58: Riyan's Dome Of Powers (Patreon)

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The days turned to weeks, which soon blurred together as a month passed, then two. Six months had now passed since Rudvik had died in the Godshollow.

To Vir, it felt just like yesterday. He wondered where the time went.

“You have five minutes to complete the course,” said the man, handing Vir a blindfold.

“Only need three,” Vir replied.

He took the black cloth from Riyan and wrapped it slowly around his eyes, his gaze lingering on Maiya and Tanya, who stood at the edge of the training dome. It was his big day, after all—the day he finally proved to everyone that he could finally clear the course. His final examination, of sorts.

Maiya remained expressionless, a sight he’d learned to get used to these days.

Ignoring the spectators, he ascended the stairs to the first challenge and awaited Riyan.

Vir shot into motion even before his instructor had finished saying “Begin.”

With feline grace, he sprinted over the balancing beams. This first obstacle could hardly be called one anymore—it took less than five seconds for him to clear all three beams. Blindfolded.

Riyan had wrongly assumed that Vir was a prodigy who’d picked up the Awareness Talent. The truth was far simpler.

Prana Vision had continued to grow in resolution and range until it effectively replaced his sight. It was at a point where, were he to suddenly go blind, he’d hardly be inconvenienced. There was scarcely a single thing that was entirely devoid of prana unless one ventured to the Voidlands, and so Prana Vision showed him nearly as much as his eyes. Sometimes even more.

The second obstacle, with blades that rotated on cylindrical posts, had had its wooden swords replaced with real ones. If Vir missed his timing, he could easily lose an arm.

Without breaking stride, he seamlessly rolled and jumped through the blades as if they weren’t even there, diving headlong into the third obstacle—the series of swinging scythes.

Here again, the wooden scythes had been replaced with iron. With their weight and momentum, a single hit could decapitate him.

“Fifteen seconds,” Riyan announced when Vir rolled and stood on the other end. Fifteen seconds to do what had once taken him ten minutes or more.

He moved like water, flowing gracefully from one obstacle to the next.

The monkey bars succumbed within seconds as Vir leveraged his toned muscles to hurl himself through the course.

If Rudvik saw him now, the man would be hard-pressed to recognize him. Vir’s entire body rippled with well-defined muscles. In place of bone and exposed ribs, strong pecs, bulging abs, and thick biceps now bulged proudly.

No one would call Vir large, but a single look at him would make all but the bravest brawlers reconsider fighting him. While compact, he had become lithe and strong.

Vir didn’t bother grasping each monkey bar rung. Or even every other rung. With each movement, he bypassed two entire rungs, making short work of the course, throwing himself onto the vertical ladder jump obstacle.

Earlier, he’d paused for several moments between rungs, taking great breaths and planning each move with extreme consideration.

Now, he barely even came to a stop before explosively throwing himself upward, carrying the bar in his hands to the next V-shaped notch. Rung after rung notched before his might, and soon, the obstacle was behind him.

“Forty-five seconds,” Riyan said, looking at his Magic Clock.

The final obstacle was a grid of ropes, three by three, with dozens of deadly swords, spears, and axes suspended above. The blades would drop onto him at random, forcing him to jump from one rope to another to dodge. If he lost his balance, he’d fall all the way down, right into the maw of the first rotating blade course.

Vir had memorized the path through long ago, but this time, he didn’t bother completing the course—it’d have taken too long.

Sending prana to his legs, he Leaped off the first rope and sailed to the finish line even before the deadly overhead blades could deploy.

This was the halfway point. From here, everything became harder. Much, much harder.

Because every obstacle from here required the usage of Talents.

Vir wondered what Riyan would’ve done if he’d never manifested them. He somehow doubted the man would ever make the course easier out of consideration.

He High Jumped to the lowest rung of the ladder that hung from the roof of the dome. This was a brutal obstacle, similar to the vertical monkey bar obstacle he had to clear before, except this time, there were two ladders, one in front and another behind Vir. To make his way up, he’d have to jump from one ladder to another.

