177: Domain Lord (Patreon)

She swept her eyes over the dead city. Little had changed since her last hibernation cycle. The city of spires stood as it always had. Dead and abandoned, its Prana Swarm clinging as it always did to the central spire, while wyrms swum through the sky around it.

This time was different, though. It had known what she craved. Long ago, it had promised her a future. That when her cores ran dry, the end would not be the end. It would be a beginning. If only she trusted the one who would come for her.

After having remained static for so long, the realm was changing. She was changing. And she embraced it dearly.

— —

Vir sat cross-legged upon the dead domain lord’s lair, enduring agony in silence. It felt like day one in the Ash all over again.

He’d wondered why the prana density here was many times what it was just paces away, but learned that the Colossus upon which he sat emanated prana continuously. In some places, it was just a trickle. In others, a torrent that pulsed rhythmically, ebbing and flowing with each beat.

Must be where its heart is… Or some other vital organ.

The Mahakurma was prana incarnate. Just the excess bleeding off the beast was enough to make Vir’s blood explode if he didn’t maintain his saturation dam, only allowing a trickle to leak into his body at a time. The sheer scale of its size and power still boggled Vir’s mind.

Could an army of 40,000 really take this thing out? Vir thought. He doubted it, and it was likely whoever slapped that rank upon it did as well, given the bestiary's enormous Balar range from 12,000 to 40,000. While Vir hadn’t seen its maw weapon in action, the beast’s steps alone could crush a whole village in one go.

With something as mammoth as this, it was better to think of how many lives would be lost before the beast was taken down. Depending on the battlefield and circumstance, Vir could imagine it easily reaping 100,000 humans. One might consider running away, but as Vir had witnessed, the turtle could move, despite its seemingly lethargic gait.

Quick strides simply weren’t necessary when each step carried the behemoth several hundred paces at once. So while an individual or a team of mercenaries could escape the beast—or even board it—an army, or a city, had no chance. Vir wondered how long it would take for the Mahakurma to erase a city like Sonam with its maw weapon. Not long at all.

At least these horrors were contained. Ash Beasts had been stuck in the Ash for millennia for a reason; they wouldn’t survive outside with the lower density. Only the least of them could, and none of those were City Enders.

Well, maybe a certain pet Prana Swarm could… But the one Hiranya kept was a far cry from anything he might run into here.

Grak it! Mind’s wandering again.

One week had passed since Vir claimed victory over the Shredder. Seven days of agony. Both from stretching his body’s prana limits, and because more than a month had passed in the Human Realm.

The Mahakurma was still on the move, but to Vir’s immense frustration, it had delved no deeper into the Ash.

And now, even a week later, his body still hadn’t adjusted to the ambient prana levels. Vir wanted desperately to confront the next domain lord, but knew he wasn't ready.

There was just so much prana. Three times as much. When multiplied with the twofold increase Vir had dealt with upon entering the Ash’s periphery, once he acclimated, his body could handle six times what it did prior to entering the Ash. Vir doubted even the Prime Mejai could boast such a capacity.

Unfortunately, that meant little in a realm where all the beasts had more.

The adjustment process was slow and painful. There was little to do other than sit for hours on end, allowing more and more prana within himself as he adjusted. Which left his mind open for plenty of other thoughts, such as ruminating on avenues for progression, like Prana Armor.

Vir’s eyes wandered to the slash marks on his seric bracer. It was still in good condition, but a few more strikes like that, and they wouldn’t be for long.

He’d spent many hours wondering exactly how Ash Beasts manifested their armor, but now, he had an inkling. Watching the internal prana flow of an Ash Beast while fighting it wasn’t exactly a simple task, but he’d noticed a pattern.

Quite literally—Ash Beasts cycled prana through their bodies. The patterns differed, and Vir was almost sure they did it intuitively, but the principal was identical to Parai’s Prana Channeling.

A week ago, that would be as far as Vir got—Parai’s technique stymied him, working on unknown arcane principals. Now, he knew better.

It’s using Chakra. It has to be.

There were 144 chakras spread throughout the body. Cirayus concentrated on the seven major ones, but the others were also fulcrums of energy… and Prana Vision was blind to it.

It was nothing more than a hunch—but one that perfectly explained the underpinnings of Parai’s patterns. Parai must have mastered each one, allowing him to design new patterns by linking prana from one chakra to another in a virtuous cycle.

And so, Vir had spent the past days concentrating on the Foundation chakra, though the pain assaulting his body hadn’t helped any. While his progress had been glacial, thankfully, he wasn’t on his own.

“You’re pushing too hard, lad,” Cirayus said, striding up to where Vir sat. The other domain lords shirked back, instinctively understanding the threat that Cirayus represented.

“I need this,” Vir said. “How am I gonna defeat the other domain lords if I don’t do at least this much?”

“Aye, true. Surely you’ll be able to keep this up for the foreseeable future, yes? Ah, silly me. Of course you can’t. Let me teach you about this concept we call pacing.”

