I think a good learning action and potential omake is Jacob going to the library to checkout fantasy novels, comics, and manga while searching the internet for ideas on how to use his powers, I.e going to superpower wiki and looking up all the dark related powers
Martial: You are an Evil Overlord General without an army to lead. In order for the Black Kingdom to become strong, you need an army. With the power of Ebon, you can forge one. And with an army, you can start fulfilling your role as the Ebon Lord. The question is merely how you shall do it. (Choose 1)
[X] Born From Power: Your attempts to create minions from nothing but Ebon Power result in failure with the exception of Count Cuddles. You probably weren't using enough power. It's time to give it another shot and hopefully this time, with a bit more oomph, you'll get minions that can be of actual use. Cost: 20 EP: Chance of Success: 85%. Reward: Ability to create minions out of Ebon Power.
Roll: 10 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon): 20
Your second set of attempt at creating minions out of simply Ebon Power gets off to a rough start.
This time around, your first try results in a small gurgling pile of jiggling black sludge that didn't even last a minute before collapsing on itself and dissolving into black smoke. Thank god your underground base is somehow ventilated.
Your second attempt ends up with you covered in an ink-like substance after you managed to create a bigger blob that actually had something resembling arms and legs before it tried to attack you, forcing you to put an immediate end to its short life with a well-placed kick.
After cleaning up, your third attempt makes the phrase, third time's the charm seem like a real thing when you finally get something that isn't some hostile sludge like thing.
It has a vaguely humanoid body structure. It has a round spherical head with circular, glowing yellow eyes. It also has two long, twisted antennae sprouting from the top of its head. Each of its hands has three clawed fingers, and its feet are large and lack any discernible digits. With the exceptions of its eyes, its body is completely black.
You sense no aggression or hostility from the thing as it looks up at you with blank yellow eyes. Tentatively, you give it a wave and it waves back.
Okay, you think you're getting somewhere.
Further attempts result in more of the same creature. By the time you've finished confirming that your new ability works and isn't a fluke, you have five of these new creatures idly standing around. You can tell that these things aren't very strong individually plus they aren't very smart either. You think a child could easily beat one up without much problem.
However, as your first minions, they work just fine. They know no fear, are completely loyal to you and they cost virtually nothing to maintain their existence. And with enough of them, they could easily overwhelm a grown man.
They can also flatten themselves against the ground, making themselves look like shadows.
You've made what are essentially Shadows from Kingdom Hearts, haven't you?
Eh, whatever. Not like Disney can sue you for copyright.
There's one thing that is bothering you though. Appearance-wise, Count Cuddles could be considered an infantile version of these Shadow Minions but what you sense from Count Cuddles is completely different from your new minions.
Just what is Count Cuddles then?
Putting that thought aside, for the time being, you end up creating a total of twenty shadows over the week in between your other experiments.
Reward: Create Shadow Ability gained. 20 Shadow Minions gained. More will be automatically be made every turn.
Shadow Minion – Looks and functions like the Shadows from the Kingdom Hearts series. Weak combat strength but capable of flattening itself and moving through small gaps. Upkeep cost. 1EP per Shadow.
Stewardship: Your generation rate of Ebon Power is nowhere near enough to keep up with your power expenditures from what you can tell. You need a way to secure a way to obtain more Ebon Power and you have a few ideas on how to do it. (Choose 1)
[X] Human Resources: In a lot of magical girl and tokusatsu shows, the villains are often going around draining people of their "life force" to sustain themselves or for some nefarious plan. As an evil overlord that wouldn't look out of place on such shows, you should be able to do the same. Luckily for you, you have three guinea pigs to try this on. Cost: 10 EP, 1 Human Captive. Chance of Success: 100% Reward: Gain the ability to Drain people of their ??? and convert it into Ebon Power.
Roll: 44 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon): 54
With your new minions in tow, you head to the cells where your prisoners await their fate. They're frankly in bad shape. Not surprising since you hadn't held back much when you beat the crap out of them. Fortunately, you beat them up in a way that there was little chance of them dying from their injuries. They just really hurt.
You enter the cell of the biggest guy and he groans when he sees you approach.
"Motherfu – ", you don't give him a chance to finish his sentence. Moving faster than the human eye can see, you grasp the man's face and reach out with Ebon Power to see what you can draw out from the man. With Ebon Power, you can feel several different 'pools' within the man that gives off an energy source kind of feel. Now aware of these pools of possible energy, you begin your experiment.
The largest pool reveals itself to what is closest to the concept of life energy. The man gasps as you start draining his life force. Interestingly, the drain energy simply pools up within you as a separate entity instead of being added to your own life force which you can now also sense. When an unhealthy pallor appears on the man's skin, you cut off the draining. The man slumps against the wall, breathing heavily as though he had been through a very intensive marathon or suffering significant fatigue.
