Holden was in the training yard at 4am in the morning after the rice incident. He was running Gale-Step at full speed, when he felt it.
He stopped to take a breath and paid attention to how his body really felt.
it wasn't good.
He was incredibly talented, and he knew it. The skills were there, but his body was the problem. He was still just a hungry kid from the slums who was too skinny for his own power.
That was the part nobody wrote about in the cultivation manuals.
Techniques multiply the strength you already have, but they don't give you what you're missing. Even the best footwork is limited by legs that haven't been toughened up.
He sat down on the low wall.
The Aether Core was still in his pocket. He had been thinking about how to use it, the timing of it, whether to save it for a specific moment or absorb it gradually.
He added this new problem to the list of considerations and tried to think clearly.
Body tempering. That was what he needed. He had to toughen his bones and muscles so they could hold all his power without breaking.
He knew the category existed. He'd seen it in the archive catalog, listed under Physical Foundation arts, but he had skipped it to look at combat moves because he didn't think he needed it back then. Now, it was very important.
He went to find the academy market.
The academy market opened at eight. He was there by eight-fifteen.
The market hall felt like a place that could fix any problem, as long as you had enough money. It had three rows of stalls, each one in its own section.
He found the body tempering section without much trouble. He looked at each one carefully, reading all the labels before picking anything up. He found six manuals. They varied in price and had different theories on the best way to improve the human body.
The Titan-Marrow manual was the third one on the shelf. The description card explained it plainly. Blood-infusion method. Heat the water, add the material, submerge, activate the cadence. This process pulls the power through your skin and into your body. It works from the inside out, starting with your bones and finishing with your muscles.
Efficiency: sixty to seventy percent in standard application. The rest, waste.
He looked at the compatible materials list. Bear blood was first, labeled entry grade, effective, widely available. He looked at the price. Looked at the credits in his pocket.
He could buy the manual and a single vial and still have enough left over for Maeve's winter coat.
He bought the manual and the vial.
The vendor wrapped the vial in cloth before he could ask.
He read the manual on the walk back.
Submerge fully. Activate cadence before body temperature adjusts. Maintain until material is exhausted.
The cadence itself was printed on the last page. It only had three steps.
He thought about what his multiplier was going to do to a technique designed at sixty to seventy percent efficiency.
He had a feeling his power was going to have a very strong reaction to it.
Holden was in his estate's bathroom, filling the bath and waiting until the steam was rising properly.
He uncorked the vial over the water.
The blood was dark, almost brown, thicker than he'd expected. It spread through the bath in slow circles and turned the water to a strange red color
He got in anyway.
The heat was intense. He sat as still as possible, until his body finished its initial reaction to the heat. Once the shock wore off, his body finally gave in and accepted the sensation
He found the cadence.
He moved slow and deep, pulling energy from the surface of his skin toward his core, almost like he was breathing through his pores. Once he caught the flow, he held onto it and let the multiplier take charge.
The water went clear.
In just four breaths, the reddish-brown water became completely clear. His skin pulled all the energy in so well that the tub was left with nothing but plain water. Every drop of the bear blood had been used.
Zero waste.
And then it hit his bones.
It felt like he was being stretched from the inside out, like something was growing within him and his body was struggling to make room for it.
He breathed through it.
In. Out.
In. Out.
The tempering moved through him in waves, bones first, then the deeper muscle tissue, his body accepting each new layer.
The water was back to normal. Holden sat there for a bit longer with his eyes closed and his hands relaxed. He couldn't see a change, but he could feel it. His bones felt dense and tough, as if his body had been rebuilt from the inside out
He looked at the water around him.
One vial. Entry grade. One hundred percent of it, sitting in his body now, none of it lost.
He thought about the price card at the market. The note about higher-grade materials. The implication of what higher grade meant when your extraction rate was already perfect.
The system screen appeared at the corner of his vision.
[Titan-Marrow Tempering: Applied.]
[Extraction Efficiency: 100%. Zero material waste.]
He was still reading when the second line appeared beneath it.
Then he felt something changed, deep within him.
Something that had not finished changing yet.
He sat still in the water and felt his own body doing something he hadn't asked it to do, something the manual hadn't mentioned.
The water around him was starting to change color again.
Not red this time.
Black.