Vir rolled his eyes under his eyelids. “I just want to get deeper into the Ash.”

“Yes, to keep your poor lass from worrying. A noble motivation, but do ensure you stay on the right side of the line that splits ambition from recklessness.”

“I will. Say... have you ever seen an Ash Tear to that, Cirayus?“ Vir asked, pointing to the gate that had opened up for what had to be the twentieth time since they'd arrived.

The Tear was dangerously close to a deeper Domain Lord's lair, but unlike the other lords, this one didn't hesitate. It walked right up to the Tear, which blinked out of existence as it approached.

The beast, which resembled a hulking metal gorilla, snorted in victory.

“Can't say I have, lad,“ Cirayus replied.

“Doesn't... doesn't it almost seem like it's alive?“ Vir asked. “It couldn't have been coincidence that it closed right when that ash beast got close, right?“

“If it happened once, I might've believed it. I've seen it do the same thing before,“ Cirayus said. “Keep a watchful eye. There is something strange about that one. Now, let us begin.”

Vir felt the calming aura of Cirayus’ Life chakra touch his soul. His thoughts calmed the moment he accepted it. The pain no longer dominated his mind, allowing him to contemplate on the Foundation chakra.

Maybe he was getting closer, or maybe it was Cirayus, but he felt closer to the concept of solidity. The weight that pressed upon him before had grown heavier, but so too had his ability to resist it.

Like the rock at the bottom of a mountain, the weight above it was incomprehensible, and yet, the mountain didn’t crumble. Vir couldn’t say the weight he felt amounted to a mountain’s worth—more like a small hill—but it was progress, nonetheless.

Cirayus called the session to an end six hours later, and after a quick bite of raw onion and root vegetables, Vir finally stood.

“You’re not planning on fighting the next domain lord, are you?” the demon asked, but Vir shook his head.

“I don’t have a death wish. Just, it bothers me that I don’t even know what I’ll be up against. I can see the other domain lords, but the next one remains hidden. I need more information.”

Wits, not strength, had allowed him to defeat the Shredder in his last battle. Going forward, he needed to be smarter about how he fought, squeezing every last drop of potential from his abilities.

It’s how Cirayus would fight, he thought.

“Take care not to venture into its territory. You cannot handle that level of prana. Not yet.”

Challenge accepted.

Vir could handle the prana, but only as long as he maintained his Prana Dam—the saturated layer near his skin. Taking down the next domain lord would grant him access to an even higher level area to train his body, which would speed up the process. It’d be more painful, too, but Vir was no stranger to pain.

Rather, it was the challengers that bothered him more. Over the past week, opportunistic Ash Beasts had attacked him while he meditated, eager to claim the prana-dense region for themselves.

They’d failed; Vir had fought back every one, though some were closer calls than he’d have liked. The fights grew easier as his body acclimated, strengthening him and boosting his vitality, though even then, none had been easy.

If he did make a move on the next domain lord, it wouldn’t be long before another beast claimed the empty throne he left behind. If that happened before he won, or if Vir found himself unable to take the pressure, he’d have to retreat—either fighting the new lord behind him, or giving up entirely and exiting the prana-dense regions to start from scratch.

That was a situation he wanted to avoid at all costs.

Feeling confident enough in his recent gains to take a quick break, Vir approached the periphery of the next lord’s domain.

Like his own, it was a flat, grassy land near the center of the valley. The prana was visibly thicker, forcing Vir to dial back how much of it went to his eyes—to let him penetrate the thick haze.

Scanning the horizon, he expected to find a monster with the ability to deceive the eyes and turn invisible. Such a creature would blaze brightly to Prana Vision, but he saw nothing.

Nothing, aside from a tunnel that led into the earth. Vir almost missed it, owing to Prana Vision’s degraded sight for affinities that weren’t Ash. If it wasn’t for the bright signature deep inside the shell, he might’ve missed it.

A rodent-sized beast shot up the tunnel and popped a head out of a hole in the ground before emerging, standing on its hind legs to regard Vir with hostility.

The ground squirrel might even have been cute, if its body wasn’t covered entirely with vicious-looking spines like a hedgehog. Twin tusks protruded from its mouth almost down to its clawed paws… and it moved blindingly fast.

Vir lost sight of it and assumed it had retreated into its cave, but that wasn’t the case. It’d Blinked right up to him, standing daringly at the very edge of its domain.

Scary though it might’ve been, the Ash Beast barely came up to a third of Vir’s height. Hardly a vicious opponent.

Then it shrieked, and Vir collapsed to his knees in pain. The sound wasn’t simply loud, it was alien, resonating horrifically.

When he recovered moments later, four more of its brethren had joined it. More and more poured out through perfectly camouflaged holes in the ground, and there seemed to be no end of them. Twenty. Fifty. A Hundred.

Two hundred ground squirrels all stood facing him. A whole colony.

“Well, this should be interesting.”