Ignoring your test subject, you try and get a feel for the life energy that's being held within you. You try adding it to your own pool and feel a slight burst of energy when you add a little. Nice. However, that's not the purpose of this experiment. Next, you try converting it into Ebon Power. A chunk of life energy immediately converges into a smaller pool of Ebon Power.
Damn, if you had to estimate, ten units of life energy just turned into a single unit of Ebon Power. Not very efficient but judging by your own pool, you can safely say that life energy can regenerate with rest and food.
Right then, time for source number two.
Grabbing the man again, Ebon Power reaches out towards a much smaller but denser pool of energy. As you begin drawing upon this smaller pool of power, you instantly recognise it for what it is. Magic Power.
The magic power you draw is much denser than life energy but the amount available is tiny compared to Life Energy. You end up accidentally draining the man dry of the stuff. Fortunately, you don't see any adverse effects from being emptied of magic on the man.
Again, you repeat what you did with the man's life energy with that man's magic power. You can easily add it to your own much larger pool of Magic Power and when converting it into Ebon Power, the exchange rate is about the same. A unit of magic power becomes a unit of Ebon Power.
Nice.
You decide to finish the experiment by draining one of the weirdly fluctuating pools of energy in the man. The effects are near instantaneous. The expression of rage and despair on the man's face lessens as you drain the pool. You realise what is happening and up the draining. The anger and despair faded from the man's face to be replaced by a vague cheerfulness. Tentatively, you try adding a tiny bit of this energy to your own relevant pool.
You feel a surge of anxiety, anger, and other negative emotions for a few seconds before you forcibly suppress it and rip it out from yourself. It's painful when you do that but you now know the risks. Questioning the man, you find that while he knows he should be angry or terrified at being kidnapped and beaten up, he's vaguely happy that he's still alive and that someone will eventually realise that he's gone missing and come looking for him.
The rather disturbing smile on the man's face prompts you into draining the other fluctuating pool of energy. A quick check confirms that you can also drain positive emotions. The effect this has on the man is obvious as he becomes expressionless and his tone of voice becomes mechanical. There's no emotion in his voice but there does still seem to be a sense of self-preservation in your test subject so that's something.
Converting emotional energy into Ebon Power gives you much more than life energy but less than magic power. You estimate a two to one conversion rate for emotional energy to Ebon Power.
There are still more pools of energy for you to drain but for some reason, you can't grab hold of them. It seems like you're lacking the necessary skill or experience to try draining the remaining pools of power. Unfortunate but you've learnt enough that you could probably start some kind of energy draining operation in the near future.
You leave the man to recover from your experimental draining and force feed him some food and water to keep him alive.
After a couple of days, you give the man's energy pools an examination. His life energy has almost greatly recovered though not to how it was before. You suspect that his current condition is affecting his life energy capacity.
His magic power has barely recovered that you think it's more like a normal person has a slow magical regeneration rate or something like that.
His emotional energy is a bit better. You observe that he can feel emotions again but they're muted and stifled. It looks like without enough emotional energy, a person can't feel intense emotions.
After failing to drain the remaining pools of energy, you decide to see if your minions can drain energy as well.
You order them to drain the man dry of his emotional energy, magic power and finally his life energy, in that order.
Observing as your Shadows swarm the man, you note that they have a low capacity for holding foreign energy. They need to return to you in order to transfer the collected energy back to you or forcibly expel it as a quickly disappearing puff of energy. The man suffers the most as his life energy drains away.
First time around, you had drained the man of about a quarter of his life energy, resulting in exhaustion. At half way, the man's body has begun to show signs of starvation. At three-quarters, the man has withered away into a wrinkly old man. The moment his life force is fully drained, however, the man turns to dust.
Huh. You just killed a man.
You were expecting to feel guilt or something along those lines but frankly, as far as you can tell, there's absolutely nothing special about killing a person. Maybe if you knew them or something you would have felt something but these strangers elicit absolutely no emotion except disappointment.
Or maybe this is what being an Ebon Lord feels like.
No matter. With this, you've solved your Ebon Power shortage.
Reward: Gained ability to drain a person of their life energy, magic power, and emotions. Ability to sense life energy gained. 200 EP gained. You pop your murder cherry. You killed a person.
From observation, People have an average capacity of 500 LE (Life Energy), a 10 MP (Magic Power), and 200 combined PE and NE (positive and negative emotional energy).
