After his meeting with Mingel, Blake rushed to the longboat yards, skirting around the edge of Centertown. For a moment, he considered spending the rest of his tip on a taxi, but he was going to need all he could get, and he wanted to try something.

  “So, Ethbin,” he said as he approached the longboat yards. “Since we’ve advanced a stage, what exactly is different now that I’ve…I dunno, felt my echo resonate?”

  Is it not obvious?

  “Not really.”

  Ethbin made a whistling sound inside Blake’s mind that sounded almost like a sigh, then said, This is draining my reserves more than I’d like, but let’s see…you’ve managed to use your willpower to draw more Honour, and you’re using your staff to maintain the purity of the aspect. But consider the Honour itself.

  “I’ve done nothing to raise the purity of it,” Blake said. “Up until now?”

  Precisely.

  “What’s making it impure, though? I mean, I get why mana would be impure when you draw it in, but why Honour?”

  Because the spiritual plane which you draw it from contains other energies, and some venture through your siphon. The more your echo resonates, however, the purer the Honour is. Since you’ve found a good source for all three components of the Honour Trigram, the resonance remains, purifying your Honour consistently. And the purer it is…well, you’ll see. I’m not wasting energy on that. Try out a technique or two.

  Blake stopped at the edge of the longboat yards, crouched down, then triggered the Serpent’s Cloak.

  I didn’t mean right now, Ethbin muttered.

  “What did you think I meant when I said we wouldn’t need a taxi?” Blake replied.

  That you were going to sneak aboard a longboat and stow away.

  “Nah. Where’s the fun in that?”

  Before Ethbin could tell him not to, Blake sprang upward off the ground. A shockwave blasted away the dust and snow, and he shot up into the sky. Immediately, he lightened himself, hoping to turn himself more cloudlike. It didn’t really make much sense. Not at first.

  Really, gravity didn’t work that way. It didn’t matter how heavy you were, you had the same acceleration due to gravity, barring air resistance. But the ‘cloud body’ aspect seemed to work more like the longboats’ floating mechanism. He was messing with the Way.

  It worked on the idea of it rather than the reality of gravity. He was becoming more like a cloud, which meant he didn’t fall nearly as quickly. He was less dense, floating on the air. It worked on the idea of clouds, not how gravity would actually interact with his body.

  However, after the Echo Resonance stage, it seemed like that fundamental principle had been enhanced. It wasn’t as if his body had been immune to falling before, and it still wasn’t, but the world was shifting around him, bending to the techniques and the will of his Honour. The concept—the idea of lightness and being cloud-like—had improved.

  You improved your Honour’s connection with the Way by purifying it, Ethbin said. On paper, it doesn’t make your techniques stronger, but it begins to touch on the profundity of the Way. It is becoming more like its essential inspiration—in this case, a cloud. The technique itself gains a sliver of understanding of the Way. The same applies to all your techniques now.

  Blake wanted to respond, but he still rose through the air, wind rushing down his throat. It wouldn’t last forever, though, and he was beginning to slow already. Soon, he’d start falling, even if he fell more slowly than usual.

  “Come on,” he hissed with sealed lips. “Come on!” He urged himself to climb a little higher, aiming toward a longboat rising up through the air. He straightened himself up, like he was trying to stretch a little farther.

  Since it was night, the longboat and its crew didn’t see him coming. He clung onto the gunwale at the ship’s bow, then set his feet against the decorated prow and sprang off with the ‘lightning fists’ half of the technique. A shockwave burst out behind him, and the ship lurched. The crew shouted something, but by the time they looked for Blake, he’d flown far beyond the light of their lanterns.

  As he sprang off, he targeted the next longboat in the sky, and when he arrived, he used it as another stepping stone. He had to leap off four more longboats before he arrived at the Indent-City where the Silk Fan headquarters was. But instead of returning directly to the headquarters, he hauled himself over the bottom ledge of the indent and began searching the depths for mana-rats. After all, he’d need something to test his newly enhanced techniques on, and he’d rather return to the headquarters after he finished all his tasks.

  As he walked, he whispered to Ethbin, “So, the cloud body part…I get why it’d work for a regular lightning technique. Storms are related and all. But void lightning doesn’t exactly have storms, does it? Is that the purview of the galaxy serpent?”

  It is not a cloud in the sense that you’re thinking, Ethbin replied. But yes, the Galaxy Serpent’s aspect and affinity relates to clouds.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “How?” Blake ducked under a low crossbeam, then found a mana channel and leaned over the edge. There were no rats yet, but a pulse of mana raced past. He leaned back, but the pulse of energy made his nose tingle and his skin prickle. That was new.

  The Galaxy Serpent wraps around the edge of the galaxy, forming its very outer boundary and holding it in place, Ethbin said. But it is also a barrier. It has cloaked our galaxy in an immense shield of dark clouds. Void nebulae, you can call them, from which the dark lightning originates. Sometimes, it shocks cultivators who grow too confident in themselves and try to test themselves against the greatest boundary known to man—a tribulation, they call it. I call it stupid people getting what they deserve.

