged fighters and getting close to him was a death sentence. A single cut or stab was enough to allow enough flames to swallow them up, rendering their regeneration ineffective.
They were smart enough to get their fellow members to avoid Ebony but Grandmaster squads weren't anywhere nearby. Ebony obviously sought the strong out. His Glacial Models had trouble as they were ganged up on. He pulled them back to him as he didn't want to waste the mana they contain.
He retreated back into the sky when his mana pool dropped to less than 10%. Upset that no strong foe came around to stop him. 'The imperial mages can't remove this corrosive cloud?' A random thought hit him. They had to fly relatively low and under the range of strong physical attacks.
Ning Xin was in a good mood when he found her back at the camp. She had killed a cocky member of the Vigiot tribe that was very rude to her. The militia was scheduled to carry out another attack in 2 hours. The small academies' mages could only go for another round before drying up and the archers had to source for arrows. They would have a longer break after that.
After only half an hour, alarms rang out as people started roaring to get moving as the Troll made a detachment to attack them. It was a faster response than the commander and captains expected.
"First assault squad! Hold them back, the rest of you retreat!" Commander Wil ordered. Ebony suspected that the reason the militia's camp wasn't within the range of the Imperial's defence towers as they were bait to drag Trolls out of their base. He was absolutely right.
The support squads were already low on mana and stamina and they were vulnerable but valuable. The rag-tag bunch mostly helped them to get back safely but the people from the academies weren't very happy about that. Ebony heard arguments from quite a few directions but it was none of his business.
Commander Wil only watched the first assault squad struggle, he would gain nothing fighting this battle and they needed the overall increase in the militia's power. Their opponents seem to know this and the fighting force they sent didn't have any strong leaders that can rival the scrawny old man.
The force of ten thousand strong pushed the militia all the way back and remained to pressure them from leaving the Imperial base's range. Ning Xin was tired and Ebony alone couldn't break the impeccable teamwork of the soldiers. The Trolls were fighting completely differently. He faced a different beast altogether.
Coordination changed the situation more than he would expect. He could see how these enemies pushed the Imperials so much.
They sustained a few casualties but the Trolls were unwilling to push too far in case of retaliation.
'What kind of game is this…is this what war is like?'
❅❅❅
The detachment of Trolls received reinforcements and the militia couldn't get past them without being found out. The two were constantly battling each other so the militia couldn't bother their enemy's main base any more. In just two days, Ebony and Ning Xin were marked pretty badly. They couldn't appear without a bunch of squads that could survive and keep the two of them in check.
It still helped the militia since they took on at least 2 to 3 Grandmaster squads each. The two of them fought separately so that they don't come into conflict with each other's powers. They were not able to kill the Grandmasters with ease but most of those squads couldn't really hurt them either.
"How are you feeling?" Ebony asked Ning Xin who slumped onto the crate of arrows they were using as a table.
"Better. I can gauge how much to hold back so that I don't have to fight on an empty stomach and still fight those pathetic Grandmasters." She replied with her mask on the crate.
"Didn't you fight that Benumbed tribe leader?"
"I'm weaker and was only support in that battle but he was a level 500 grandmaster. Pathetically weak if I could almost match his speed." She dissed the stronger opponent.
She went on to predict that a month or two of this speed of skill levelling and she could beat that leader. They continued to diss their opponents before she got a bit worried.
"We need to hurry."
"Is it your intuition again?"
"Mmm. Now I know why Grandma doesn't really care about the Trolls. They are so weak! This 'invasion' isn't the benefits that she wanted me to get, it's a catalyst for us to get stronger to reap benefits later."
"Then we throw ourselves deeper into danger."
❅❅❅
Ebony had opened up a stall. They had longer breaks now and Ning Xin naturally joined the chef duties and he was a bother in that department. He offered to help with mending some equipment and it quickly gained traction. He set up his forge and got some questions about it but no one really cared enough to annoy him.
On the first 2 days of business, he only asked for items that people were alright with breaking. He didn't break anything and even strengthened their armour a little. He slowly gained confidence that he wouldn't break any Uncommon quality equipment and below and repair works with metal and scale armours weren't an issue.
He set up a board of the types of durability, sharpness or impact runes that he was confident of moulding. It was a free-of-charge business; he only got a line of customers after almost ten days. The effects of his work on equipment were beginning to set in and make a tiny difference in battle. Money wasn't a problem, he improved his craft and familiarity with repair and runic work. He didn't have the confidence to mess with good equipment though. Including anything that already had runes or enchantments.
He still had daily training with Ning Xin outside of any clashes with the Trolls. Others have started to call them crazy. They fought each other right in front of the Troll's detachment every single day. Conditioning couldn't be forgotten so that they didn't decrease in level.
That was the only time they spent with each other. He was busy with his small forge and she was busy cooking, preparing or keeping stock of their food for thousands of people. She delivered food to him but they rarely had time to eat together. He had many people queuing to get repair work done. He also started to mend weapons if the damage wasn't too big. He didn't have the materials to reforge badly damaged weapons but he did decent work.
