Covered in mud and blood, Blake knelt over the corpse of a shroomclaw he’d killed and searched for its ‘core spore.’

  At least, that was what the bounty slip had called it, had said was the proof of defeat and the treasure worth bringing back. It was probably an ingredient in an elixir or something. To Blake, it was just points.

  He used a tooth of a howler he’d killed yesterday to cut through the shroomclaw’s corpse. (He carried five pelts from the rest of the pack through the arm strap of his backpack. They weren’t properly processed, and if he took too long with the other beasts, they’d begin rotting.)

  He sliced through the shroomclaw’s flesh beneath the mushroom forest growing on it. It had no fur, not anymore, only thick muscles and fungal growths. According to Ethbin, whatever had happened to it wasn’t contagious and only affected badgers, so Blake trusted him on that account.

  Blake kept digging around, peeling away layers of fungal flesh and wincing at the sight of the black blood. Ethbin told him roughly where to look—in the beast’s chest, where the beginnings of their beast core could be found—if they had one.

  After a few minutes, he uncovered a marble-sized sphere. It was pale brown bone, polished smooth, and it carried flecks of shiny dust in it. Even for Blake, it radiated a slight bit of spiritual pressure that he picked up on, like a twinge in the back of his mind. He took the core and tucked it into his pocket.

  That better not be the pocket you put me back in when we return to the pavilion, Ethbin said.

  “You’re a ring,” Blake said.

  It doesn’t mean I want to be covered in shroomclaw guts.

  Blake looked down at his hands. Black blood caked them, and completely covered the Honour ring. “Yeah. Alright, sure, Gramps.”

  I was hoping you’d wash me off in the next pond we came across.

  Blake looked around. The merge-mists surrounded him again, with giant mangrove trees rising on all sides of him. He trekked over to the nearest deep puddle and washed off his hands, making sure he cleaned the Honour ring completely. “Now, let’s find ourselves that last creature. The pistilwalker.”

  He’d picked bounty slips that were all in a similar location—in the ‘Spidertree Thick,’ which the Clearflow villagers had later informed him was the densest patch of the mangrove-like trees he could find when he went asking.

  He wandered the forest for about a day, keeping his eyes out for other cultivators. He stumbled upon a few other hunters who were passing through—and they were all at Body Tempering—but no Green Bears nor any of Svarikson’s men.

  Had he actually gotten away from Svarikson?

  Blake wanted to hope for a moment, but he also had bigger problems. At sundown, he stopped and set up a makeshift mist-rig, then made sure to cycle Honour through his stomach meridian. All throughout the day, he’d been practicing the Lightning Crucible (that was what he shortened it to in his mind—Lightning Crucible was much easier to say). After killing the beasts, he had plenty of Honour to work with.

  When he cycled through his stomach meridian, he staved off the hunger for a little while. He wasn’t strong enough to permanently keep the hunger at bay, but he was strong enough to last a few days without needing food or even feeling hungry.

  Or so Ethbin said. Blake would have to test it out.

  “Alright,” he said as he leaned back against a tree. “What am I doing to advance through the next two stages? Like, what do I actually have to learn? Or is my Honour sea just too small to advance?”

  They should be relatively simple tasks for you, which we’ll try to knock off when you reach the pistilwalker. Now, me telling you directly is going to cost me, but I suppose you can afford a treat. I’ll just have to be silent for a week or two as I recover.

  “Thanks, gramps.”

  Willpower Sharpening: to refine more Honour from your cycling technique, to create more useful Honour, you must think about your willpower. You’ll know it when you feel it. My master taught me to think of my Root Meridian as a grindstone. I’m pushing the Honour against it as I cycle, shaving off the impurities, and at the same time, sharpening my will. But it’s easier to visualize during battle—at least, for the first time you do it.

  “Sounds doable.”

  And Concentration Linking. That one is slightly more difficult. It’s the opposite of how it sounds—and I don’t know what fool named it that.

  “Probably the same type of person who wrote the technique slates.”