Life Energy exact nature is difficult to describe. It seems to be something of a spiritual fuel that runs the body and mind. At a low level of draining, symptoms of exhaustion appear. At a medium level of draining, physical impairment and degradation start occurring. At a high level of draining, symptoms of extreme ageing appear on the body. Full draining causes the target to crumble to dust.
Magic Power is used for magic. You don't actually know much about it but it seems to react to belief and mental concentration. Possibly self-hypnosis as well. Not enough knowledge. No visible effects of draining on a normal person. A normal person normally has a small pool of magic power. Magic power regenerates very slowly in normal humans.
Emotional Energy exists in an emotional balance. Moods are dependent on whether there is more positive or negative energy. Draining a person completely of emotional energy results in an inability to feel emotions. Emotional energy regenerates at a steady pace. The normal amount of Positive and Negative Emotional energy is required to feel intense emotions.
10 Life Energy = 1 Ebon Power
1 Magic Power = 1 Ebon Power
2 Emotional Energy = 1 Ebon Power
Ebon Shadows can only hold about 50 points of any energy.
Diplomacy: You have only one lead on the supernatural world. Should you go and make contact?
[X] Don't investigate. There is surely better sources and lead that are just waiting to be found out there. If anything, you don't know how the supernatural world would see someone such as yourself and meeting with a purveyor of old and magical artifacts might be a bad idea.
You decide that you don't know enough or have enough backup plans to risk checking out the place.
Intrigue: There's a hidden world out there and you have no idea how to properly introduce yourself to it. However, you won't let that stop you from finding out what things are like. But first, there's a bunch of other stuff that needs to be done before you can properly get into being the manipulative mastermind gig. (Choose 1)
[X] Need for a Disguise: The main reason you kidnapped those thugs was because your face was seen and you did not want anyone looking for you. You need a proper disguise. A facade so that you can do your Ebon Lord stuff without fear of your identity being revealed. Your parents would be very disappointed if they knew what you were now. Cost: 40 EP. Chance of Success: 90%. Reward: Glamour Spell.
Roll: 4 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon): 14
Your attempt at changing your appearance meets little success. So far, you've managed to change your hair and eye colour but that's about all. What you need is something that can hide your true appearance no matter what.
With that in mind, you experiment with various means of disguising yourself with your powers. Most of them fail.
Eventually, you manage something.
An attempt at trying to change your clothes to something else results in you finding yourself wearing a black coat with magenta flame designs decorating the sleeves and coattails. Your face is completely hidden in the deep black shadow of the hood with only two red eyes peering from the darkness.
Eh, not what you had in mind but this is good enough. Conspicuous but it works good enough for your plans, you guess.
Reward: Ability to appear as a hooded figure with an awesome coat gained.
Learning: You have been infused with energy, not of this world which you're calling Ebon Power for now. It's different to anything that you've ever seen. Time for some science! (Choose 1)
[X] Ebon Material Testing: Ebon Power can be made into a solid form, a black crystal full of bluish purplish lightning. Who knows what something like this is capable of. Can it be made into armour? Can it be used as a power source? You must do science! Cost: 40 EP. Chance of Success: 40%. Reward: Learn how to use Ebon Power as a material for crafting.
Roll: 98 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon): 108. Crit Roll: 60 + 8: 68
You're starting to believe that Ebon Power is actively overwriting the laws of physics to do what it can do.
As a solid, you discover that it can become three things - a source of electricity, very tough and durable armour or a very sharp blade.
Its default form as a black crystal with lightning inside could be used to power a machine by coiling wires around it and connect those to the right connectors. It didn't matter how much power the machine needed to run, a single ten unit piece of Ebon Shard (You're calling the solid form of EP Ebon Shards) the size of an AA battery could be used to power a house with no problems what so ever. Except there was a problem - lifespan.
Ebon Shards used this way lasted about four hours of running time per ten unit of Ebon Power it took to create it. So creating an Ebon Shard to power something for an entire day would require sixty units of Ebon Power. Something to take into account if you wanted to use Ebon Shards to power your stuff. Incidentally, you can charge you phone almost instantaneously with a one unit shard, just remember to disconnect after charging or the shard dissipates in about half an hour.
With a mental twist, you could remake an Ebon Shard into a metal-like material that you decide to call Ebon Steel. With a weight that changes on your mental command, it can become as light as a feather or become heavy enough that not even you could lift it and with your enhanced power, you can easily lift a truck over your head like it was nothing. In terms of toughness, you don't know. It's extremely tough though, only yielding to your grip when you willed it to. Attempts to break it in its normal state resulted in a number of broken hammers and tools, each leaving not even a scratch. The only thing that seemed to affect it on any scale was pure magical power or Ebon Power. A magic-infused fist left a small dent in the material. Ebon Power infused fist smashed through it like it was nothing.
