Tsem battled against qi inside his body, pushing against the same ethereal raptor he had grown used to. The difference was that he was even more exhausted than usual. His schedule had changed. Instead of one bout of cultivation each night, he had switched to two. The second pushed him to his limits, but it was worth it. Tsem was determined to open another meridian before he returned to Sumoon city. Already, he was making faster progress through the large intestine meridian than he had with the stomach meridian. He should be able to meet his goal. It wasn’t easy keeping at it though, each time he went to start his second session of cultivation, he had to fight against his own mind as it sent him dozens of excuses to try to keep him from following through with his plan. He soldiered on.

  When morning came and Tsem was unceremoniously ferried out of the lair by a mildly annoyed basilisk, he began his preparations for his hunt. He had decided to go after a gold pinfish. First, he wanted to lay eyes on one, and study it. The Da family hunting manual didn’t include this creature. Tsem suspected that the bounty list was mostly for full disciples of the clan. He was honored that elder Goro had seen fit to let him peruse it. Still, this was not the kind of demonic beast he could underestimate.

  He crept upstream, forced to head to the roots of the mountain itself. Here, the stream moved faster, crashing against jagged rocks. Tsem moved amongst the trees, keeping his eyes out. The gold pinfish wasn’t exactly the kind of demonic beast that was hard to spot. Its gold scales flashed like the sun. It spoke to its strength that it could survive even with such a handicap.

  After about two miles of hiking, Tsem found what he was looking for, and it was in the middle of a fight. An Uvarian Bladebear, heavily scarred, was slashing away, each of its claws shrieking against scales that might as well have been plate mail. The gold pinfish itself barely looked like a fish. It was too flat, too angular, and its tail was too long and powerful. Spikes, the pins of its name, broke clear of its body, coming from holes within its scaled hide. They too were of the brightest gold. It stood in the shallows of the stream, the fast-moving water flowing around it without throwing up so much as a splash.

  The gold pinfish snapped its jaws at the bladebear’s legs, sinking teeth into the other beast. The bladebear, its bloodlust undaunted by the blood seeping from its leg, stabbed its own claws, each ensheathed in a wicked stone blade into the pinfish’s eyes. The pinfish moved its head, so fast, barely in time. Claws left slight cuts across its snout. Its four legs sped up, qi burned, and the monstrosity leapt right for the bladebear’s throat. It didn’t make it, the bladebear pushed its way forward, leading a shoulder into its attacker.

  The pinfish let the blow toss it back, circling around. Its spikes flew from its back, blasting the bladebear. Tsem winced as two of them blasted straight through the bladebear’s shoulders. The rest were met with claws, but the damage had been done, even the bladebear knew it, crying with furious pain, turning to flee, moving hunched over awkwardly on two legs, its front limbs hanging useless beside it. It burned qi to manage the retreat.

  The pinfish tried to catch it, but as fast as it had been over short distances, it stood little chance in catching the other beast without water beneath to aid it. Tsem watched the bladebear carefully, it was familiar. When he had last seen it, it had felt a touch weaker and hadn’t had nearly as many scars. Still, he’d never forget the particulars of the beast that had nearly killed him with a thrown claw, and the gold pinfish had fought such a monster off, nearly killing it in the process.

  This wasn’t a hunt Tsem could complete as he was, nothing he could see of the gold pinfish seemed to make it easy to deal with. Its scales seemed nearly impenetrable, if a bladebear’s claws were ineffective, he couldn’t imagine his spear would perform any better. Aiming for the eyes had seemed like a good play, but the beast was able to move its head faster than anything else on its body. Perhaps the scales there were smaller, thinner, but not meaningfully enough. It was slower outside the water, but still probably faster than Tsem, certainly much faster over short distances. Then there were those pins. Tsem shuddered. No. This was not going to be easy.

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  Right now, there was no way he could take this thing down. Every simulation he ran in his head ended in his death. Crushed and sawn in half by its jaws, caught, too slow to avoid its lightning quick pounce. Impaled by a dozen pins, their force punching holes through his body, his heart. He wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t durable enough, and most of all, he wasn’t skilled or experienced enough.