He was scolded by dozens of people in the beginning though. They didn't know he was using mana and heat to do his repair work, washing away their imbued mana. It made equipment tougher but they were not able to utilise certain traits or it just didn't feel natural to them. A plus for armour but a negative for weapons. Hence, he was only fixing armour and robes. The academy mages had cheap, mass-produced robes that didn't have any sort of enchantment. None of them complained after he mended and improved their defensive capabilities.
Ning Xin wanted to crash into the Imperial base's outdoor kitchen to learn their skills on imbuing food with energy to give temporary strength buffs to the consumer but she didn't get the chance to.
There were rumours of a princess getting assigned to Fourth Tide's base. He listened in on people chatting while they waited for his repair work to be done so he learnt a lot. There were zero Elves present, not because they didn't want to fight the Trolls or because there were few of them that didn't want to leave their secret forest homes. Rather, they didn't want to do anything that would remotely assist or benefit the Frost Elves. They were all up where the battle was the fiercest so who could complain?
Those were some crazy rumours but Ebony heard about the bad blood between the races in the past. His curiosity didn't get him any more information since Koawe shrugged saying that he was too much of a junior in their society to know why the 'normal' Elves hated them with a passion. Koawe called to tell them that he was leaving way back on the first day they arrived. He couldn't wait around for the Imperials to begin their attack.
Thanks to the 50 bows, they didn't really lose an advantage with the loss of a high-level mage. These bows came to him to get him to cool them down every day. They didn't need it but they sure liked ice mana. They could survive with ambient mana but were required to fly back to their creator twice a month to be charged. They never launched a full strike and conserved both arrows and mana.
Ebony's presence on the battlefield could be felt by both allies and enemies. Obviously, it could, while he was sparring with Ning Xin not too far away they tossed a bomb at their detachment. They were banned from sparring where the Trolls could see because the two of them dived into the detachment's camp by themselves after they tossed a bomb.
The two of them hit so fast, their specific watchers didn't react in time before hundreds died. They didn't get away scot-free but he managed to get a Glacial Model to drag Ning Xin out. She went to get help while he hunkered down and made them kill themselves by attacking him. They already knew they couldn't attack him safely and it bought him some time as they got squads capable of hitting him.
The airspace wasn't safe either, the Midnight Shepherd was disturbed by their activities. Ebony could only sense the ambient mana being weird above him while Ning Xin's intuition told her something dangerous was in the air. Dozens of people disappeared simply because they jumped a little too high when they dodged an attack.
Surrounded and outnumbered, Ebony was forced to stay still. The drain on his mana was too high to maintain a domain that affected every one of his opponents. He tried his best to force the weaker ones to surround him with their huge bodies but they helped to pull each other away from the pull of his gravity. He froze a few corpses to cover himself but they shattered their allies' bodies with no remorse, as remorseless as Ebony himself. Almost out of mana, he didn't want to expose his unenhanced body and had the remaining Glacial Models and the ice mana in his robe reform into Imperishable Frost Scales and made an igloo for himself.
Redirecting all his mana regeneration from compressed augmentation to sustaining his domain to strengthen his turtle shell. With nothing to do, he made some tea while he waited. He didn't understand his saviours' anger when he asked if they would like a cup of tea after they found him.
That was just two days ago when his mana chassis completely recovered. Their slow healing was worrisome but it only made him more interested in levelling Potent Mana Overdraft. He just wanted to let it fully recover to observe and understand his own anatomy better at least once before he attempted it again. That recklessness taught him that level 350 Trolls could do nothing to him even if they were particularly good at strengthening themselves. If Ning Xin wasn't conserving energy she would probably burn herself up before getting surrounded.
The Vigiot tribe were dancers. The specific squads containing Ning Xin were formed of Vigiot tribe members while Ebony had Benumbed tribe squads keeping him busy. The dancers couldn't fight well against Ebony once he chilled the bone weapons and their bodies but some squads of the Benumbed tribe had resistance high enough to counter the cold when they could reinforce their bodies. They never let him push them into a battle of attrition.
It wasn't easy to kill them. Their skill levels got the chance to catch up with their actual levels.
Ebony tossed the gravity reduction and ice blast ring into the box beside him. They were made from Common rarity iron and were really easy to make. He supplied at least 200 people with it so far, mostly the members of his own assault squad. He got lesser repair jobs and had the time to make everyone faster. He improved the ring and made it chargeable with the user's mana but there was still a slot for a mana ore. The ambient mana was too chaotic to be useful and if he made thousands of rings to absorb ambient mana, no one would be able to use the ring effectively.
Inscripted Mana Moulding had great gains and the rings he was making had greater and greater effects. The warriors needed to get used to drastically weakened gravity but it was beneficial in most cases. They recently had to turn the ring effects off in case of jumping too high and disappearing into dust.
Ebony put the next iron ore that he had into the flames but the dim daylight got swallowed up. Sounds disappeared. He continued his work as if nothing happened.
Bards and sound mages took half a minute before sending out alarms.
The Midnight Shepherd was attacking.