87: Empowered (Patreon)

NOTE: Hey everyone, I see your feedback from the prev chap, and will make some edits. I agree that Vir doesn't need to divulge as much sensitive info to the prince, whom he's just met. Will make him a bit more cautious during that convo.

Vir greeted the dawn with a heavy heart and bleary eyes. Having given up on sleep, he’d left the sleeping Neel in his room and relocated to a nearby rooftop to Daha as it woke up.

To think that a mere seven months after Rudvik’s death, Vir was about to claim the lives of those who’d perpetrated that atrocity.

It wasn’t about revenge. At least, he tried to convince himself of that. While the head priest angered Vir, he wasn’t motivated by hatred, nor was he consumed by it. Rather… killing them simply felt right. It felt like closure, like he needed to do this to close one era of his life to begin another.

Vir was Ashborn. He was the reincarnation of the Primordial. Whether he agreed to Shardul and Ekanai’s requests or not, there was a life for him beyond Brij. Beyond even Hiranya.

But before he could turn the page, the current chapter had to be written. And its climax would occur in just a few brief hours.

The meeting with prince Sanobar had gone well. Surprisingly well. Not only had the prince given Vir information about Mina’s quirks, habits, combat style, affinities, and weaknesses, he’d even arranged a plan.

A plan whose timetable was moved up, owing to the head priest’s calendar. The man ultimately responsible for the deaths of Apramor, Alicia, and Rudvik was about to retreat to his vacation home to the north, near the inland sea. Tomorrow.

Which meant tonight was Vir’s only opportunity. The prince had panicked at the suddenness, but eventually agreed to Vir’s terms. Tonight, he would eliminate both princess Mina and the head priest in one fell swoop. For better or for worse, it would all be over soon.

The plan was simple, as most good plans were. Prince Sanobar would have a sedative sprinkled into Mina’s food. Vir would wait until the dead of night, entering through the secret passage. He worried a bit about whether he could bypass the hatch’s lock, but if he couldn’t, Dance would allow him inside.

With luck, Mina’s death would go unnoticed for hours, giving Vir free rein to infiltrate the royal temple where the head priest slept.

The priest was the main reason Vir went along with this. He’d seriously considered ambushing ‘Amin’ when she was alone. Ideally in the sewers, where no one would notice. But if he offed the princess, what of Harak? Castle defenses would be bolstered, and his chances of taking down the priest would plummet. It was safer to kill both in one fell swoop.

According to Sanobar, Harak retired early and snored up his entire quarters. Killing him should be a simple matter. Vir would then escape—either back through Mina’s room, or to the District of Internal Affairs, whichever was more readily accessible.

Vir smirked. Since when did things ever go according to plan?

Riyan was right. This would take everything he had, and then some. He’d have to transcend his limits and step outside his comfort zone.

Worrying about it wouldn’t change a thing. Preparations would, and there were several actions he could take today to ensure his success tonight.

Vir stepped off the fourth story roof and fell into the alley, leveraging Light Step to turn his fatal fall into a small hop.

The veiled receptionist waved Vir down as he entered. “Acolyte, a package for you, just this morning,” he said, passing a rectangular object to Vir.

“Thanks,” Vir said, leaving the package sealed until he’d reached his room.

Neel woke up at the noise and lazily sauntered over, brushing up against his leg.

“I feel like you keep getting left behind on these missions, boy. Don’t worry. That’s gonna change.”

Vir was hoping to be rid of this assassin role he’d somehow grown into.

Arooo!

“That’s right. It’s all gonna change after tonight, Neel,” he said, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a wooden box.

Inside, he found ten silver coins, a velvet emerald-and-gold robe, and a folded piece of paper. The robe was the same one Mina had given him weeks ago when he’d first arrived in the city. San had altered the garment, removing the insignias that marked it as a royal heirloom. Now, it made the perfect disguise to infiltrate the royal grounds with. It marked him as someone of prestige, trusted by the royal family.

The coins were downpayment; he’d receive far more upon completion of the task. It was a nice show of faith from the prince, but what interested Vir more was the paper.

It was a map. A detailed map of the castle grounds. Every floor was there, including the basement floors and the temple building. And marked with an X was the royal priest’s room, on the sixth floor of the tall temple building.

Of course it has to be all the way up.

The robe was his backup disguise. Another tool he might use to keep himself hidden.

Vir spent the next hour committing the castle map to memory. It helped that he’d already visited once, allowing him to link the halls from his memory to the lines drawn on the map.

The money, while appreciated, wasn’t immediately useful for him. With the new coin, he could afford that brigandine he’d been eyeing, but there wouldn’t be enough time to have it fitted. Going on a high stakes mission with unfitted armor he hadn’t grown used to felt worse to him than going without it.

It was the same for his chakrams. Though he’d longed to upgrade his rusted iron ones for superior steel, chakrams weren’t widely available weapons. They’d be a custom order, which meant waiting a week or more.

Instead, Vir spent his time on the upgrade that would bring him the most benefits.

“Feel like some exercise, Neel?” he said with a grin. “I’ll race ya!”

Woof woof!