  There were solutions of course, his cultivation was making him stronger, faster, more durable every day. Skill and inexperience could be remedied by constant practice. He could get there, would get there. By when though? If he waited more than four weeks, there would be new bounties, but Tsem doubted they’d be easier. Would elder Goro even show them to him again if he failed this time? Certainly, he wouldn’t have a chance of closing the gap in contribution points between himself and Raej without kills from the bounty list. The boy was ahead of him in cultivation and already had a martial manual to draw from for use with his bow.

  Tsem needed to take action if he didn’t want to stall in his cultivation, and he definitely did not. He had told Da Waska and Da Kanuk that he wanted the frontier to be a place of opportunity, and those hadn’t been empty words. His path was to become a protector, perhaps to cut a way for other paths, safer ways for newcomers who might arrive on the frontier after him. The wilderness offered hope, opportunity, and death. Tsem wanted the first two to shine and the third to be reduced as much as possible. Who was he to do that though?

  A weak cultivator in the early steps of meridian purification was a long way from being able to do anything of the sort. Da Waska, Da Kanuk. Those disciples had been able to help Tsem, to make death’s grasp that much looser on him. Tsem wanted that kind of strength, as soon as possible. He wanted to do the kind of things they had already begun to do, the kind of things his parents had wanted but failed to do. He needed strength to do so.

  Tsem returned to his usual hunting grounds, practicing his qi burning exercises, the ones Da Waska had begun walking him through. When he finally did make it back, he went straight into the first formation he’d set up. He would need more meat from ghalri raptors. His cultivation was going to speed up. He’d already doubled down on it, but that wouldn’t be enough. Tsem needed to push himself to the limit to pull this off, he needed to double it again. He’d need at least three meridians open and completely purified to fight the gold pinfish. Two just wouldn’t cut it.

  His simple training, too, wasn’t good enough anymore. Without a martial manual to fall back on—and he didn’t have the time to wait until he’d earned one—he wasn’t going to improve by just aimlessly practicing basic thrusts and net throws. He needed experience, more than he got normally. The usual tactics he employed, he’d forego them in favor of straightforward fights. He’d improve in the midst of battle. He’d figure out what thrusts worked best in what situations, figure out how he could leverage his new net to its fullest potential, and probably more too. Was it reckless yes, but Tsem could feel it was the way forward.

  A tether led him to a ghalri raptor right away, and Tsem grinned to himself. This was the way of the frontier. It would offer him opportunity and death. It was up to him to make sure the former gave him its rewards, and the latter stayed well away.

  Tsem rushed towards the ghalri raptor, letting out a battle cry. He would let it know he was here; let it make the first move. Adjusting to its speed would do him good. As fast as the ghalri raptors were, the pinfish would be just as fast in close range. Better to fight against that speed here when each individual attack from his opponent was more likely to mean injury, and not death.

  The beast flew at him, not straight on, dashing through trees. Tsem moved his net, but not in time. The raptor’s talons raked at his arm, his new hunting leathers managing to hold, though one slipped through. Tsem tried to burn qi to improve his durability but wasn’t nearly fast enough. He switched to burning qi for speed. Again, he wasn’t fast enough.

  Three minutes later, Tsem sat down heavily, his opponent dead on the ground. So many passes. When he didn’t take the demonic beast by surprise, it was so much less predictable, so much harder to deal with. On the last pass though, when he’d managed to catch it with his net, he’d burned his qi. He’d moved faster than he’d ever managed before in combat. He’d improved, even if just a little.

  Tsem knew he would improve more. He had to if he wanted to start truly following the path he’d set out for himself. Yes, it was still clouded with mist. Yes, it wasn’t fully realized. He wouldn’t, couldn’t understand the entirety of who he wanted to become though. Perhaps the legendary cultivators of the stories had known exactly what they wanted to be from the start, but Tsem’s wasn’t them. He was a simple hunter, and he’d stumble his way along. He’d figure out the exacts of who he wanted to become along the way. He felt the need to start moving though.

  Strong as it was, in four weeks, Tsem was going to hunt that gold pinfish.