147: Prana Channeling (Patreon)

Vir returned to his Undercity home exhausted. Though as much as he envied Neel, who promptly curled up on the floor and fell asleep, there was far too much left to even think about resting. Most important of which was growing his power.

If there was one thing he knew for certain about the Ashen Realm, it was that no matter how much strength he possessed, it would not be enough. Perhaps it was foolish to wish for more power at this eleventh hour, but he had to at least try. Because it was equally foolish entering it without having grown far, far stronger. He knew that, and yet, he still wanted to go.

No matter how much he trained in the Human Realm, the gains he made here would be incomparable to the Ash.

Vir sat down on the earthen floor and crossed his legs. Deep inside the ground, the Order’s Prana Siphon had little effect, allowing him to practice unimpeded.

Clearing his mind of distractions, he focused on his prana. He’d given more thought to Parai’s channeling technique lately. While he regretted not being able to learn Blade Projection, Parai’s vitality boosting technique might be exactly what he needed in the Ash. More than offensive power, the ability to heal one’s wounds—especially once his stock of healing medication ran out—would be critical to his survival.

After all, it didn’t matter how hard he hit if he couldn’t survive long enough to make it to the other side.

He’d learned something after observing Parai’s technique for hours on end; the prana in his body had a particular ‘alignment’, and by grouping motes of the same prana alignment together, their strength grew dramatically. It was the basis of Parai’s technique, and the reason why his cycling pattern worked.

The concept of prana alignment was new to Vir. Until now, he’d thought that it didn’t matter how prana was channeled, and that flowing it to where it was needed most was the extent of its power. But by circulating it in specific patterns, he noticed the prana in his body had something akin to the poles on a magnet. That by aligning it incorrectly, the motes of prana repelled each other.

It was so subtle that he hadn’t sensed it before, but after seeing the results of aligning prana properly, it was now unmistakable to Prana Vision. Even so, Vir had no success at aligning his body’s prana without Parai’s technique. Controlling individual motes of prana was impossible—there was far too much of it in his body for his brain to manage. Thus, while alignment seemed like the key to further advancement, he was forced to rely on conventional options to achieve it.

Vir’s aims for this session were two-fold. He hoped to boost the existing technique’s efficiency, and also experiment with copying the pattern onto other parts of his body. While the technique had stopped the Matron’s poison, he felt he hadn’t unlocked its true potential.

Though he had no basis for it, Vir simply couldn’t shake the awe-inspiring image of healing rapidly during a fight—possibly even closing up mortal wounds.

He’d had a few thoughts on how to accomplish that. The technique relied on moving blood—and thus prana—in a very specific pattern. He didn’t understand the principal behind it, only that this particular pattern dramatically boosted his body’s regular healing mechanisms, clotting and closing wounds faster than normally possible. It also gave him more vitality, as if he’d supersaturated his body with prana.

There was more; the faster he moved his blood, the more effective it was. He’d already reached the limits of how quickly he could safely channel blood and prana with his current body, so that part wouldn’t pose a problem.

Likewise, expanding his blood vessels was a skill that had become very familiar to Vir after mastering Empower. He never stopped practicing, even after learning the ability. Now, it took mere days to expand his larger pathways. The smaller ones only took hours. Doing so came with its risks, but he was well past playing things safe.

Vir took a deep breath and started with the smallest pathways on his back, expanding only those used by Parai’s technique.

The whole time, he kept a keen eye on his body’s Ash Prana with Prana Vision. Because prana was locked to blood, if he did rupture a small pathway, Prana Vision would be the first to tell him; prana leaking where it shouldn’t be immediately meant something had gone wrong.

Vir took his time, carefully nudging the pathways open bit by bit, allowing more blood to flow through them.

Meaningful expansion would take time, but even a small improvement would tell him whether this strategy bore fruit.

Once he’d completed, he activated Parai’s technique, sending blood flowing faster and faster.

With no wounds to heal, the technique did little apart from tingle and make him feel full of life, but there was no denying it; his blood now cycled slightly faster.

Yes!!

From now on, he’d work on expanding his pathways during every waking moment until he entered the Ash.

While pathway expansion was a slow process, it wasn’t his only idea. Cycling blood faster was good, but ultimately, Vir suspected it was the total amount of cycled prana that determined the ability’s efficacy. In which case, supersaturating his blood before cycling it ought to boost the skill as well.

Of all the ideas he’d had, this was among the safer ones, and so Vir boldly sucked prana out of his feet, creating a suction that drew Ash prana from the ground into his legs. Carefully guiding the supersaturated blood up his legs into his back, he cycled the blood according to Parai’s technique. The result was instantaneous—the tingling sensation grew stronger, and his sense of vitality soared.

If only I could do this to my arms and legs…!?

Empower, Leap, and High Jump flooded his limbs with prana. Parai’s technique cycled prana according to a pattern.

Could it be that my existing Talents and Parai’s Technique are related?

Rather, Leap and Empower now felt like a brute force application—akin to an amateur bashing away at a sculpture with crude tools. Parai’s technique merely took that prana and channeled it in a more efficient manner, aligning the blood flow to maximize the effects of the prana like a master would.