It was time to remove the thorn in his side. It was time to master Empower.

— —

It took some time to find the ideal spot. The rooftops made prana channeling more difficult, so he’d opted for an alley in the Upper West Side district, far enough away that his experiments wouldn’t drain the prana near Mina’s secret hatch, which was also in the same district.

The area was defined by its larger homes, which meant a lower population density, allowing Vir to practice in peace while Neel roamed, poking his nose into everything he found.

Empower would serve him well for his upcoming operation. It was an ideal counterpart to Toughen, which was another side of the same ability.

With Toughen, Vir supersaturated his blood with prana to improve his resilience. It was essentially natural armor, but it was one that had to be activated manually.

For Empower, Vir relied on the same technique, except instead of focusing his will on tanking hits, he surged the prana in conjunction with a strike. Now that he thought about it, Leap and High Jump worked similarly.

He was learning that what appeared to be unique Talents were really just different applications of the same underlying principle. Just that they appeared distinct since no one seemed to understand how Talents really worked.

The issue with Empower was the prana he sucked in from the ground would dissipate into his bloodstream as it traveled from his legs to his arms.

By the time the supersaturated blood reached his arms, it was no longer supersaturated.

Until now, Vir had relied on a crutch to make up for this. Since he lacked the skills to conduct ground Ash affinity prana up to his arms, he’d been forced to charge the Talent by placing his hands on the ground.

This was less than ideal. In combat, he’d rarely have that luxury, and Empower was uniquely suited to combat. He needed a way to charge it as quickly as he charged Leap.

Which meant conducting the prana through his entire body, and on that front, he’d made progress in two areas.

The first was a continuation of what he’d been doing the past several months—mapping out his body’s blood pathways. Prana was bound to blood. Blood carried prana—they were inseparable. Which meant if Vir wanted to optimize the flow of prana from his legs to his arms, he had to understand how blood traveled through his body.

Mapping out the largest arteries hadn’t taken him too long. After all, they had the most blood and prana in them, making them easy to detect. It was the smaller pathways that had taken him forever.

Vir retrieved a piece of parchment from his sack and unfurled it. It vaguely resembled the human body, but instead of showing flesh, it showed the pathways he’d mapped until now.

The sheer number staggered him. Many were so tiny, he only found them by intentionally diverting prana and seeing the motes travel through the tiny tubes. They were otherwise invisible.

Ordinarily, such small capillaries would be useless to him—even if he could shortcut blood up his body using those, they were too tiny to carry a significant amount of blood.

But he’d been working around that. After trial and error, he’d learned to expand the pathways. By regularly shunting prana-soaked blood through them, they slowly expanded. The process took weeks, and Vir had only stumbled upon it by chance as he practiced his prana control.

It did work, however. After months of practice, he’d finally expanded the proper blood pathways to streamline the prana flow from his legs up to his arms.

Taking a deep breath, he grasped the blood in his foot, pulling it up higher into his leg. He left enough blood behind to conduct the ground Ash prana that rushed into his leg. Losing no time, he guided the supersaturated blood up his leg, then through his enlarged blood passages that connected to another artery, shortcutting the path.

Almost there!

The supersaturated blood traveled up his gut, then to his chest…

But by the time it reached his arm, it was barely more saturated than the rest of his body’s blood.

Grak it!

His path optimization wasn’t enough. Another failure.

Vir shook it off. He’d hoped optimizing prana flow would suffice, but he had another trick up his sleeve. Just that, unlike his first solution, he’d never attempted this one before. And Vir had a track record for blacking out whenever he did something new.

Clearing his mind, he refocused on the problem. The issue he faced was twofold. First was the long path, which he’d already shortened as much as he could. The other problem was the leakage. That was the root cause of his troubles. If he could stop prana from leaking to the rest of his body, then the path length didn’t matter. A longer route would hinder the Talent’s charging speed, but only slightly.

The key lay in how prana traveled into his body. Namely, it required blood. If Vir evacuated all the blood from his foot—not only would it be painful—the ground prana would have nothing to conduct it. Blood could only hold a certain amount of prana. To conduct more, more blood was needed.

In which case, a complete absence of blood would have the opposite effect—it wouldn’t conduct prana at all.

Rather, it wouldn’t leak prana at all.

Vir tried again. This time, he created a bubble devoid of blood around the supersaturated blood as it traveled up his body.

Easier said than done. It took far more concentration to keep the blood surrounding the pathway away. There was just so much more to manage.

But it worked. The supersaturated prana’s dissipation rate plummeted. Earlier, eighty-five percent of the prana had dissipated, but now, less than twenty-five percent was lost.

Not ideal, but…

“Hiyah!” Vir roared, swiping an Empowered katar into the air.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.

All he had to do now was reduce the mental burden required to perform the ability, and to speed it up as much as he could.

Vir looked up at the sky to find the sun was still low. More than half a day remained until the operation.

Half a day to train.

With a grin, Vir activated the ability again. Come nightfall, he’d be ready.

NOTE: I’ve gone back and added mentions of Vir practicing his blood pathway expansion a few times during this arc, so there’s more of a sense of progression there.