Blake’s eyes widened and his stomach dropped. Unconcerned about how the thorns were ripping his clothes and slicing his skin, he rolled to the side, and just in time. The cultivator threw one of his axes.

  The man imbued its head with mana. Turquoise light traced the cracks in the wood and illuminated the chips in the axehead. As it flew, tumbling handle-over-head through the air, it cracked. One second, it was just leaving the cultivator’s hand, and the next, it was carving a deep channel through the mud and bushes, moving faster than a bullet.

  The thornbush where Blake had been hiding was reduced to an explosion of twigs. Some scraped Blake’s face, and one embedded itself in his shoulder. The axe raced off into the distance with a thunderous roar, cleaving a channel in the water.

  Hissing in mild pain, Blake jumped to his feet and hoisted his staff. “What the hell was that?”

  A Smite technique, Ethbin said. Channelled through a weapon. Force-aspect, I’d say, since it was a bladed weapon.

  “Fiend-blend!” the cultivator sneered. “Your scent betrays you.”

  Blake glanced side-to-side. “Uh, hi. Nice to meet you. I was just passing through, and I—”

  “A fiend-blend in a thrall’s attire,” the cultivator droned, “with no rank seal, no weapon, somehow living in the wilds…when I can’t smell a single drop of mana on him. He wouldn’t happen to be the boy Svarikson’s looking for, would you?” He tossed his remaining axe back and forth between his hands, as if testing its weight. “He courts death by looking at me, and in his manner of speaking. Perhaps I should put him out of his misery?”

  “Yeah…about that.” Blake shrugged. He was tired of playing their games. “Look, if you go on your way, I’ll go on my way. I’m sure you’re very busy, and probably need to get your arm looked at by a healer or something, and I’m—”

  The cultivator roared, then charged. Blake probably looked like easy pickings.

  But this was a mana cultivator. He wouldn’t have access to an Augmentation technique yet. He charged slightly faster than a mortal human, strengthened only by the mana sea around his siphon, and swung his axe. Blake jumped back and landed steadily on a pile of peat. It shuddered under his feet, but he stayed upright.

  “Okay, then,” Blake said. “That’s how it’s going to be?”

  It wasn’t very nice to attack people you just met, who wanted nothing more than to leave you alone, and especially people much weaker than you. For that alone, Honour surged through his siphon.

  He may have been looking for you, Ethbin said. But he still wouldn’t act like this in a city. Not if there were others watching.

  “I don’t think you’ve been to a city in a while,” Blake said, springing back and grabbing onto a tree branch. He hoisted himself up above the cultivator’s axe-swipe. The axehead flew beneath his feet and bit into the trunk. While the man wrenched it out, Blake activated his basic Augmentation technique and kicked the cultivator in the shoulder with both feet, sending him stumbling back.

  “Because…” Blake continued, jumping down, “they act like this in the city, too.”

  Then you need to get strong enough that they won’t dare pester you.

  “Working on it.”

  As usual, Blake concentrated on his sea-forming technique. He couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste, not when he had more Honour than ever flowing through his siphon.

  “Augmentation? How…?” The cultivator’s eyes widened, but he wrenched his face under control a moment later. Raising his axe, he feigned a charge in one direction, then pummelled Blake from the other direction.

  Strike after strike bit into Blake’s staff. The rebar was thin, and each strike bent it slightly out of shape. Sparks flew from the impact point. The old metal wasn’t anywhere near as strong as a cultivator’s axe, and the cultivator must’ve actually had combat training. His blows were precise and measured.

  After the fifth hit, Blake’s staff had nearly snapped in half. He directed his Augmentation technique to his legs, launching himself to the side, but the cultivator anticipated it. He swiped back in the other direction, and his axe smashed into the top of Blake’s shoulder.

  Blake tumbled to the side instead of letting himself be driven to the ground. If he resisted, the injury would’ve been much worse. As it was, the axehead bit a finger’s width into his flesh, tearing muscle, and probably cracking bone with how much it hurt. Blake clenched his teeth. His eyes watered, but he pushed himself up.

  The cultivator was charging in for a killing blow, axe raised. Blake rolled over, then thrust his length of rebar up desperately. The mana cultivator was many stages higher than him. How could he hope to beat him?

  Because I need to live, he told himself. I’m going to lose my first real fight with a cultivator?

  No.

  At the last second, Blake pulled his staff back, holding it like a quarterstaff. He ignored the blazing pain in his shoulder, ignored all his wounds. The cultivator’s swipe missed, and Blake struck the man in the side of the head with all his might—which included an Augmentation technique. The cultivator fell to the ground with a surprised shout.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  He swiped at Blake’s legs wildly with his axe, shouting, “What sort of monster are you?” he shouted. “Why won’t you die?”

  Blake held his staff up, ready to deliver another heavy, skull-crushing blow. “Your last chance to run away.”

  “Never. Not to the likes of you!”

  The cultivator’s axe began glowing. He was about to use another Smite technique, to launch his last axe desperately at Blake. Grimacing, Blake slammed his staff down into the cultivator’s skull again. The axe stopped glowing. Blake gave the cultivator one more strike on the head. The man fell still, bleeding out his nose and mouth.

