The lightstalker’s echo turned, about to bound away and disappear into the merge mists, where eventually, it would fade away into nothing.

  The echo was about the same size as the lightstalker, and it was made of misty black and gray streaks, with two jagged blazes where its eyes had once been. The rest of its body quivered, like every second, something was repainting it onto the world. It didn’t have any depth, and whenever Blake shifted his position, the echo didn’t seem to gain another dimension.

  Before it could escape, Blake concentrated his killing intent again. A wave of pressure swelled out from him, flattening the weeds in the cracked road ahead of him, before crashing on the lightstalker. A weight bore down on it, and it froze entirely.

  “Alright,” Blake said. “I froze it. Ethbin, what next?”

  Approach it, Ethbin instructed. And make sure your siphon is open. A word of warning: telling you how to do this is going to sap all my energy, and I will be unable to help you for a week. But I don’t see any alternative.

  “Neither do I,” Blake replied. “And I want this echo.”

  He stepped toward it, arm out.

  Concentrate, Ethbin said. You must draw the echo inside yourself. This would be easier if you had regular mana gathering techniques or a Harvesting technique, but it isn’t impossible. The echo is made of pure spiritual matter. Keep your siphon open, focus on your own echo, and run your basic cycling loop in reverse.

  “Basic, or—”

  The Lightning Crucible.

  Blake kept the echo frozen in place with what felt like an intense glare, but he knew it was more than that.

  Be fast. The moment your hand pierces it, it’ll break free of your pressure and try to escape.

  Blake followed all of Ethbin’s instructions, first running his cycling loop in reverse, then he plunged his hand deep into the echo’s side.

  It flickered, then turned to a stream of mist and disappeared into his channels. It followed the Lightning Crucible’s route until it reached his siphon. The lightstalker’s echo passed through and absorbed into his own echo. A gem of orange crystal formed on his echo’s shoulder, but it was solid and impossible to interact with. On its own, it didn’t have an ability—it would need a set of echoes to do anything for him.

  This Galaxy Serpent set better be worth it.

  He lowered his arms and spun in a circle, making sure there was nothing else around to attack him, and no remnant of the echo that he just hadn’t properly absorbed. Nothing.

  “Ethbin, I think it worked,” he replied.

  There was no response.

  “Asleep already, huh?” Blake pulled the ring off his finger and put it back in his pocket, then got to work processing the physical corpse of the lightstalker. Its horns and pelt were both valuable, and being a fiend, it had something else he needed.

  But first, he gathered its one remaining horn. That would award him bonus contribution points (he didn’t need it to complete the mission) but the pelt was where the real value was. He carefully cut it off, using the horn to scrape, then bundled it up and wedged it between his backpack and his back.

  It wasn’t a perfect harvesting job, but it did the trick. And more importantly, he needed the fiend’s bile and stomach acid.

  Skin Hardening was a similar process to the other two Tempering stages, especially for modern mana cultivators. But for Blake’s form of destructive Tempering, he would only need to attack the surface of his body. It was fast.

  Any sort of acid would do, but one that came from a fiend was best. After all, he himself was part-fiend.

  Using his enhanced muscles, he dug a channel in the concrete beside the lightstalker’s corpse, then stomped out a small ditch large enough to fit his body. Finally, using the lightstalker’s horn, he cut open the fiend’s stomach. Acid burbled out into the channel he dug, then filled the ditch. He found its liver next and harvested its bile. The orange slurry was cold to the touch, like he’d dipped his hand in ice-water. As quickly as he could, he dumped it into the bath of stomach acid and stirred until he had an icy ditch full of orange-yellow liquid.

  If it hadn’t been cold, it probably would’ve smelled worse. As it was, the mixture made him shudder just looking at it. It bubbled and let off an icy steam, and he was pretty sure that meant it had high Vir essence.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Before he could second-guess himself any more, he pulled off his clothes and armour and set it at the foot of the bath, then shut his eyes, clamped his lips shut, and lowered himself in.

  If Muscle Reforging had made his insides gooey like a marshmallow over a fire, this was akin to stripping off any crispy golden coating with acid. He probably screamed, but his head was under water—or under acid.

  As usual, the rest of the world faded, replaced only with intense concentration and the need to repair his flesh.

  He pushed out with Honour, keeping the vital energy in his Skin Meridian, re-organizing the skin material as the acid broke it down, and reforging it stronger. If he was too slow or lost too much flesh, he used River’s healing ability and rebuilt the flesh, only to reforge it with acid a moment later.