No, that wasn’t quite right. If the Talents he knew were the beginner version, then prana channeling would be an intermediate step at beast. What really excited him was decoupling prana from blood. That would allow him to cycle prana through his body as rapidly as he wanted—almost like the electricity the Pagan Order used for their non-magical lights. Unfortunately, Vir couldn’t be sure if that was even possible, or if it was merely a delusion on his part.

Working on the assumption that Parai’s technique was an evolution of his existing augmentation Talents, he flooded prana into his legs as he would when using Empower. But instead of triggering the ability, he allowed the prana to dissipate.

When activating Leap, High Jump, and Empower, prana selectively filtered into certain muscle groups. Or rather, he’d learned early on that channeling prana into certain muscles yielded far better results than others.

What if I use that as the foundation, and apply Parai’s technique on just those muscles?

There was a certain form to Parai’s technique. Almost like the runes that were inscribed within magical orbs—the overall structure was both geometric and beautiful in a way. It reminded Vir of the prana lines in Valaka Amara. At the time, they appeared to serve no purpose other than being beautiful, but now Vir wondered whether their form actually supported their function.

The structure made it simpler for Vir to copy the general form. The details were another matter entirely. Parai’s back technique had blood travel along tiny pathways, and Vir had found in the memory vision that the technique failed to function very well unless most of those smaller pathways were intact.

Regardless, he began with the larger pathways since they were easier, moving the blood in his calf muscle according to Parai’s technique.

The first issue he hit was that the pathways in his leg didn’t match those of his back. At all. Which meant replicating the technique was impossible.

Instead, Vir sought to preserve the overall form of the circulation path, even if the exact details weren’t quite correct. To do this safely, he first had to omit smaller parts of the pattern from his back technique one by one, analyzing which omissions caused the ability to cease functioning, and leaving out only the ones that had a small impact on its efficacy.

After many dead ends and backtracking, he finally had a simplified version of Parai’s technique that was about 75% as efficient, but less than half as complex.

Now comes the hard part.

From experience, he’d learned that moving blood in a localized region along smaller pathways usually bore little risk; it was the experiments near his heart and head that could kill him. But even if it didn’t kill him, the pain of forcing blood where it didn’t want to go wasn’t anything to dismiss.

Vir gritted through the pain, aborting his attempts when his body refused to do what he asked.

Slowly, just as he’d done in the memory vision, he carefully molded the circulation of his leg’s blood to Parai’s pattern, copying over one detail at a time, modifying it as little as possible to work with the blood pathways already there.

He augmented this by expanding some of the paths to better fit the technique, and after several hours, managed something that more or less resembled the pathway he used on his back.

Dunno what it’ll do… or even if I’m about to destroy my leg.

Vir didn’t have the luxury of convalescing if he did injure something. Then again, neither did he have the luxury of entering the Ash without every advantage he could muster.

Gritting his teeth, he went for it, channeling a trickle of his body’s own prana into the pattern.

He’d been fully prepared for agonizing, debilitating pain. Nothing of the sort happened. In fact, nothing much happened at all; his muscle behaved as normal.

So he tried channeling more prana through. Then even more.

Something was wrong. He was channeling nearly as much prana through his calf muscle as he did for his back, yet he felt only the barest tingle from his legs.

Instead of injecting even more prana, Vir stopped and analyzed his blood circulation with Prana Vision.

At first, he saw nothing, but as he cycled his blood, it became obvious what was happening. Blood was moving along the path he wanted, but not all of it. In fact, much was being lost to the blood outside the pathways, bleeding off.

It was the same issue he’d had when he first learned to suck prana from the ground. The same issue that reared its head when he first tried Empowering his arms.

Luckily, he already knew how to fix this problem. By saturating the blood lining the pathways, he trapped the blood inside, preventing it from leaking out.

He’d learned to do this subconsciously for his torso long ago, which is why it completely slipped his mind.

Vir once again cycled prana through his calf muscle, and this time, the tingling sensation nearly made his leg spasm.

On a whim, he activated Leap, but instead of simply dumping prana into his leg, he channeled it through Parai’s pattern.

The effect was both surprising and predictable. Instead of hurtling forth, he tumbled and fell over, but he fell over, laughing in pure glee.

It was obvious why it hadn’t worked—he’d only boosted a single muscle with Parai’s technique, while Leap relied on several muscles working in tandem.

But it also meant that whatever ability Vir had before was now augmented even farther. Even better, this upgrade took no additional prana at all. Rather, it made his existing usage even more efficient.

And unlike an individual Talent, this evolution boosted nearly every Talent he had. Leap, high Jump, and Empower all leveraged the same fundamental principle, and so it stood to believe that all would improve.

Now all he had to do was replicate the same pattern on all of his major leg muscles, then again on his arms. Having the benefit of a template to follow, he suspected it wouldn’t be much longer until he had a full set.

When Vir’s mind turned to the bottomless Ash prana that was rumored to populate the Ashen Realm, he shivered. Because while Parai’s technique improved his efficiency, that improvement was magnified several-fold when injected with even more prana.

When Maiya returned hours later and knocked on his door, Vir opened his eyes and grinned. For the first time, he felt excited about his upcoming journey, rather than simply anxious and terrified.

What heights will I achieve in that blighted land? What sights will I see?

He couldn’t wait to find out.