192: Power Training (Patreon)

Days bled together as Vir meditated, working tirelessly to expand his prana capacity. Through careful study and experimentation, he’d learned that by injecting blood into Parai’s Barrier pattern and by forcing it to deviate slightly, the barrier effect weakened enough to allow prana to enter his body.

Prana Barrier was essentially a better version of Prana Dam—the supersaturated layer Vir kept near his skin—so with this new ability, he didn’t even need the dam at all.

Slowly, Vir’s blood capacity stretched, though the ordeal was both less painful, and far quicker, on account of Ashani’s pranites.

What would normally have taken him months now only took days, and just three weeks after Ashani had shut down, Vir was fully acclimated. Prana Barrier finally dropped, and he’d suffered no ill effects from it. What would have killed him in moments just a week prior had now become benign.

In addition, Vir’s muscles had visibly grown, making his armor feel tight, and his body coursed with power. Thanks both to the prana, and the high nutrition food and pure water Ashani had prepared for him in her absence.

Vir had never felt as strong in his life. It was all a little intoxicating. The thought of going back to his more mundane self now seemed unpleasant.

Luckily, there was little need to. Experiments with this newfound prana capacity had yielded interesting results. When full, Vir’s Talents’ charging rate diminished slightly, as expected. He had to pull prana from his legs or arms to create the vacuum effect—or the potential difference, as Ashani had called it. Still, the overwhelming amount of prana in the Mahādi Realm meant the charging rate was still lightning quick.

When Vir eventually left Mahādi behind, he could simply reactivate Prana Dam to prevent the monstrous amount of prana in his blood from leaking out, thereby retaining the benefits. His prana capacity had permanently expanded, and would permanently strengthen him.

It also meant he could now power Talents using the prana reserves in his own body—a feat not even Cirayus was capable of.

Eager to test it out, Vir left Janak’s lab, darting up the stairs and out of the home.

He stepped onto the lift platform, which activated automatically, lowering him to the street.

The Ashfire Wolves who guarded the entrance snarled at Vir’s approach, but he ignored them, Leaping some distance away for his experiments.

First up was Leap. As the Talent that consumed the least prana, it made for a good test.

Vir activated the ability, coalescing blood into his leg muscles and willing himself to shoot forward.

Leap activated, draining his prana reserves—but not emptying them. It also shot him nearly two hundred paces forward. By increasing his prana capacity, he’d also increased his ability to channel it. Like expanding the water pipe, his blood could support a greater flow rate now. And that meant his Talents had grown even stronger.

Five more Leaps drained Vir’s body to a level where he could no longer sustain that increased rate, and the Talent took him less and less distance.

Looks like it’s five or six full-power Leaps for now.

Vir looked up to see a couple of Ashani’s Ashfire Wolves had perched themselves on nearby ledges protruding from the spires, observing his antics with curiosity. Their black hides camouflaged them on the dark towers, but they lit up like a beacon to Prana Vision.

Watch all you want, just don’t get in my way, Vir thought.

As significant as his gains were, there was still an opportunity to expand his blood’s capacity, above and beyond what the realm demanded. After all, he was still just in the outer reaches of Mahādi, and there were other ways of forcing the process if needed.

Blink consumed the same amount of prana as Leap, just in a shorter time for a more explosive burst. His body could support a handful of activations of that Talent as well.

Prana Blade had always powered off his blood, but now it shot out even denser, a black abyss of visible prana.

The Ashfire Wolves perked up at the sight of the devastating blade of pure prana.

Impressed already? Vir thought, observing the beasts as the prana in his body refilled. Wait ‘till you see what comes next!

Blade Launch was in another realm entirely, sucking Vir dry to fire off a devastating attack that ripped through the air, dying off a full hundred paces away.

Like Maiya’s C Grade Wind Blade, but deadlier. Far deadlier.

Vir’s gallery grew.

Chakram Launch was no less impressive, sending his disks flying a full two hundred paces before coming to a stop, effectively doubling their previous maximum distance. Vir suspected they’d be deadlier, too. That was hard to test, owing to the Imperium preservation scripts that covered their buildings and roads. Nothing he had penetrated them.

Gotta watch it with those, though, Vir thought. Powering Launch from the prana in his body had left him an empty husk—that included the pranites in his blood. And unlike his blood, they couldn’t be replaced. When they ran dry, they were gone for good. He’d have to be careful to ensure that never happened.

