Dario pulled on the reins to get his ox to slow down. Well, he thought of it as an ox, because it looked kind of similar, but it had longer, segmented legs which were strangely bendy, allowing it to easily cross even rocky or mountainous terrain. Courtesy of the Houjo clan, the animal carried him out of Veinora and to his destination in just a few hours, a trip which would have otherwise taken him most of a day.

  This time, he did get a map, along with some descriptions of where to start looking for the plants he was supposed to gather. The Fogbreaker Boglands covered a large area where the ground rose in a series of cascading plateaus. For over an hour, his ox had been carrying him up a slope that turned into a steep climb near the end, and now he was looking down at a landscape that was a bit like a series of giant stairs, if you added the chaos that wild nature brought. Each ‘step’ formed a large plateau that stretched far into the distance in one direction, while forming a rounded corner to his right. The rounded part of the layered plateaus reminded him of a stadium, with half a dozen levels leading down to a large, fog-covered basin.

  Aura mists of various colors covered many of the plateaus, flowing gently downward like waterfalls made of smoke. Since this area was so rich in aura of different kinds, it was fertile ground for all kinds of plants to breed. Each plateau was covered in a mix of trees and tall ferns, even some giant mushrooms. It would have been a feast for the eyes, except for one thing.

  “Way too fucking bright,” Dario grumbled as he looked out over the landscape, adjusting his glasses and holding a hand to his eyes. In the wilds of the Basement, there had been many mundane plants and beasts, with the occasional Reijuu that were rich in Ki, but here, with those mists feeding everything, every living thing seemed to carry a huge amount of Ki, which glowed in his vision.

  Up here, that meant everything glowed. The glasses helped, but still he had to adjust the Ki in his eyes down to a trickle so that he could actually see where he was going.

  His current position on the outer edge of these descending plateaus gave him an excellent view of everything below. Behind him, Veinora was visible only as a splotch beside the towering pillar. Since the Ki here was blinding, he was left to use his old scope to check out the plateaus below. The foliage on the first few was too thick to see through, though on some of the lower ones it seemed to thin out, revealing strange rock formations between mists of aura.

  He put the scope down as he tied the ox to a tree where it could graze, but then he sniffed the air, turning back to see a bit of smoke rising from the grass. Squatting down for a closer look, he grunted as he noticed that the scope seemed to be somehow bundling the light into a more focused beam. Apparently, even without concentrating the aspect of heat, this beam was hot enough to make the grass blacken and smoke. That was a little trick that might come in handy, but it seemed like it’d only work in direct light, so it wouldn’t help on these plateaus.

  So he set off into the jungle, gaping at the many varieties of plants. Hana had helped him pick out the most common and easy to harvest plants on his list so that he knew what to look for, but anything that looked cool was up for grabs.

  “This could come in handy,” he muttered to himself as he tested a liana that hung down from a giant tree. It managed to hold his weight, and when he channeled some plant Ki into it, it grew a bit longer. He cut off a piece and put it in his pouch, figuring that there always came a time when one needed rope.

  There were flowers in all shapes and sizes, tall ferns with long, wet thorns, huge trees with giant nuts hanging from their branches. He saw a hundred different varieties of plants in the first ten minutes of walking. Clearly, there was huge potential here if he got serious with his splicing experiments again, but the variety was overwhelming.

  He poked at a thick white bulb which promptly opened and spat out a cloud of spores, so he ran. When he grabbed for his tablet to ask Hana what those spores might do, a rustle of leaves had him reaching for his stave, using his plant Ki to shape it into a bow.

  The beast was about the size of a wolf, but it looked more like a mouse, sniffing the bushes as it hopped forward on two huge, thickly muscled hind legs. He lowered his bow and turned to move on, but then it sniffed the air and let out a growl. He turned back and its ears twitched, before its massive legs launched it in his direction.

  He dodged, twisting around as it flew past, unable to change its direction in the air. By the time it landed and turned again, he had an arrow drawn, which went straight through its eye and thunked into the back of its skull.

  “Tenjin’s balls, even the mice are brawny here.”

  It was only because he was on his guard now that he noticed a build-up of white and blue Ki. With a mute puff, a spike was launched at his face. With light Ki moving through his muscles, his hand snapped out on reflex, yanking the spike right out of the air. He looked at it for a moment, amazed by what he’d done, before he tossed it aside and returned fire.

  But before he could even confirm that he’d hit whatever had shot at him, more growls sounded from the bush, and four of the oversized, thick-legged mice came speeding out, growling and yelping as they raced for him, tilting their heads back to show incisors as long as daggers.

  They crossed the distance in a blink, but even more light Ki was coursing through his seams now. His arm flashed gold and the bowstring twanged like the string of a lute, four arrows streaking through the air in quick succession.

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  Three beasts collapsed instantly, the last one taking a shaft in the throat instead of the eye, sliding to a stop in front of him as it gurgled, choking in blood. He quickly put it out of its misery and made sure he was blended into the surroundings as he snuck over to where his first arrow would have landed. It was stuck in a tree trunk, yellow sap leaking down from where it pierced a long, brown bulb.

  He poked at it for a bit, finding more of the spikes lodged inside, then decided to pick some of its spores for later. It could be a useful addition to his arsenal, but he’d first have to find out what triggered it, as otherwise it would be as likely to shoot him as his enemies.