Except, neither ladder had any rungs—only notches. Which meant Vir had to take the bottommost rung up with him, exploding upward, and this time twisting in midair, jumping to the other ladder as well.

It was nearly impossible, especially since any fall from this height could be lethal.

Yet Vir made the impossible possible, jumping up to the next rung, then jumped across to the other ladder, the bar clanging into place.

To everyone on the ground, it was as if he belonged on those bars. Like he was a bird, and this aerial death trap was his home… because he continued jumping his way up and across with ease, hardly even breaking a sweat.

What observers on the ground couldn’t see were the ways Vir Empowered his arms to send him flying upward. Even if the ladders were suspended from the ceiling, the dome’s ceiling was connected to the ground, and so prana flowed. Not much, but enough for quarter-powered surges of energy, tactically applied. Micro Empower, as Vir had dubbed it.

He leaped up, clearing the obstacle, sailing right into the maw of the next one.

If this obstacle seemed impossible, the next one actually was. It was another rotating blade platform, with swords embedded into cylindrical posts that spun at high speed. No matter how much Vir had analyzed it, he hadn’t found a way through. Worse still, there was no breathing room between the ladder and the rotating blades, so Vir had been forced to study it from the halfway point, far below.

He’d eventually realized that there actually wasn’t a safe path through.

The second rotating blade course required Blink; a Talent that let its caster disappear in one location and suddenly reappear in another. When Riyan fought Vir in their duels, it wasn’t Leap he’d used… It was Blink. And it was a Talent Vir did not have.

No matter how much he’d struggled to learn the ability, it had eluded him. After hours of analysis and experimentation, he’d concluded that there simply wasn’t enough Ash prana in the ground to power it. Ash prana was more potent than the other affinities, but sometimes, there was no substitute for quantity.

It was a good thing that he had a substitute. Something even better.

Vir disappeared just before a blade could decapitate him… and reappeared at the other end of the course. In fact, he did one better. He’d bypassed the obstacle after that as well.

A battering ram swung harmlessly behind him as he appeared at the finish line of that course. No doubt Riyan had expected Vir to Blink past the swords, only to be slammed in the gut by the ram.

Too bad for him. Dance of the Shadow Demon was far more versatile.

He’d wallowed for ages over whether to use the ability here. Ultimately, he had little choice if he wanted to progress through the course.

After practicing the Dance over and over, he could finally activate it as quickly as Shardul had. The trick was in how quickly he pulled the blood from his feet up into his legs.

To all eyes, it looked identical to Blink—he disappeared in one location and reappeared elsewhere.

Unlike Blink, its range was far superior, and he could spend up to ten seconds in the Shadow Realm calmly gathering his thoughts.

“One minute, thirty seconds,” Riyan’s voice sounded from far below. It came a moment late. No doubt the man had been shocked by Vir’s move. He’d gone farther than what should’ve ordinarily been possible with Blink, but only just. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility.

Unfortunately, Dance wouldn’t help him for the next challenge.

Vir stood on a platform of wood, and in front of him… was nothing. Just empty space, and some ropes hung from the ceiling far away.

Well within the range of Blink. Impossible for Dance of the Shadow Demon.

Because there were no shadows he could leverage here.

This was as far as he had ever gone. Everything from here was new; his first try.

Vir backed up, took a great breath… and Leaped.

— —

Maiya watched her friend leap and bound, roll, and jump with avian grace. Like a circus performer—a master of acrobatics.

With each obstacle cleared, her heart skipped a beat, thankful he was unharmed and well. As he inched closer to his goal, her hope and excitement grew and grew, until the tension threatened to seize her heart.

He's gotten so good.

In the beginning, there had been hope for her. Maybe she was a slow learner compared to Vir, but she had made progress.

Then, months ago, she’d plateaued, and her magic training had begun.

But she’d never stopped training Kalari. After learning of her parents’ death, she’d redoubled her efforts. While she didn’t brave the course, each day, she diligently dueled Vir, improving with agonizing slowness.

