Blake flipped over the sheet of tasks that Stone Moon had given him, then sketched out a tiny chart using mud from the ground and the tip of his finger. With Ethbin’s guidance, he jotted down a list of stages on the back of the page. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to write so precisely with his finger, but after Body Tempering, he had significantly better muscle control. Instead of smearing it around with his fingertip, he used his fingernail.

  According to Ethbin, many of these stages differed from what the Nords used, but Blake ‘shouldn’t think about what they do, because it will set him on the wrong path.’ Seeing how Heron’s shoddy foundation really hadn’t amounted to much difference in strength between him and Blake, Blake was inclined to agree.

  I promise you, Ethbin said, that unlike Heron, you will feel a true boost from your proper foundation. Besides, the Nords have seemingly forgotten—or don’t care—about closing fractures in their mana sea. In your case, your Honour sea.

  “I thought this stage was all about echoes,” Blake muttered.

  And I wasn’t lying to you. How do you think you’ll separate your Honour sea without the help of an echo? Or become Wand-wed without first giving the ‘wand’ itself an echo?

  “I’m using a staff, not a wand. Besides, I don’t even know what—” Blake cut himself off as Lord Tomskar thrust his spear through the howler’s chest, striking a fatal blow. The beast still struggled for a few seconds, yelping, and allowing Blake to finish his thought unnoticed. “I don’t even know what that means, Honour Sea Separation."

  We will worry about that when you get there. For now, we must concentrate on Echo Resonating.

  But for the moment, Blake had a job to do. He stepped closer to Lord Tomskar. The kill hadn’t been pretty, even if the Howler had been a weak, Condensation five beast. Blake asked, “Where are we heading next, Honoured Lord?”

  “You’re not going to congratulate my husband?” Lady Sixin demanded, placing her hands on her hips.

  “Did he do anything worthy of congratulation?” Blake cursed himself silently the moment the words left his mouth, but he couldn’t help it.

  “That is quite alright, my love,” Lord Tomskar said, stepping up beside Lady Sixin. “He doesn’t know our customs, does he?” The man tilted his head to the side and stared at Blake. “What an endearing little savage.”

  “He won’t live for very long anyway. He’s a fiend-blend. They never do.” Lady Sixin shook her head. “You would be better off putting him out of his misery.”

  “Nonsense!” Lord Tomskar proclaimed. “He still has more monsters to guide us to. Bring me something with a challenge! I wish to truly test my skills—against something more than just a Tempering three wolf!”

  Blake bit his tongue, desperately resisting the urge to reveal truly how strong the wolf really was. When he was certain we wouldn’t say something he’d regret, he pointed off into the fog. “What do you say we go after a shroomclaw?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Is it stronger?”

  “Usually, they are.”

  “Then lead on.”

  Blake used the same strategy to pinpoint a shroomclaw. Since it had almost no value to him anymore—he didn’t need its echo, its echo material, and he didn’t even want to kill it—it didn’t cost Ethbin any energy to track it down and lead Blake to it.

  At noon, they found the shroomclaw feasting on the corpse of a fell-crow. It was all rather mundane to Blake, but Lord Tomskar was enjoying himself. As the man jumped into battle, Blake turned to Lady Sixin and said, “If you permit me, My Lady, I would search the area for your Glasstooth Squirrels. I believe there might be some nearby.”

  “You are here to watch my husband and I, are you not?”

  “And you believe I can protect you better than you can protect yourselves?”

  She considered that for a moment, then flicked her hand off toward the woods. “Fine, fine. Find me a squirrel. And it is ‘Honoured Lady,’ not ‘My Lady.’ Do not mess up your honourifics again in my presence.”

  Blake gave her a thumbs up, which she didn’t seem to know how to process, then darted off into the mists. Although he didn’t have time to set up a trap for the Glasstooth Squirrels, he figured that they were no match for his new speed and power.

  And of course, he stayed close enough to Lord Tomskar to hear the result of the fight. Judging by how cautious the man had been against the howler—fighting as if he was desperate not to get a single drop of blood on him—he would take his time with the Shroomclaw. Blake had plenty of time to himself.