  Blake nodded. “Well, let’s see if my lightning understands something else fundamental about itself.”

  He searched the lower levels of the Indent-City. There were a few other rat-hunting parties out in the distance, but Blake stayed away from them. To make the process quicker, he had Ethbin search for the mana-rats with his senses. He made a beeline to the location Ethbin pointed out and arrived at a pack of seven rats.

  “Evening, guys,” Blake said as he hopped down into the channel, then spread his arms and tugged his staff out of his backpack.

  These have been feasting for longer tonight, Ethbin warned. They’re all around Foundation six.

  Even after a few seconds, the rats didn’t make a move for Blake. They just kept gnawing away at the walls of the channel.

  He approached slowly, picking a rat near the edge of the pack, then struck it hard on the back of its neck, channelling a Black Palm through his staff. It arced up into the rat’s neck, racing up from the floor to meet his staff.

  The impact would’ve knocked the rat on its back, but Blake’s staff sandwiched it, holding it in place and instead simply crushing its throat. Icy frost spread from the impact point, using its Vir nature to sap the heat from the rat’s skin. But the void lightning remained, as usual, binding the rat’s neck.

  His willpower caused a greater amount of void lightning aspect Honour to flow through his smite technique, creating the dark lightning. A greater attunement to the aspect had the same effect—more lightning flowed through the staff, because the wood wasn’t restricting it as much.

  It came together to create more material to bind and restrict the rat with. But that was already something he could do before.

  Before, however, the lingering binding wasn’t responsive to him. It was just there, sapping the rat’s mana, lingering in the air as raw energy. There were no techniques to hold back.

  Today, something was different about the energy. It still formed a collar of black lightning around the rat’s throat, but Blake felt a greater connection to it. It wanted to move along with his echo, like there was an invisible chain binding his echo’s hand and the Smite technique he’d just used. And none of it would have worked if his echo wasn’t as compressed as it was now.

  Blake yanked his hand back, and the lingering lightning responded, jerking toward him. The rat lurched, squealing, and he winced. Sure, it was a pest, but he wasn’t here to torment it. Instead of waiting for his technique to run out of power on its own and release the rat, he clenched his fist, tightening its grip on the beast’s neck and snapping it in a single blow.

  By now, the others in the pack had turned to him, but as the collar tightened around the rat’s neck, the technique finally popped, and a chain of black lightning raced out, surging through the rest of the rats. It killed the first two it contacted, but the rest were only stunned. Blake walked between their quivering bodies, giving them all a quick blow to the head with his staff to kill them quickly. Then he tore off their tails.

  Between his five tails from before, the three pounds of hacksilver he’d saved on not needing a taxi, and the seven tails he’d earned tonight, he was up to fifteen pounds—or an equivalent amount in tails.

  As he tucked the tails into his backpack, he whispered to Ethbin, “So I can control the lightning better now that I’ve resonated my Honour. And it has a binding effect. Isn’t it basically a Shaping technique? I mean, it acts as if it is solid.”

  Have you ever seen someone use a Shaping technique? Ethbin replied.

  “Well…no. Not really. I mean, Heron’s Shaping technique was to create a clone of himself. But that doesn’t seem standard.”

  While there is no standard Shaping technique, his was less standard than most. But Shaping always involves giving true mass and volume to your Honour—or mana. Even though your Honour has a binding nature to it, it is not solid itself yet.

  After that, Blake spent another hour hunting for rats. When he’d accumulated five more tails, he climbed up through the intertwined buildings and walked straight to the government hub.

  When he arrived, however, the hall’s doors were shut. A pair of Scaleslingers stood outside. They wore purple cloaks overtop long chainmail coats, and steel helmets covered their eyes.

  “Excuse me, sirs,” Blake said. “Is the hall open?”

  “Not to the likes of you,” one said, stepping forward. He was Core Formation stage one, according to his rank badge.

  Blake was pretty sure he could have fought the man and won, but he didn’t want to cause a scene. Instead, he just shrugged and said, “They let me in before.” He turned his shoulder forward, presenting his cloak.

  The two guards glanced at each other. One gulped, but the other shook his head and tightened his grip on his spear. “I’ve heard you’re trying to get into the Iron Hide Tournament. To jump right to the upper bracket. As a thrall.”

  Blake shrugged again. “Is that not allowed?”

  The soldiers glanced at each other again, before the more aggressive one stepped forward. “Listen here, boy. We’ve heard the tales about you. You enter that tournament, you’re dead. You’ll be going up against me or one of my Scaleslinger brothers in the first rounds, and we’ll show no mercy.”

  “So now I can enter the tournament? I think you’re just making stuff up now and didn’t come here with a plan. Except to scare me.” Blake stepped forward and reached for the handle of the hall’s doors. “I defeated Svarikson and Heron Silverbeard. Did you really think that you two could scare me?”

  Both of the soldiers glanced at each other. Their exposed mouths turned to grimaces.

  “I’m entering that tournament,” Blake said. “If you want to stop me, then face me there, and we’ll see who’s stronger. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  Without another word, he pushed open the doors and stepped into the government hub hall.