Which meant Lindon had to catch one of these Highgold-level fish, kill it, and bring it back without using Blackflame. He had a plan for that too, but not one he liked.

He felt like he saw eyes on him with every crunch of his shoes on sand, but a golden dragon-girl didn't leap out of her two-story fortress of Forged madra and burn him to death, so he had to assume he was still hidden. After creeping around, it had only taken him a few minutes to locate one of the drifting fish.

The bear-sized creature slid lazily over Lindon's head, silver scales glinting in the dim yellow light. Its fangs clashed like spears, but it didn't seem to notice him at all. As Dross had said, they seemed to hunt by spiritual perception alone.

Dross, tucked away in the now-purple gem stuffed into the pocket of his outer robes, started to say something. Lindon slapped him. He muttered to himself, but stayed quiet.

Now it was time to execute Orthos' plan, which—in its entirety—consisted of one step: “Hit it with your arm.”

Lindon couldn't help but feel a little nervous about that advice.

Without a full-body Enforcer technique, Lindon had to use basic Enforcement on his entire body. The spirit had a strengthening effect on the body, with or without the guidance of a technique, and all he was doing was pouring effort into that. It was horribly inefficient, and it would exhaust his madra more quickly and provide worse results compared to a real Enforcer technique.

However, it did make him stronger.

Lindon jumped ten feet straight up, seizing the fish's tail in his left hand. He dragged it down to the ground, though the fish fluttered and strained to stay in the air. As it fell, it gave off a deafening shriek.

Now he had a deadline.

According to Dross, the fish screamed to one another every once in a while under natural conditions, so its cry shouldn't alert Ekeri, even if she heard it. However, the other fish would start coming immediately.

He didn't sense any other sacred beasts within a hundred yards, so even in the worst-case scenario, he had a few seconds.

Lindon threw his whole body over the creature to pin it to the ground, though it was still strong. Its flailing and flopping nearly bucked him off. But in a moment, he had locked his legs around it.

Now it was time to execute Orthos' plan.

He pulled back his white arm, filling it with the power of his pure core, and began slamming it into the fish's head.

The sacred beast screamed and screamed. Dross assured him they weren't any more intelligent than normal fish, just more powerful, but the shrieks bothered him anyway. Lindon hammered until the silver scales began to crack, and dark blood splattered his face.

This is why I need a weapon, he thought. Of course, there was every chance he would have lost a weapon at the same time he had lost his pack.

When the fish's spasms began to weaken, he gripped the sharp tips of his white fingers into its newly exposed flesh.

Then he triggered the binding in his arm.

Gladly, the limb started gulping down the creature's madra. The arm seemed to grow more dense as it fed, more real, though strangely enough it seemed to get a shade darker as well. Like it was shading to gray instead of its normal, pristine white.

When Lindon had gotten the arm, he'd hoped that the hunger binding would allow him to steal madra from other sacred artists. That, he reasoned, would help him to learn more Paths.

But other than the obvious practical downsides to such a plan, he'd since learned that the hunger binding was not as simple to use as the Ancestor's Spear had been. Maybe there would be a day when he could use the arm to pull madra into his core.

Until then, he had at least learned one trick.

When the arm had absorbed so much water madra from the fish that it started to tint blue-green, Lindon vented the excess power. Aquatic madra sprayed from his forearm, splattering like rain on the sand before it dissolved into essence.

The arm could swallow some madra of any aspect to strengthen itself, but anything more than that amount would start changing the aspects of the limb's madra. Unless Lindon wanted the limb of a water-Remnant, he had to vent the extra madra before it corrupted the arm too much.

The Ancestor's Spear had a similar feature, and Jai Long had used it in his battle against Lindon. Based on that principle, Lindon had a few ideas for using it in combat, but he had yet to test any of them.

Without its madra, the fish had lost the will to resist. It flopped once or twice more as Lindon drove his fist into its skull until he heard something crack.

Then, at last, the creature was still.

Without missing a breath, Lindon grabbed the creature in both hands and started dragging it across the sand. It wasn't quite as heavy as Orthos, but it still wasn't light.

And silver-blue light bloomed as a Remnant began to rise from the body.

The Remnant looked like a wire model of the same fish, and it pulled itself free of the body as Lindon continued marching. He kept an eye behind him, hoping to lose it, and let out a breath of relief as he passed around a clump of tree-sized stalks. The Remnants didn't seem as dangerous as their living forms.

When he turned back to the front, he was standing face-to-face with a wall of fangs.

This new fish gave a shriek that stabbed his ears, and Lindon ducked just in time. Even so, the fish's scales scraped against his scalp as it swam past his head.

Lindon turned, following the fish...only to see the shining form of the Remnant drift straight through a stalk.

There was no time to think. Without considering it another instant, he changed the pattern of his breathing and drew from the Path of Black Flame.

Blackflame madra surged through his veins, filling him with heat. His channels still burned, despite Little Blue's healing touch, and he hadn't cycled aura to refill his core. There were only a few dim sparks of madra left in his core.

Though it was enough for a few seconds of Burning Cloak.

Lindon leaped at the Remnant first, kicking off in an explosive burst fueled by the Enforcer technique. He swept his Remnant hand down on the wiry spirit, clawing through its structure. His white fingers seized the pale blue wires that made up the Remnant’s outer layer, and he dragged the Remnant down by its strings.

Then he tore away a chunk of madra.

The Remnant's scream sounded like a crashing wave, but Lindon didn't have time to waste. A Cloak-powered fist punched through its head like a spear, then he turned to catch the living fish that was darting at him.

He caught a lower fang in one hand and an upper fang in the other. The force of the creature's charge pushed him backward through the sand, and its breath stunk like dead fish and rotting vegetation. Nearby shrieks told him more of its school was coming.

Orthos was always telling him that he needed to think more like a dragon. Eithan seemed to agree with him, considering his talk about tiger-chasing.

That was always easier to do with Blackflame raging through him.

Even as his madra started to die, Lindon met eyes with the sacred beast. A dragon could not be defeated by a fish. He was the predator here. He had the power.

The last of the Burning Cloak surged through his limbs, and his arms burned. He roared as he pushed power through both hands.

In a massive rush of strength, he tore the fish apart.

He stood with its body in his left hand and its lower jaw in his right, panting, blood coating the sand. As his Blackflame core winked out, he threw his head back and let out a shout of victory.