Finally, after mentally reshaping it into an edge, Ebon Steel was ludicrously sharp. You think you managed to create an actual monomolecular blade. Of course, you don't have the equipment to test this but so far the only thing it can't cut is Ebon Steel.
There was something else you found out by accident. You discovered that Ebon Power in its liquid and solid form can be transformed into an edible food substance, you haven't thought of a name yet so you've just been calling it ebon food. With your mind, you can change the texture, taste, and even appearance of this edible form of Ebon Power. Experiments with the prisoners revealed that normal people could eat it without problems and that it somehow converted itself into Life Energy to nourish the body. Meaning you could eat as much Ebon Food as you wanted and never get fat.
That wasn't the craziest thing about it. You could also convert Life Energy, Magic Power, and Emotional Energy into Ebon Food as well. Doing so allowed you to make food that could replenish these three energies. You could make real mana potions, health-restoring food, and even drinks that made people happy.
...
You realise that you could use positive emotion energy to create happiness drugs. You need to experiment to see what the effects of excessive amounts of happiness would do to a person. That and refine your ability to drain emotional energy to selectively choose between different positive emotions.
Reward: Learnt the properties of Ebon Shards, Ebon Steel, and Ebon Food. Able to create Ebon Shards, Steel, and Food. Ebon Power is bullshit.
Piety: Ebon Power is not magic but it can be transformed into magic in an instant. In this way, the power of Ebon allows you to do any kind of magic, theoretically. You just need to do to figure out what magic is out there and what you can do with magic born from Ebon Power. (Choose 1)
[X] Healing and Harm: Ebon Power can transform into any substance. By that notion, it can also become human flesh and poison. With magical enchantments, you can make healing waters and drinkable curses as well. Time to test how well Ebon Power can be used to heal others and you got some test subjects to try it out on. Cost: 40 EP, 1 Human Captive. Chance of Success: 80%. Reward: Learn how to heal and harm others using Ebon Power.
Roll: 7 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon) + 10 (bioticgrunt omake bonus): 27
Your attempts to make Ebon Power replicate the flesh of your subject fails terribly. You also can't transform it into some healing energy type thing. Rather than an inability to do so, it's more that you lack the knowledge and samples to learn from to do so.
You do however find a roundabout for it. By converting Ebon Power into Life energy, you can fill a person beyond their normal life energy capacity and supercharge the body's natural healing ability. Useless in a combat situation but life-saving outside of it. Still, it's a waste of Ebon Power to use it this way so you hope that you can find a better way to heal people with Ebon Power.
Reward: You can now heal by converting Ebon Power into Life Energy and filling a person up reserve beyond their normal limits to enhance their natural healing ability.
Personal: With school still closed, you got plenty of free time. What are you gonna do with all this time though? (Choose 1)
[X] Friends and Family: You made your friends and family worry about you last week. You should put some effort into spending some time with them. The last thing you want is for your friends to come snooping around wondering what the hell you're doing that's so important that you're completely ignoring them. Cost: $50. Chance of Success: 80%. Reward: Increased Relationship with Friends and family.
Roll: 44 + 10 (Saviour of The Ebon): 54
You didn't stay underground the whole break. You remembered to take some time off to hang out with your friends and family. Your siblings are a bit jealous that you've been given free time while the school gets fixed up while your parents have been concerned that you'll be behind in your studies because of this. Fortunately, your school made preparations and you've been doing your schoolwork online.
You also have been getting homework as well.
"Why do you torture me so, algebra…" Roselyn grumbled as she worked through her math homework. Roselyn was ahead in her homework. However, when it came to math outside the most basic, she started having major difficulties. For someone that could move people to tears with her English work, she was hopeless with numbers.
"At least you don't have the write a report on world war 2 and the reasons why there was one in the first place," Ando muttered darkly. Ando was about average in most of his grade except for gym which he excelled at. He was no means a musclehead but he preferred working the body over working the mind.
"Jacob, could you help me with my science homework, I'm having a hard time understanding this part," Christina asked you, showing which part she was having trouble with. Christina, despite being rich in money and kindness, was doing the worst in her studies. Something of an airhead, she was often the person in your circle of friends that needed help not failing her exams.
It's sad that you're the most intelligent person amongst your group of friends.
"Eurgh, pass me Count Cuddles, Jay. I need a pick-me-up." Roselyn requested, reaching out towards your pet slime buddy.
"Bo. Bobobo! Bo." Count Cuddles said with the tone of someone rich in wisdom. Or maybe he was just hungry.
No matter what, schoolwork was the bane of fun times.
