The next morning, Blake decided that the best course of action was to pour fiendberry juice in his eyes.

  Confident he could mend whatever damage he did to himself with River’s ability, he needed to unmake and then reforge his physical senses. That meant improving his eyes, his nose, his hearing, everything that had to do with his ability to perceive the world around him physically—not spiritually.

  He also didn’t know for sure if this was what Ethbin had in mind, but the ring was still silent. Blake went for it. At worst, he’d be down three fiendberries.

  Alright, that wasn’t nearly the worst thing that he could think of happening to him. There was a chance the juice got into his brain and began melting his mind. That would cause a few problems.

  But he was pretty sure that he could keep the poison contained where he wanted by simply not using too much and reforging it quickly. His enhanced flesh, muscles, and bones seemed to act as a barrier to poisons, holding them in one place, and fiendberry poison acted like an acid in that it could get used up.

  Plus, the poison always seemed to go after the area it entered first. If he put it in his eyes, then it melted his eyes before moving on. And if all the poison got used up melting his eyes, he wouldn’t have to worry about it spreading. There was probably some kind of magic explanation, but he told himself that it was because the fiends sucked and their berries were even worse.

  As usual, he had booked an hour in the isolation chambers, and this time, he snuck his syringe in with him. No one seemed to care that he wore clothes now. As he was starting to realize, people only used the isolation chambers with no clothes when they were opening meridians because of the sludge, and he’d just been carrying on the tradition in the higher stages for no reason.

  That had caused him a few seconds of anxiety, until the attendant, a young mortal woman, giggled and said, “This one didn’t mind, Senior Brother…”

  Blake rolled his eyes, but in the moment, he’d felt his worth surge. He couldn’t be too awkward about it.

  When he got inside the chamber, and when he felt certain no one was paying attention, he pulled the syringe out of his pocket and got to work. Instead of stabbing his eyes, he used it as an eyedropper.

  The process was only different from melting and reforming the rest of his organs in that it prevented him from seeing. The temporary blindness and searing pain that accompanied it was enough to stir a primal fear of losing a sense permanently, but it didn’t last long. When he pushed honour through it and rebuilt his eye, a blurry image returned. When he used River’s healing, a full image would return.

  He held off on healing them until the end, because he wasn’t sure what he’d actually need the healing for. If there was something more critical, he needed to save it. Instead, he moved on to his other senses and attacked them in a similar way. Smell, hearing, taste…he’d somewhat hoped that he would reforge his tastebuds after just eating a few berries, but he had to hold the poison in his mouth for much longer if he wanted that.

  He dripped poison in his ears and in his nose, he held it in his mouth.

  But even once he’d finished reforging those senses, about two thirds of the way through his time in the isolation chamber, he knew he hadn’t increased his tier yet. Half-blind, unable to smell or taste, and with a horrible ringing noise in his ear, he barely kept his mind together long enough to realize that he needed to target his nervous system. How else could he reforge his senses without adjusting the pathways that connected his senses to the rest of his body?

  The good news was that fiendberry poison was so toxic that it could destroy quite possibly any part of a human’s body save for the muscles and skin, and it enjoyed spreading through wherever its first injection point was.

  When he injected it into his spine, aiming between vertebrae, and jabbing the syringe deep enough that a deep lance of pain erupted along his entire spine, he knew the process had started. His entire body went rigid and began quivering.

  It was a good thing he’d saved River’s healing, because the moment the poison spread through his nerves, his entire body spasmed. His head smashed the hard ground, and he would’ve blacked out if he hadn’t healed himself right away.

  As the poison slowly melted his nerves and he slowly rebuilt them with Honour in its wake, he lost feeling in his extremities. His limbs didn’t respond to his brain. It was going to take a lot more healing to fix all his nerves. The surface of his skin tingled, and then lost any sense entirely.

  He finished the reforging process as soon as his time was up, and he used another heal immediately. It was enough to restore twitchy control to his legs, which allowed him to push himself to his feet and stagger out of the room, using his hands to steady himself. The attendants stared at him, and they were probably confused at why he seemed so damaged, but he hadn’t restored his eyesight enough to read their expressions properly.

  Then he spent the rest of the day in his room.

  He laid on his bed, slowly fixing the damage he’d done to his senses. It was a good thing the room was dark, because as his eyesight returned to normal…and then more than normal, he was pretty sure he would’ve overstimulated himself and passed out.

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  Finally, something clicked in the back of his mind, and there was a faint ripple of waxy noise from his chest. His rank seal. The air currents shifted around it, playing on his shirt and making it ripple slightly, which his chest felt. A few different hairs compressed, and he felt every one of them.

  As he stared at the ceiling, he picked out each individual splinter on the wood. His eyes kept focussing and focussing, and when he thought he couldn’t pick out any more details, they did. Colours swirled at the edge of his vision, and a massive headache erupted in the front of his mind.

  So much for not overstimulating himself.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to get them to focus on what was actually important, until he realized that he had control. It wasn’t as automatic of a process as before.