  While he followed Ethbin’s directions toward a den for squirrels, he reached into his backpack, whispering, “Sorry, River, I just need to get around you.”

  After a second of rummaging, he retrieved the Monarch’s core—with a chunk of it sheared off. As he walked, he held it out in one hand and held out his staff in the other hand, staring at them both. The staff wasn’t even quivering anymore, and it had vented all the excess mana it’d taken in from the core, leaving behind only the void essence of the aspect and tuning the staff to his purpose.

  That meant it was ready to absorb more of the core.

  He stopped and set the core down on a relatively dry patch of land, then used the Serpent’s Cloak and slammed his staff down on the sphere. The initial hit only fractured the surface. He had no illusions of breaking it as cleanly as Reccán had, but he could at least shatter it into workable chunks.

  He struck it one more time, this time channelling a Black Palm through the staff. It didn’t hurt the core based on a fundamental difference in aspects, but the black lightning simply provided more raw force.

  The core shattered into five different shards, with tiny specks of core material scattered in between them. Blake scooped up as much of it as he could, then tucked all of them into the front pocket of his backpack—all except one.

  Much like the first instance of absorbing a slice of the Monarch’s core into his staff, like he’d done in Mergewatch, he absorbed a single shard of the core into the staff. Turquoise mana vented out the bottom of the staff with a puff of sparks, leaving only the black energy to swirl around the kinghaven sand within the staff, absorbing into the resin and sand and enhancing the aspect of the staff.

  But more importantly, he’d just released the Monarch’s echo. At first, he wasn’t sure where it was, until he recognized a tiny swirl of echo material floating in the dirt where he’d shattered the core.

  It expanded slowly, growing larger by the second and threatening to return to the size of the regular monarch.

  Don’t let it get away, Ethbin said. That is a key echo of the Galaxy Serpent set, and you don’t want it escaping on you. Worse, it’s a powerful echo. You don’t want it getting a mind of its own and attacking you.

  “Echoes can do that?”

  Yes, so hurry up.

  Blake projected a wave of killing intent, locking the echo in place. It stopped growing when it was about the size of a large dog. Like most other echoes, it was as if someone had sketched it onto the world in charcoal—only it was the shape of the Monarch, a lizard walking upright. Blake plunged his hand into it and absorbed it with a tug of Honour.

  The echo dispersed, its material floating back into Blake’s body. He turned his attention through his siphon and watched his own Honour echo. The Monarch socketed on his shoulder as a black gem, barely distinguishable from the rest of his echo now.

  He waited, checking to see if it would give him an echo ability, but it felt different. He couldn’t trigger it like he could trigger River’s. Instead, it felt like it was providing support to his Root Meridian, enhancing the purity and impact of his aspect. Pushing him closer toward the Galaxy Serpent itself, whatever that meant.

  “I thought I hadn’t completed the set,” Blake replied.

  You haven’t. You need three more echoes of the set—you have the Lightstalker and the Monarch already, but it requires five echoes. The good news is that, where mana-cultivators only get seven slots to socket echoes, you have nine.

  “I’m using one for River, and three for the Swamp Prowler set.”

  Swamp Prowler is a weak set, and you will want to discard it as soon as you get something better.

  “Right. So I’ll have River’s echo, and surely, this staff is going to form an echo at some point. So I’ll socket it.”

  That is how you become wand-wed.

  “Right. That still leaves a few extra sockets, though.”

  We have time to find extra, specialized echoes.

  “But that doesn’t answer my initial question. The Monarch’s echo is doing something. It feels like it’s messing with my Root.”

  It’s bolstering your Root Meridian, like you guessed. Which, in turn, is boosting the purity of your aspect. Instead of increasing the raw output, like your staff does, this improves the quality of the output.

  Blake nodded. “I’ll take it.” Through the fog, Lord Tomskar shouted something, some kind of Nord battlecry, and the shroomclaw screeched. Their fight was almost over. “Next up, let’s find those Glasstooth Squirrels. We’re not going to have much more time.”

  I already gave you directions.

  “That you did. Let’s make this quick, then get back to Lady Sixin before she gets too suspicious.”