  Possibly. The theory is much more difficult for most, and the culmination of the stage, but once you master it, you’ll be more capable than most modern cultivators. Think of it this way: when you’re walking, you don’t want to think about every muscle you’re moving. You simply take a step. The same goes for Honour. You don’t want to think about the individual channels and precise Honour movements in the channels, you want to think about the result—fuel the Muscle Meridian, for example. You’re most of the way there already.

  Ethbin made a sound that reminded Blake of a yawn, though it was slightly tinny. He wasn’t going to have much longer.

  Blake nodded. “I think I can do that. And then…to break into Body Tempering?”

  For you, it will be automatic. With how the mana cultivators have shortened the stages, they need an extra push to advance, and the process is more dramatic, but you won’t need anything of the sort. You’ll just find yourself in Body Tempering.

  Blake nodded. “Thanks, gramps.”

  Ethbin didn’t respond.

  “I guess that’s it,” Blake muttered. Ethbin had gone to sleep.

  He wanted to sleep too, but with no one keeping watch, he didn’t want to risk it. He kept walking through the night.

  When the moons were directly above (he couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there with how bright it was in the mists), a blue glow sprang up behind him.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Blake whirled around, only to find the eiknir following him. “You’re the…same one?”

  It had to be. It looked about the same size, shape, white markings on its back, everything. And it approached him, dipping its head to beg for food. Blake sighed. “I just domesticated one of you guys, didn’t I?”

  It squealed softly, almost like a hawk’s cry mixed with a gurgling river.

  “I don’t have any food for you…oh, let’s see.” He pulled open his backpack and rummaged around. He’d eaten all his ration packs, but there were a few loose groats still in the bottom of the bag, which he gathered up and tossed into the swamp for the eiknir. “You have a name, bud? Or…not bud, ‘cause you’re a girl, but…”

  The eiknir seemed to understand, but after a few seconds, she only tilted her head.

  “Well, let’s see,” Blake muttered. There were plenty of cultivators who were terrible at naming their pets. He’d had to watch a six-and-a-half-foot-tall mana cultivator call his wolf “Browny” once, and he wasn’t going to be anything like that. He had to give the eiknir a proper name.

  “What about River?”

  The eiknir squealed again, then hopped up and down.

  “Alright, I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, Blake, ‘River’ is a good name’.” He set off again, and the eiknir stayed close on his heels.

  Three quarters of the way through the night, he thought he was going to be exhausted, but he just wasn’t. He didn’t even yawn.

  Was that one of the benefits of Honour condensation? As he built up the Honour sea, he could last longer between naps.

  Or he was going to have some nasty sleep debts to pay when he got back to the pavilion. One of the two.

  Even weirder was the apparent lack of lesser monsters. Aside from the pack of howlers he’d targeted, he found nothing else—except a few howler corpses. No snakes, no more shroomclaws, nothing.

  And then at midnight, he found a trail of toppled trees and ripped vines with massive broad footprints carved into the peaty ground. Each had four claw-shaped marks at the tip, and were poised like something that only had two legs. He sensed nothing around, but that wasn’t saying much. He didn’t linger.

  When the sun began rising, he found the pistilwalker. At first, he thought one of the beast’s legs was a tree trunk, but the closer he got, the more insectile it became. The leg had a carapace of bark covered in spines, and it bent like a spider’s leg. Its body was an enormous flower with wilting yellow petals and a tall pistil covered in blinking eyes. Vines reached down from beneath its main body, feeling along the ground. At the moment, they dragged a dead howler, and were ripping its flesh from its body before stuffing it in the beast’s mouth.

  Its mouth was on the bottom of the flower, facing directly downward. A circle of wooden teeth gnashed and tore apart the meat.

  Blake ducked behind the roots of a mangrove, then pulled River along with him. She nuzzled his arm, and he whispered, “Not the time.”

  The way things were looking, they didn’t have much time. The pistilwalker was walking away from the tracks Blake had seen last night. Whatever was out here had to be stronger than the pistilwalker, and it was probably stronger than the spiker, too. He’d bet that was what killed it.

  But he had to focus on one problem at a time. First, the pistilwalker.