  He shut them, centering his mind, and pulled his focus back in. He could still make out so many more details than before, but the headache faded away quickly.

  Next came the sounds. He could hear every voice on his floor of the housing block, every footstep, every creaking floorboard, until he performed the same process of reeling his senses back in.

  Smell was more difficult, mostly because the odour of the sheets, which hadn’t really bothered him before, now told him that he needed to wash the bed. And he’d probably need to take a few more showers. Plus, was some of that still the residual stink of opening his meridians?

  He did his best to ignore it. When he finally escaped his room, his nerve function restored, and his ability to walk unchanged from where it was yesterday, he raced to the meal hall to catch dinner before the day ended entirely.

  Froskur and Iver were just cleaning up when Blake arrived. He first asked, “Iver, how much of a boost does ‘Physical Sense Refining’ usually give?”

  Iver tilted his head, then quickly said, “That’s Junior Brother Iver.”

  “What did you do?” Froskur asked. His eyes drifted down to Blake’s rank badge. “By the fates, senior brother. You’re starting stage six now.”

  Blake scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Sorry. But…”

  “It usually improves a cultivator’s hearing vastly in a small range around them. Maybe five feet. You can extend it farther, but it isn’t perfect,” Iver said. “You might pick up a mouse walking at fifty feet.”

  Blake nodded. He shut his eyes for a moment, pushing his senses to the limit, and all sorts of sounds flooded in from inside and outside the pavilion. Mice, a fox, other burrowing animals. Something was trying to dig under the pavilion. He’d extended the reach of his senses far beyond fifty feet.

  “What about my sight?” Blake asked.

  “I would estimate…well, can you make out the nails in the rafters with your regular eyesight? Because I cannot, and neither can Froskur. A Tempering stage six cultivator could be able to see them with ease.”

  Blake could make out the rust on the nails’ heads.

  “What about you, Senior Brother?” Iver asked. “I assume your enhanced sight is worse than the average Tempering stage six cultivator?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Blake replied. “It’s fine. I just need to live.” He wasn’t about to attract any more attention by telling them that his reforged senses were much better than an average mana cultivator.

  “Eat up,” Froskur said. “And enjoy how intense the flavours are now. Apparently, it’s quite the experience. I’ve heard that Elder Ulfreld passed out the first time he ate food after advancing.”

  Blake laughed a little, not exactly believing them. But just to be safe, he took only a bowl of bland steamed barley.

  After one bite, his mouth erupted with sensation. Bitterness overwhelmed him, making the roof of his mouth sting, and after a few seconds, everything went dark.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Now hit me!” Wind-Eyes snapped. “Break my defenses. Land a strike for once!”

  Blake spun back with his staff, leaning away from a broad swipe from Wind-Eyes’ spear. They’d been sparring all morning to make up for lost time, and all the others in the sect were watching, having finished their duels.

  “Don’t retreat, hit me!” Wind-Eyes hissed. “What makes you think you can survive the wilderness if you’re always running? Don’t wait for your opening—create it.”

  That just sounded like one of the business guru seminars that Mom would listen to before the Integration.

  And it had the desired effect of pissing Blake off.

  He blocked Wind-Eyes’ staff and held his ground, then twisted and heaved his opponent’s spear up. While Wind-Eyes adjusted, Blake sprang forward. He didn’t Augment himself, lest he show the rest of the sect his lightning. Only a few of them knew about the dark lightning, and he’d rather it stayed that way.

  But it didn’t make it any more frustrating that he couldn’t practice integrating his techniques into combat. If he’d just been a little bit faster…

  The bottom of Wind-Eyes’ staff whipped around, moving to intercept Blake. Blake blocked again, angled himself to the side again, and got closer.

  But Wind-Eyes would still win. He expected Blake to use an ordinary attack. He knew every fighting technique Blake knew.

  Blake had to improvise and make something up. He pretended to aim at Wind-Eyes’ head, then diverted his staff’s direction at the last moment and plunged it down to the ground. Once it was planted, he sprang up, kicking Wind-Eyes spear on the haft. It snapped back toward the man, and the haft hit him in the nose.

  “Good,” Wind-Eyes said. “But be careful.”

  He swung a leg out, knocking Blake’s staff out from under him, and kicked him to the side with his enhanced body. Blake rolled across the training pit and tumbled to a halt. Wind-Eyes had been fuelling his body, but he hadn’t been Augmenting himself, either. He had, however, used an echo set.

  Blake wouldn’t have known unless he’d heard the other hunters in the sparring pit talking about how Wind-Eyes had a full three-piece echo set. Something called a ‘Lightbearer’ set that helped boost the impact of his strikes on certain conditions.

  Blake pushed himself to his feet, and Wind-Eyes nodded to him. “A good start, Junior Brother,” he said. “I would feel slightly more confident about sending you into the wilds, now.” Then, after a hesitant pause, he glanced over his shoulder. “But we are not done here. You have caught up with your peers. Now test yourself against them.”