  After that encounter, he moved more cautiously, blending himself in with the surroundings and careful not to make any noise. After an hour of looking, he found only a single flower before coming up to the edge of the first plateau, so he decided to move down to the next one. Apparently, the rarest plants were found lower down.

  He climbed down a series of rocks embedded in the slope, blue aura flowing down between them. He managed to avoid the Reijuu here thanks to his stealth, but he spotted a few, bigger and more dangerous looking than the mice of the plateau above. Collecting the plants he needed took a few more hours, but as he was about to head back, the sound of fighting drew him to the edge of the second plateau.

  A cultivator sat cross-legged in the midst of two Reijuu corpses, freshly torn apart. Dario gaped as the young man took in some of the aura that was wafting from the corpses, his muscles seeming to swell, before he walked over to a giant boulder and began to lift it up. He didn’t think the guy was going to make it, but then his muscles bulged and he lifted the whole thing up over his head with a roar before throwing it back down.

  He frowned, bringing a bit more Ki to his eyes for a closer look, noticing thick auras in different hues of red hanging around the man.

  The young man sniffed the air, scanning the surroundings before looking up in his direction.

  “Who’s there?” he called out. Dario hesitated before answering, sinking into that mental focus he needed to be able to see emotions. From the colors he saw swirling around his chest, the man was wary, but not angry or murderous.

  So he stopped the light Ki that was making him invisible, stepping forward and waving at the man. “Hi there! Don’t worry, I’m friendly! I wasn’t trying to spy on you, just heard the sound of battle and came to investigate.”

  The young man grinned up at him, his muscles rippling as he dusted off his hands. “Oh, I wasn’t worried at all.” He took a few steps closer, squinting up at Dario. “You’re sneaking around the Boglands, huh? I should warn you, this place gets more dangerous the lower you go. Looking for something in particular?”

  “Just out gathering some herbs and plants,” he said, climbing down the rocky wall so that he could get a better look. “Name’s Dario by the way, nice to meet you.”

  The man smiled and bowed. “Karada, of the Taira clan. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Now that he was standing closer, carefully channeling a bit more light Ki through his eyes, he could see Ki flowing through the man that he found hard to place, swirls of yellowish white, pink and red. He’d been taking in the aura from a corpse, hadn’t he?

  “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but how are you doing that thing with the muscles?”

  “Oh, you’ve never heard of us?” Karada smiled, flexing a bicep which swelled to almost thrice its previous size. “The Taira clan are body cultivators. Where others look outside for ways to strengthen themselves, we believe you got all the aspects you need right here,” he said, tapping his chest. “Hardness from the bones, toughness from the skin and tendons, strength from the muscles. Though we do need to bring in some aura from outside the body for cultivation, same as everyone else.”

  Dario looked around the beast corpses, one of them a mix between a huge bear and a cat. “So… You can take in the aura from the muscles and bones, and then… what, grow your own?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Wait, but then can you, like, suddenly pop into Coral? If you adjust the muscles to meet those numbers. What was it, fifty percent or so?”

  “Oh, the thing about fifty-two percent muscle mass? It’s a helpful guideline, but it only works if you reach those numbers while training in a certain way, using Ki to exceed your limits. The muscles by themselves are not enough, see?”

  Pink and scarlet Ki surged through his limbs and his muscles rippled underneath his skin, his body shifting until it settled into a leaner shape. He was wearing a short-sleeved tunic, so Dario could only see the muscles of his arm, but those looked more outlined than before, the veins clearly visible.

  “This should be about fifty-two percent, though honestly, it’s hard to get it exactly right,” Karada said, raising his arms wide while flashing a grin. “And yet, here I am, still a lowly Amber.”

  “Wow. So it’s not actually just the muscles that matter? But what then? Something to do with the Ki?”

  Before Karada could answer, the both of them turned at a sudden noise, spotting a huge lizard that was darting toward them. Dario cursed, drawing an arrow, but Karada lifted a hand. “I’ve got this.”

  His leg muscles swelled until his pants tore and then he exploded forward, bounding at the lizard. He ducked underneath a glob of acid, the fern it landed on sizzling and smoking, before his arm grew to twice the size. A devastating haymaker from that massive arm snapped the lizard’s head around and Karada leapt onto the dazed Reijuu's neck. Ki surged and muscles strained as he locked two hands under its throat and heaved up, pulling the Reijuu’s muzzle up to the sky and further still, bending it backwards until, with a loud crack, the beast went completely still.

  Karada didn’t waste any time, using a sleek blade to make a few large cuts on the beast's back, then sitting cross-legged on top of its body and beginning to take in the aura.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to make use of this. Wouldn’t want anything to go to waste here. I come here often, so maybe I’ll see you around.”

  Dario nodded, then found a path back up, hearing distant roaring and the crash of a boulder behind him as he made his way back to his ox.

  That had been a touch confusing, but it had also given him fresh hope. It was like Nika had mentioned; Ki was involved in the training process somehow, and now he’d just have to find out how, exactly. Wherever there was Ki, there should be room for shenanigans, as long as you knew how to control it well.

  Like a meat pie left to cool by the window, the sweet smell of a shortcut was in the air, and he intended to follow that trail until he could enjoy a sneaky dinner.