  Blake peered out of cover. Though he didn’t have Ethbin to tell him, he could guess how strong the beast was. That howler, if it was anything like the others, had to be around the middle of mana condensation. That meant the pistilwalker was probably somewhere around the peak of Body Tempering, just judging by how effortless its destruction of the howler was.

  He grabbed River’s hoofs and pressed them into the mud, then said, “Stay here, alright? You’ll be safe here.”

  She made a soft trickling noise. Blake took it as agreement.

  He tightened his grip on the staff. There was no sense waiting any longer. He’d better attack while the beast was still trying to eat the dead howler.

  Charging out of cover, he activated his Augmentation technique, drawing on the dark-lightning-aspect Honour.

  It didn’t make the augmentation technique any different. He’d need a specialized technique for that, to actually use the aspect. But his open meridians conducted the Honour effortlessly, and when he slammed his staff into the beast’s leg, the bark cracked under the impact. He used the sideways swipe Wind-Eyes had taught them.

  The pistilwalker didn’t turn. Blake couldn’t tell which way was forward—for it, everything was forward. It had eyes on all sides. But it dropped the howler corpse, and vines shot toward him. Their tips coiled, trying to snag his limbs.

  Blake batted the vines out of the air, relying on the extra speed his Augmentation technique afforded him, but he was running out of aspected Honour. More flowed in through his siphon, surely because of bravery and loyalty, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with how fast he was consuming it, and it wasn’t aspected.

  He used the Lightning Crucible, drawing more Honour from his Echo and tainting it with dark lightning, before deploying it back into his limbs as a basic Augmentation technique. He took Ethbin’s advice, imagining he was pushing against his Root Meridian.

  Sweat poured down his forehead as he swatted vines away and charged back toward his enemy. One struck him in the chest, flinging him back into the inside of the beast’s leg. Spines and barbs tore his back, but he barely registered the pain. None of the injuries were deep enough to deal lasting damage.

  He was thinking too much. He needed to just Augment himself, to plan the blow and deliver it, to—

  The pistilwalker moved, kicking over the tree he’d told River to hide behind. The only reason she was here was him, and probably just because she wanted to mooch more food off him. If he let her die because of him…

  No. Not because of him. Because of this wild, horrible monster.

  He looked up at the swirling maw above his head, then let the vines take hold of him. If he let it bring him closer, he could strike at something slightly more vulnerable.

  Holding his staff tight, he let a cold rage infuse his limbs. It was trying to hurt an innocent eiknir, which it wouldn’t get any sustenance from, and that wasn’t right. Dishourable. It made his spine tingle, and an orange glow lit the bottom of the pistilwalker—probably from his eyes.

  When it drew him close to its mouth, trying to bite him, he wrenched himself to the side, then jabbed his staff into the chinks between its leg’s carapace plates. He swung off the bar and planted a palm art directly on the side of the beast’s main body.

  There was no time to think. He only knew that he wanted to channel the dark lightning.

  Black lightning pulsed out of his hand, striking with immense force and rending the beast’s guts. Its outer shells cracked, and frost accumulated on their surface.

  But one hit wasn’t going to be enough. It was too basic.

  He struck again. His technique flared, activating with immense force. More cracks, more squelching liquid within the beast.

  Again. Again. He hit it until it collapsed, until its vines stopped moving, and until its central eye stalk burst. At one point, it lifted its leg to try swatting him off, but it couldn’t reach. The shifting carapace, however, shattered his staff into a puff of wooden shards.

  When the pistilwalker finally collapsed, he wasn’t sure how long he laid in the mud below, slightly dazed. Finally River nudged his shoulder with her nose, and he sat up.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  The eiknir trilled softly.

  “Cool. Don’t know what that means, but…” He glanced back at the heaping corpse of the pistilwalker. “It’s dead, and I need those petals. And—”

  The eiknir nudged his chest with its antler.

  The rank seal on his shirt had changed. It shifted, turning from a set of waves to a single star.

  He’d made it to Body Tempering.

  The threat of protecting River had done it. He’d stopped thinking, and just acted, and with how he’d struck again and again, without worrying about the individual movements? He was starting to actually get caught up to where he should be for his age.

  But now he had to get back to the pavilion before whatever else was out there in the mists found him.