Vir mulled over these new discoveries. Powering Talents with his blood freed him from dependence on prana-starved lands. Useful both for offense and escape; a single invocation of Dance of the Shadow Demon could mean the difference between life or death. This would serve him well in the Demon Realm, assuming the shadows there were strong enough.

It also meant he could use Talents while airborne in the Demon and Human Realms.

Bet people will get a kick out of that, he thought.

While the ability to power Talents from his blood was less useful in the Ash, the vitality boost would certainly help.

But not enough, Vir thought darkly.

He held no notions of actually fighting the Yaksha guardian. He didn’t dare try. Even with his offensive gains, this was an Imperium Automaton he was up against—a machine created by the gods. It had survived for thousands of years against foes far greater than Vir.

Vir would be stealthy, leveraging Dance of the Shadow Demon to sneak past the guardian. He’d grab the cores and escape as fast as he could.

That was the plan, but Vir wasn’t naïve—he was venturing into the maw of death. He needed better defense, and his seric armor alone wasn’t going to cut it.

He needed Prana Armor, and he had a pretty good idea how to achieve it.

In fact, Parai had given it to him already. Vir had kept Prana Barrier off recently—now that he’d acclimatized to the ambient prana density, it was more an impediment than an aid.

Prana Barrier worked by repulsing ambient prana. Ashani had even called it a Repulsion Field.

If so, what would happen when Vir ran prana through the pattern backward, as he’d done with Prana Channeling when he’d entered the Ash?

Luckily, Prana Barrier was subconscious—ingrained into his muscle memory. Shifting it to run in reverse should…

Got it!

The pattern reversed, and instead of being repulsed, prana surged into him… over-saturating his blood.

Well, this would be a good way to train up my blood capacity, I suppose, he thought, canceling the ability.

That wasn’t quite what he was going for, but the good news was Parai’s Prana Barrier moved such little blood, it was possible to run two of them simultaneously in opposite directions.

Because of its subconscious nature, it’d taken Vir a while to wrangle the knowledge into his conscious mind. Luckily, the task had proven far simpler than learning it from scratch, and so Vir had managed it in the weeks he took to expand his blood’s capacity.

By running one repulsion pattern and another attraction pattern—and by adjusting the blood flow such that the attraction pattern was slightly stronger, Vir slowly coalesced prana against his skin, and kept it there.

But the two forces fought each other, and so the attraction effect was weak. It forcing Vir to wait several minutes before prana accumulated around his skin to a level that rivaled the Domain Lords he’d fought on the Mahakurma’s back.

Definitely not something I can summon on demand, he thought.

There was another issue with it as well—whenever he sucked in prana to power a Talent, the layer of armor would be damaged. Made of pure prana as it was, it simply got sucked into his body to feed the Talent.

Which meant that part of his body would be armorless for a minute or two until the cycling patterns restored the prana layer.

It was certainly a restriction, but not a crippling one—Vir could always suck prana from the ground instead.

The other interesting observation was that when active, the attraction effect was always active. And that meant it never stopped pulling prana toward him, condensing it around his body, tighter and tighter. There would naturally be a limit beyond which the attractive force would be insufficient to compress the prana armor any further, but even after ten minutes, Vir hadn’t reached it.

Good for surviving a single, lethal hit, but bad in a protracted battle.

Still, Vir couldn’t complain. It was more protection than he’d ever had before.

Satisfied, Vir strode up to his gallery of canine onlookers who’d now gathered on the street.

“Easy, easy! I mean you no harm.” He opened his palms, scanning the pack for—

“Found you,” he said, noticing the runt of the litter.

Vir walked up to the wolf, who eyed him wearily.

“You’re the one who found me at the Ash Gate, aren’t you? You’re a little smaller than your brethren.”

The wolf growled, baring its teeth.

“Okay, good. So you can understand me. Normal Ash Wolves are smart, but you guys are just… more. I figured you might be able to help.”

Vir pulled out the two broken halves of the orb he’d destroyed and slotted them together.

“The vault. Where these are. Can you take me?”

The other wolves closed in around Vir, surrounding him.

“Listen to me!” Vir said, raising his voice to be heard. “Ashani—your master—is dying. I can help her, but I need you to guide me. Will you help me?”

The wolves looked at each other. The Alpha had perished in their earlier battle, and so Vir sensed some confusion among them.

To his surprise, it was the runt in front of him who howled, attracting the attention of its brethren.

The wolf barked sharply, then turned, loping away. Most of the others followed.

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Vir said, pocketing the broken orb.

“Let’s do this.”