  That might not be enough. He couldn’t leave this man alive. He had to finish the job…

  Raising his staff above his head, he brought it down hard, shouting and yelling. When it impacted the man’s head, it cracked bone, leaving a deep dent in the man’s skull.

  He was dead.

  Blake leaned over on his staff, panting, then turned away. He always thought that if he’d ever had to kill someone, he was going to throw up or something, but he just felt slightly numb. He’d seen plenty of death in his life, and the cultivator had given him no choice.

  Maybe the cultivator was right. Maybe he was a monster, but he wouldn’t have done that if he’d had any other choice. Right?

  Would a regular man have been more disgusted with himself for killing another man? More angry? More sad? Was it the fiend-blend that made Blake numb?

  But the cultivator’s body was already sinking into the bog. Blake couldn’t let all that go to waste. As soon as he’d bandaged his own shoulder, he began looting the body. The cultivator’s armour looked too heavy—at least, to take all of it. But he pulled off the man’s vambraces and his gambeson. It was a little large, but when he fastened the cultivator’s belt around his own waist, it snugged up.

  Then he picked up the man’s remaining axe and tucked it into his belt. There were no runes, and it wasn’t terribly fancy, but having something sharp couldn’t hurt.

  Check him for a hidden pouch, Ethbin suggested. I sense something on him.

  Blake patted down the man’s under-tunic until he found a small bulge. In an inside pocket, the man was carrying a leather pouch. It had a small glass vial inside it, filled with bright turquoise liquid. When Blake swirled it, it shimmered like it contained a liquid aurora.

  “Is this…an elixir?” Blake asked. He held it up by the cork, which had a thin string running through it.

  A decently strong one, too, Ethbin said. A shame, though. It’s a mana-elixir, and you’ve already done what you could with mana. That won’t help you now.

  Blake grimaced. He was about to let it sink into the swamp with the cultivator’s body, but he said, “Wait. You can sense it? What exactly do you sense?”

  It radiated the strength of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from, only that it was coming from the general vicinity of him.

  “So…someone without as perfect senses as you would have just sensed a stronger cultivator? Could we use this to…pretend that we’re a mana cultivator?”

  Perhaps. It would take some work, and they may notice that it’s separate from you.

  “It’s a step in the right direction.” Blake placed the vial back in the pouch, then fastened the pouch to his belt. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Take his rank seal, too.

  Blake nodded, then peeled the rank seal off the cultivator’s pauldron. It was wax, and had probably been there for years, but somehow, it was still sticky on its back.

  Marrow-wax, Ethbin said. You don’t want to know why it does that, only that it will detect the cultivation stage of whoever’s wearing it, which will be helpful for you.

  Blake pressed the seal to his own chest, and it attached firmly to the gambeson. He rolled his shoulder, wincing with pain, but the seal wasn’t going anywhere.

  His own shoulder, though, was another issue. He’d had to turn another one of his shirts into bandages, and he was pretty sure he’d broken his own collar bone.

  The good news is that, when you open your bone meridian, you will get a one-time mend to all your bones. You’ve broken a few bones before, haven’t you?

  “Yeah,” Blake said. “Gymnastics and water gathering, all that.”

  I see. There are quite a few blockages to work through, caused by broken and hastily repaired bones.

  He glanced down at the rank seal. The wax on top shifted, changing to take the shape of a circle with waves inside it. The number of waves indicated what stage of Mana Condensation you were at, and now Blake understood why.

  His seal had three waves now.

  “I’m at the third stage? Almost halfway there?” Technically, he hadn’t envisioned the Honour yet—it was still ‘invisible fire’ in his mind’s eye—so he wasn’t past Stage Four yet.

  Halfway, bah! Ethbin almost made a noise that sounded like laughter. Did they not teach you math? Is three half of nine?

  “It’s almost half of seven, the amount of stages in every tier?” Blake tilted his head. “Like we learned in reeducation, like you made me draw.”

  Oh, those raiders…Fate-forsaken Nords. Ethbin grumbled something unintelligible, then said, They reduced every tier to seven stages, and cut off the last two ancient stages. Fools.

  “Are the last two stages…important?” Blake asked. “You only had me draw out the first seven stages when you made me write down the chart.”

  Because I assumed you knew they were only the first seven. Important? Let me tell you, kid, there’s a reason the Wyrdfather bathed in the void for nine days to learn the nine stages of condensation—Nine. For the Nords to just forget the last two stages because they developed Harvesting techniques? Preposterous!

  “I’m not sure I understand…”

  Alas, that is a problem for the future. We have most of what we need to join a sect, but before we do, we’ll need to open your meridians and get you to the sixth stage. For that, we’ll need a bit more Honour.

  “So back on the hunt?” Blake asked.

  Indeed. Get moving, before any more cultivators find you.

  “Working on it…” Blake grunted, pushing himself up and lifting his damaged staff. He tightened his grip on the rebar. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder and neck, he kept dragging himself along the path of destruction the spiker had left. “Alright, monster crows. Let’s see what you’ve got in you.”