Blake returned to his room in the inn, book in-hand, and cleaned himself up. There was a small washroom near the inn’s door, which had a private toilet and a shower that they didn’t have to pay for.

  Or, more appropriately, the sect had already paid for it when they booked the rooms, and the sect had used silver which the sect members had earned throughout the year. So technically, they were still paying for it.

  The water was warmer than he was used to, and it stung his scrapes when he washed them out, but it was better than letting them get infected. When he was finished, he fashioned a few new bandages out of a complimentary towel (by the time staff noticed he’d destroyed it, he'd be long gone) and inspected himself in front of the mirror.

  He’d earned a few more scars, that much was certain. But the black fiend-scales were still part of him, forming unbroken patterns around his chest. His muscles were getting more defined, but so did his fiend scales. It was hard to quantify. They weren’t getting larger, nor did they cover a larger area, but they did seem darker and slightly more rigid. Like they were a more important component of his body.

  He quickly averted his gaze, then tugged his tunic back on and walked out into the main room again. The others were waking up by now, and Blake had work to do. He didn’t have another shift at the Trade for a few hours, so he could begin working on Body Tempering. He sat down on the couch-bed and pulled out the book Ulfreld gave him.

  Body Tempering for Mana Cultivators, read the words on the cover—thankfully, it had been translated into English.

  Blake began flipping through. He’d gotten good at identifying the important parts of cultivators' writings and the unimportant parts, and skipping to the important parts. Eventually, he arrived at a small chart, which revealed the ‘seven’ stages of Tempering:

  With what Blake knew, there were surely two other hidden or forgotten stages. Hell, these might not have even been the correct ones for Honour. For a moment, he stared at it, feeling slightly lost, until a voice rang out in the back of his mind.

  Blake, why in the name of the Beardless Father are you reading that slop? You should know better than to trust a Nord’s teachings, and— Oh. Aside from there only being seven stages present, those are the correct stages.

  “Ethbin!” Blake almost shouted, but he kept it to a soft whisper. The other boys didn’t hear; they were too busy putting on their clothes and ruffling the sheets of their beds as they prepared for their shift.

  Now put me on, so I stop wasting energy talking to you.

  Blake slipped the Honour Ring back onto his finger, then shot a pointed thought at Ethbin: I’ll talk in a moment, once these guys leave.

  It was barely thirty more seconds before the other three boys headed out and left for their shift. Once Konuth shut the door and his footsteps receded, Blake let out a breath and said, “Alright, they’re gone. Ethbin, where were you?”

  Sleeping.

  “I didn’t think it would be that long.”

  Apparently, you are not very well educated in the ways of cultivators, and the importance of the information I fed you was much higher than I anticipated. It took longer than I thought it would to recover.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Blake chuckled. “Well, I’ll try not to drain you too quickly. But you’re telling me this chart is accurate?”

  For the first seven stages, yes.

  “What are the last two?”

  All in due time. Ethbin paused. The problem is that Body Tempering usually takes much longer than Condensation for most people. It is less focused on the arcane energy and instead building yourself a body that can withstand the intensity of cultivation’s higher levels. Your body is the medium through which mana or Honour or qi move.

  “Sure, but what do I do?” Blake asked. “How do I…refine my bones?”

  That is the tricky bit. You keep reading that book, and it will tell you to simply liquify your bone marrow with raw mana from the bone meridian, then rebuild it, slowly reforging your bones over weeks, months, and sometimes even years, depending on how quickly you can acquire mana.

  “I take it that’s not the solution you’re going for?”

  Huscarls had different types of bodies. Not every one was the same. In life, I myself had a Diamond Helm body, which I crafted over a few years by stealing the Echoes of diamondspike scorpions and flooding my body with their enhanced venoms. But I don’t think you will take nearly as long as that.

  “So…all mana cultivators are mostly the same,” Blake muttered. He flipped through the book a little longer, and most of what he read seemed to confirm it.

  No, they simply forgot that they were allowed to be different from each other. But surely, some remember the old ways. When I was alive, the Nords were often more adventurous than the Umber-Kin when it came to Body Tempering.

  “Do you have any recommendations?” Blake asked.