  Once the pain stopped and there was nothing more to reforge across his whole body, he sat up. The acid had done its job, and it hadn’t lost any of its potency, but it couldn’t damage Blake’s reforged flesh. He crawled out of the bath, choking and sputtering, then ran to the nearest puddle to clean himself off. He washed away the acid in a pond of slightly cleaner bog water, before running back to his equipment and putting everything back on.

  As soon as his rank seal came in contact with him, it shifted, displaying four stars. Tempering four.

  That put him just higher than the cultivator who’d hassled him for water that evening. The evening that started this all. For a few minutes, Blake sat still, covered entirely in swampy water, body still twitching from surviving an acid bath.

  But he couldn’t stay still for long. He hoisted his equipment up and walked back to the edge of the roundabout, then sat down next to the bog and leaned over. There wasn’t much light, but there was enough to see his reflection.

  A faint pattern of fiend scales had appeared in the center of his forehead. A diamond of black scales. He reached up and touched them, then scratched at them. None of it itched, but…why did it have to be there at all?

  He kicked his reflection.

  Turning away from the rippling water, he crossed his arms. Of course, reforging himself with fiend and fiend-adjacent materials was destined to bring out the faint fiend-y nature of his own body. But he couldn’t just not advance through Body Tempering, and he wasn’t going to make a weaker body. But was this as far as it would go? Or would he keep turning into a fiend?

  He scowled. There had to be something he could do. Could he make himself human again? Or reverse some of those processes?

  That was a question—or a problem—for Ethbin. For now, he just had to worry about getting back to the pavilion in one piece. He’d completed his hunting missions, but now, he would need some other catalyst to speed up and enhance his internal Tempering. The best he could think of was fiendberries.

  They were rare, and he’d only seen them a few occasions. Plants could merge with humans and other creatures, but most times, the human was the major partner. Most plant- and human-blends had died since the Integration, but sometimes, the plant became the majority of the blend.

  And when an Earth plant blended with a fiend, they created highly poisonous fiendberries, capable of turning a human’s organs to a slurry with a single bite.

  Blake saw no other way of reforging his organs. Ethbin might tell him not to do it, but Ethbin wasn’t here right now.

  So, instead of taking a direct route back to the pavilion, he wound through the mists, exploring the abandoned, mist-covered suburbs. Some houses had gardens before the Integration, and while most of the old plants had died, there were some that survived in the gloom of the mists. He stopped at every bush he could find.

  He’d only seen fiendberries a few times before, and always off their bushes. But he knew they grew on bushes.

  When the mists began growing dark, the water splashed behind him, and he whirled around—only to find River galloping through the bog behind him.

  “What is Blake looking for?” she asked.

  He chuckled. “How did you know I was looking for something?”

  “Because he was looking.”

  Blake shrugged. “Okay, fair enough. But what are you doing? It’s safe now, the lightstalker is dead.”

  “Yes! Blake destroyed it.” She bounded in a circle around his legs, then stopped in front of him. “What is Blake looking for?”

  “Fiendberries.”

  “Fiend…what are those?”

  Blake grimaced. “Small, black berries. Usually, they’ve Blended with raspberries or something similar.” He pointed to his forehead. “They should have scales and seeds that look like these.”

  “I will go look.”

  “Wait, River, you—”

  But she was already bounding off, and after a few seconds she disappeared into the mists.

  Blake sighed and hung his head, but he kept walking. After another hour, he found a rooftop to make camp on, and he settled down, preparing himself dinner and setting up a small water harvesting rig.

  As soon as he was about to zip up his backpack, a watery muzzle nudged his back, and he flinched to his feet. River appeared behind him. “Food?” she asked.

  “You mooch,” Blake muttered. “But yeah, come here.”

  “I trade.”

  “You—” Blake tilted his head. Half immersed in her translucent body was a clump of black raspberries with scales on their sides. “You actually found some?”

  “My nose is strong,” River proclaimed proudly.

  They looked intact, but Blake wasn’t sure how to get them out. “You’re…still alive. Even after eating them?”

  “I did not eat them. I carried them.” River began coughing and gagging, and a moment later, she coughed up a heap of ten berries. Blake’s foot shot out to stop them from rolling down the side of the roof. Finally, she said, “Trade? Food? I can be helpful now!”

  Blake laughed. “Yeah, you’re not a mooch anymore. You earned this.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a massive handful of rice, then placed it on the peak of the roof. “There you go. We’ll rest up for tonight, then tomorrow, we should be heading back to the pavilion.”