Life in the pavilion returned to normal shockingly quickly after the trading party returned. There were a few funeral rituals for the hunters who died, but in the end, most everyone had been expecting a few casualties.

  Besides, Blake had work to do. He had three months to get ready to beat Heron Silverbeard, a Core Formation cultivator. If Blake didn’t get to work, he was never going to win his duel.

  He could, of course, run away, but that would be abandoning all the progress he’d made so far. He wasn’t going to advance very far without more resources, and for that, he needed a way onto the manaship. This sect had good beginner technique slates, but he was going to need something more. Plus, even if he didn’t need any other advancement resources like elixirs (but he figured he would find something useful, at least), he could get them to craft armour and other equipment.

  His first order of business was to experiment with the ability River’s echo gave to him. In the mornings, during the time he would’ve used to practice the Black Palm, he instead spent his time messing with River’s healing ability.

  The difficult part was triggering it. According to Ethbin, you couldn’t use any echo effects unless your siphon was open—and outside of battle, Blake only had worth to draw on.

  He considered how everyone in the sect perceived him, but that wasn’t enough. Worth wasn’t just about validation.

  There is an objective reality, Ethbin had explained. The Way defines it, and the Great Pillar’s foundations link it to us. That objective reality dictates how they subconsciously perceive you. Even if they hate you, but you have served them, honoured your word, and helped them, then the Way will grant you worth. The Way sees without bias.

  Worth was how Blake felt when someone patted him on the back, looked at him and gave a courteous nod, the way a crowd cheered silently when he defeated Svarikson. There was a deeper connection there than just people seeing him positively. It was knowing he had made an impact on their life. That he had affected the world in a meaningful way.

  In other words, his worth was his ability to change the world around him.

  Once he realized that, it became easier to hold his siphon open and draw Honour through it, but what he needed was to look through the aperture at his own echo.

  River’s socketed echo had attached to his echo’s shoulder. It clung on as a gemstone of blue crystal, like it had been embedded in a sword’s hilt. To trigger its ability cost Honour—it drew Honour away from the rest of his echo, meaning less came through the siphon, and when it triggered, it slowly dimmed.

  The first time Blake experimented with the socketed echo, he kept the ability active as long as he could, until Ethbin called, Stop! Stop! If you draw an echo skill for too long, you’ll destroy the echo. And if you destroy River’s echo…

  “I’ll kill her,” Blake whispered.

  Exactly.

  So there was a slight drawback. In battle, it would dim his own Honour flow, and it would kill River if he pushed it to the limit.

  Next, it was time to see how much it could heal. By now, all of his previous injuries were gone. Clearly, it could knit together muscle and skin.

  He did the only sensible thing and impaled his forearm on a branch.

  The branch pierced straight through, and he wanted nothing more than to cry out in pain. Clenching his teeth, he ripped his arm out. Blood splattered across the ground, and his fingers barely worked.

  Beardless father, why would you do that!? Ethbin exclaimed.

  “Oh come on,” Blake grunted. “You know exactly why I did that.”

  He clamped his eyes shut and triggered River’s echo skill, barely keeping his siphon open through the self-inflicted pain. He ran the ability as long as he could, letting tendrils of healing power race through his body, searching for injuries. It cleared away old illnesses and harmful bacteria lodged in his body.

  And then it found the hole he punctured in his arm and concentrated there. A warmth spread through the limb, knitting the flesh back together. He’d ripped a tendon, but the healing fixed that too.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Halfway through healing the injury, Blake cut it off, or he was going to draw River dry. The blue gem took about ten minutes to restore itself back to its full brightness, at which point Blake triggered the ability again, and healed the injury until it was just a lump of swollen red flesh.

  There wasn’t quite anything like feeling your muscle strands tying themselves together, or the collagen of a tendon regrowing beneath your flesh. The closest thing he could relate it to was licking batteries as a child before the Integration. (The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he’d always been like this.)

  He could practically imagine Ethbin shaking his head when the ring said, Now you know what it does? You don’t need to try that again?

  “It’s perfect healing,” Blake replied. “It doesn’t even leave behind a scar.”

  That’s the benefit of working with an eiknir. There’s a reason they’re sacred.

  “Apparently.”