  Do you want to put me asleep for a year?

  “Point taken,” Blake replied. “I can’t wait that long.”

  I must guide you to the right solution, as usual. So let me tell you this: your goal is to reforge your bones with Honour, allowing them to resonate better with the energy, and in the process become more durable. That means you need to make malleable what is already there. Ideally, what you use to make your bones temporarily malleable is something that aligns with what you already are.

  “Aligns with what I am?”

  If you were a massive, bulky tank of a man, I would tell you to seek out a Leviathan Turtle’s shell extract. If you were a lithe assassin, I would tell you to seek out a shader-fly’s proboscis.

  Blake nodded. “So I need something. Something physical to literally melt my bones. Got it. Uh…I guess finding it will be the real problem.”

  It is an excellent thing you are in a market city, with pelts of your own to spare and contribution chits to exchange, isn’t it?

  A few minutes later, Blake snuck out of the inn, avoiding the Hunter’s Sect hallway guards (it was easy enough when he deactivated his elixir and dropped out of their senses), then dipped out a back door. If Svarikson was truly hunting him, people would be watching the entrance, and they’d probably follow him. The back alley was safer.

  He kept to the side streets as he navigated the city. The later the day grew, the more market stalls popped up everywhere. Most outside the main plaza had no sect affiliation, and the fees the Green Bears made them pay were insane, but they were cheaper the farther from the main plaza he explored.

  Finding a vendor willing to pay for his pelts and trade some contribution points was slightly more difficult. Most looked at him, eyes drifting to his horns, and told him to scram, or better yet, offered him half of the hacksilver that he’d otherwise get, hoping he was desperate enough to take the scam. He didn’t.

  When he reached a ring road near Mergewatch’s palisade wall, he found a Blended vendor who was willing to give him a fair trade for his howler pelts and a few of his contribution points. After a short negotiation, Blake ended up with nearly a month’s pay of hacksilver—at least, a month’s pay if he had been back in the city, harvesting water.

  He thanked the man, then continued exploring the outer ring market stalls, looking for anything like what Ethbin had described.

  As he walked, he whispered, “Ethbin, is it truly going to take me months to get through a single stage of Tempering? I mean, some people take a lot longer to get through Condensation, but I did it in weeks.”

  It depends on how quickly you can find the right catalyst to forge your body, and on how willing you are to withstand the discomfort. Some people lose the will to keep advancing through Tempering, and combine that with the inability to find mana, they stall. They come to terms with their place in the world. After a short pause, he added, You can blame the world for your inability, and yes, it holds some water. Life is easier for some people than others. But if you want something enough, you will find a way to make it happen. No matter what that means.

  When Blake reached the opposite side of Mergewatch, when he’d circled half the ring road, he arrived at a stall selling rare fiend extracts. He spent a few minutes nearby, assessing what he was about to do, before he decided on a way forward.

  He wasn’t a brawling tank, but he wasn’t exactly a nimble assassin, either. He was a knight. He had to be maneuverable. He had to be a balanced, middle-of-the-road warrior. And no matter how much he wanted to deny it, to look for another solution, he knew that using fiend by-products was likely going to be the best for his future.

  But on the Fates, he didn’t want to make himself more like a fiend. It was already bad enough. Injecting some kind of fiend-extract into himself? He couldn’t think of anything he wanted less.

  If it was the only way to find the strength he needed, though…maybe he could push through. He had to.

  After a short deliberation, he approached the stall and told the merchant—a regular human at Body Tempering three—that he was looking to buy a bottle of concentrated fiendsmoke. The merchant stared at him for a few seconds before nodding and saying, “One pound of hacksilver.” He tapped a pay-scale with a one-pound weight on it, and Blake placed silver chunks on the counterbalance until the scales went flat.

  “Very well,” the man said, then passed Blake a bottle. He narrowed his eyes and added, “That’s highly corrosive."

  “I’m aware,” Blake replied. “I’ll be careful.”

  “If someone in the city has died to fiendsmoke in the next few days, I’ll know exactly who to blame.”

  “I appreciate the concern,” Blake replied, rolling his eyes. “Have a nice day.”

  After that, he marched back to his room in the inn, excited to start liquifying his bones.