At some point, she’d understood that no matter how hard she tried, no matter how far she ran, she would never catch up to her dearest friend.

Then she'd realized it didn’t matter.

She’d never be able to beat Vir, but her skills had grown to a point where she could give even a Balar Ten knight a hard time. Without her magic. With it? She could easily decimate an entire squad. For the first time since training with Vir, she was proud of her own skills.

And why not? She’d spent every waking moment developing her magic. Even there, she was not a fast learner. But she didn’t need to be, not with the endless hours she devoted. After all, few things could resist sheer, relentless determination.

Anything other than total commitment would be an affront to her parents’ memory. Now that they were gone, she had to live up to their expectations. Had to. No matter what.

In that way, she shared the same tragedy with Vir, and their responses had been identical.

And tomorrow, for the first time, she would wield the full might of her magic in a duel against Vir. For the first time, they would learn which of them was more powerful. She looked forward to it.

Vir Danced past the whirling blades, and Maiya wished he’d seen Riyan’s jaw drop. She so desperately wanted to save that expression. She would have framed it.

And then, against the next obstacle, Vir did something unfathomable.

Maiya expected Vir to Dance again, sending him to the hanging ropes. Instead, he’d High Jumped…

“To the roof!?” She exclaimed, her mouth agape. “Why would he do that?” Why didn’t he just Dance to the ropes—oh! Right. No shadows!

Maiya craned her neck to see what harebrained strategy her friend had cooked up this time. Armed with dual katars, Vir used High Jump’s momentum to anchor himself to the ceiling. Dangling fifty paces above, he then kicked his boots together, and Maiya saw two deadly blades extend from his toes.

Wrenching his body, Vir drove his boot blades into the ceiling. He resembled a spider, glued upside down to the clay dome.

“Is… is he crawling? Is he crawling on the ceiling?” Tanya exclaimed.

“It… would appear so,” Riyan said, stroking his beard.

Methodically, Vir crawled his way across the dome ceiling, bypassing the penultimate obstacle—the ropes—entirely.

“That was not what I had intended,” Riyan muttered, speaking to himself. “But I cannot fault the result. Cunning. Very cunning.”

Her friend had just trivially cleared the course. He looked… “invincible,” she whispered, feeling a cold chill run down her spine. I’ll have to go all out against him tomorrow.

But then, the unthinkable happened.

When Vir had finally crawled his way past the dangling ropes on the ceiling, he fell. And fell and fell.

Maiya’s eyes went wide in horror. “He’s going to die!”

Her legs were in motion well before her mind had caught up. She was running to him. To where he would fall. As if that’ll do him any good. Think, Maiya! Think! What can you do?

She hadn’t precharged any of her orbs. There wasn’t enough time to charge them before he fell.

Dread overcame her as the horrible truth dawned on her. There’s nothing I can do. Again. Just like Rudvik. Just like with my parents.

“Riyan!” she cried. But the man simply crossed his arms and stared at Vir as he fell. He made no motion to help her friend.

Maiya watched him fall for an eternity. As if time itself had slowed to a crawl.

“Uh, Maiya?”

“H-huh?” She replied, gawking at Vir, currently dusting off his black robe.

“What are you doing?”

“U-u-y-y-you fell.”

Vir cocked a brow at her. “I let go. Oh, right!” he said, snapping his fingers. “I learned Light Step recently. Took forever to figure out how to activate it at the last second right before I hit the ground. I, uh, might have forgotten to tell you.”

“Two minutes, twenty seconds. You pass,” Riyan said, but Maiya barely heard him.

She fell to her knees, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Oh Adinat? Oh Janak? Badrak, Vera, Yuma, and Chala? What did I ever do to deserve this?

When her gaze returned to Vir, it had warped into a scowl that pierced the very depths of his soul, forcing him back in terror.

“Friend, just you wait till tomorrow. I am going to kill you.”