  Once he felt confident that he knew more about what River’s echo did, he spent his mornings practicing the Black Palm more. There wasn’t enough practice that he could get—at least, that was what he told himself.

  In the afternoons, after his dedicated sparring practice hours, he began working on Muscle Reforging.

  In theory, it was a similar process to Bone Reforging. But this time, he had to move the Honour faster. If he liquified his muscles and failed to rebuild them quickly with Honour, he risked rebuilding them in the wrong formation. Reversing some strands, locking others in opposite positions, knotting up his muscles and ultimately injuring himself. It would take immense effort to fix.

  At least, that was what Ethbin said. Blake had other plans.

  The more he broke down the old muscles, the more venom he fed into his body, the more aligned it would be with his nature—and the stronger it would be. And if he left it for longer, it would melt better. This was the process of Tempering, after all. Since Blake had a powerful healing ability that could sort his muscles out, he could fix them, no matter how messed up they became after reforging.

  There was only the slight issue of convincing everyone else in the sect that it was natural. First, he traded contribution points with Sister Ygfrid—the sect healer—for an ‘injector.’ It was basically a needle, but it could hold dangerous substances in its enchanted glass, and its needle was wider than most.

  To assuage any suspicions of why he needed the injector, he also traded for a minor healing elixir, but he immediately poured it out. He wouldn’t need it anymore.

  In theory, it was possible to rush regular mana tempering in an isolation chamber, so that was what he did. Yeah, it was only possible for the super motivated, and it was guaranteed to cause problems later in life, but by now, stories of Blake’s upcoming duel were circulating around the sect. Everyone would know why he was desperate.

  Of course, he didn’t plan on building a shoddy body, but he’d let them think he was.

  In the evening, he purchased an hour in an isolation chamber with a pair of contribution points, then, when no one was looking, injected the spiker parasite venom into his chest. He’d taken Ethbin’s ring off, so Blake wouldn’t have to hear all the complaints about him using way too much venom.

  The hour passed in agony, but really, what was new? As soon as the venom entered his muscles, it wanted to spread. He didn’t have to guide it, didn’t have to push it. It just ate away at his flesh, turning it into a liquid slurry.

  And preparing for him to imbue it with Honour.

  But he waited, letting the venom do its work, letting it etch away his muscles and weaken them. It took all his focus to sit cross-legged in the center of the room, eyes shut, siphon open, his worth causing a flow of Honour. It was like someone had turned him into a marshmallow and tried to roast him over a fire—and his muscles were now the gooey white insides.

  Then came a warning bell, telling him that his hour was almost up. He flooded the melted muscles in his chest and shoulders with Honour. He passed it through the channels, and the flesh wanted to rebuild. They would’ve been immensely strong, tempered to the absolute limit, if not for the fact that as he was rebuilding them wrong, all the fibres and strands were out of alignment and knotted. Whenever he tried to move, it felt like a colony of ants had set up shop beneath his skin.

  But that wrongness was no match for River’s healing.

  A cooling, repairing sensation flooded through the damaged muscles, aligning the fibres and turning them into solid iron strands, a bundle of cords working in unison.

  He stood up, brushed himself off, left the isolation chamber, and put his clothes back on. A few of the attendants stared at him skeptically, probably thinking they knew what he’d done—rushing his tempering and forming a weaker body. He only said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Then he rushed to his quarters to check on his progress.

  As soon as he put on Ethbin’s ring and wedged a blanket under the door, the man asked, What were you thinking? Why would you— Oh.

  “I have a healing ability, remember?” Blake whispered. “I can fix any permanent damage.”

  While taking full advantage of the melting nature of the venom.

  Blake nodded. “I rationed it out. I should be able to use all six vials to finish the process, and then it should be one of the best bodies I can get, right?”

  We shall see when you finish.

  As Blake tried to fall asleep, he experimented. As usual, the reforging process made his muscles stronger. They were slightly more defined, too, but that could have been because of his training. Most importantly, they were more durable. He tried punching himself in the chest a few more times, this time targeting his pectoral muscles, and with a basic Augmentation technique active.

  The muscles didn’t budge. Where he would’ve had a nasty bruise before, there was nothing. It didn’t even hurt.

  “Alright,” Blake said. “Now we’re making some headway. A few more days of this, and I should have Muscle Reforging down.”