There is just one thing that concerns you though.
Having obtained the ability to perceive the life energy, magic power, and emotional energy within people, you are surprise to see that the energy pools in your friends are out of the norm for the average person. Ando's life energy is incredibly dense, something that could only happen if he had a ridiculous amount of it. Roselyn's magic power is big, bigger than yours by a significant amount. Christina's Positive emotional energy pretty much eclipses her negative emotional energy.
Your friends are something special.
Reward: Got your homework done along with your friends. Family and friends have zero suspicion about you. Improved relations with family and friends.
There's one thing that is bothering you though. Appearance-wise, Count Cuddles could be considered an infantile version of these Shadow Minions but what you sense from Count Cuddles is completely different from your new minions.
First time around, you had drained the man of about a quarter of his life energy, resulting in exhaustion. At half way, the man's body has begun to show signs of starvation. At three-quarters, the man has withered away into a wrinkly old man. The moment his life force is fully drained, however, the man turns to dust.
Huh. You just killed a man.
You were expecting to feel guilt or something along those lines but frankly, as far as you can tell, there's absolutely nothing special about killing a person. Maybe if you knew them or something you would have felt something but these strangers elicit absolutely no emotion except disappointment.
Or maybe this is what being an Ebon Lord feels like.
Possibly. Jacob hasn't done enough experiments to confirm such things just yet, or whether there are adverse side-effects to continuous emotion draining that he hasn't seen yet.
I prefer doing in a Lawfully Evil way. We are the Good guys but in a Bad way. Rapists? A normal guy will apprehend them and hand them to the police while we put a stake in their hole (or holes). Murderers? We put a bullet (or Ebon Shard) in their brains. Drug addicts and dealers? We turn them into our... experimental subjects - I'm curious about using Emotion as drugs.
Hell, we can play a two-face with our friends. It seems like they are on their way to combat Ebon already. We can help them subtly, letting them deal with our... potential competitors and other junks in the town. We are the Dark, not Light.
You know, I imagine a scene like this in the future where our protagonist has a (reluctant) fight against his three friends. They do not know about his secret ID, of course...
Ando: Surrender, Enbo Lord, you can't win
Christina: Yeah! Surrender, we have three, you have only one
Roselyn: Or if you don't, I will banish you
Jacob: ...
A: What? Cat gets your tongue?
Jacob: <voice altered> Fuck this shit. Step back, or the slime takes it! <putting a gun at Count Cuddle>
A, C, R: Noooo~~~!!! You Dark...
J: I have the reputation to live up to, don't I? Now, please get the hell out of here. I have homework to do.
A, C, R: Homework?
J: Homework. Algebra on differential equations and graphs, Physics on Circular motion and centrifugal force, Chemistry on the Combustion of Organic fuel, Biolo...
A, C, R: ... You are studious?
J: What? This is only my part-time job. If I fail the tests, how can I have a good job in the future?
I prefer doing in a Lawfully Evil way. We are the Good guys but in a Bad way. Rapists? A normal guy will apprehend them and hand them to the police while we put a stake in their hole (or holes). Murderers? We put a bullet (or Ebon Shard) in their brains. Drug addicts and dealers? We turn them into our... experimental subjects - I'm curious about using Emotion as drugs.
His friends were either influenced by a large amount of magical energy aka Ando destined hero of light like Ichigo Kurosaki influences his friends. Or they have their own secret lives, if they ever do find out about each other how likely is it that Ando and the MC wont fight and stay friends. What are the odds of the others joining his side.
His friends were either influenced by a large amount of magical energy aka Ando destined hero of light like Ichigo Kurosaki influences his friends. Or they have their own secret lives, if they ever do find out about each other how likely is it that Ando and the MC wont fight and stay friends. What are the odds of the others joining his side.
I feel like pointing out that the thread has been retitled to "magical girl villain quest", so... The destined hero is probably the magical girl. So my bet's on Christina right now, though all three of them are probably legendary heroes of "Good" in different ways.
Honestly speaking, it's likely that it's not a coincidence that we were chosen by the Ebon Emperor. Watch this, once we have the ability to manipulate those other energies, it'll turn out our siblings have superpower levels of them.
I feel like pointing out that the thread has been retitled to "magical girl villain quest", so... The destined hero is probably the magical girl. So my bet's on Christina right now, though all three of them are probably legendary heroes of "Good" in different ways.
Well, Sailor Stars had three guys that turned into magical girls, and there was that Twintails anime not too long ago which had the MC transform into a girl
Well, Sailor Stars had three guys that turned into magical girls, and there was that Twintails anime not too long ago which had the MC transform into a girl
