Cirayus, oh great demigod, please watch over me!
7ASH WOLF
With an explosion of ash, Vir darted to the nearest Ash Wolf, his katar extended. Even in the Ash, Vir doubted many beasts could move as quickly as he could.
Ash Wolves didn’t match his speed, they exceeded it handily. The wolf calmly moved to the side, easily dodging his thrust.
Worse, Vir shot past, giving his back to the enemy. He’d put so much power into his attack, it became extremely difficult to stop, let alone redirect the attack. Vir flew for another fifty paces before slowing enough to dig his heels into the ash.
The moment he did, he was beset by all five wolves, and unlike before, Cirayus wasn’t keeping them from pouncing on him all at once.
Forget attacking, Vir was hard-pressed to dodge and block their unending torrent of blows. The moment he blocked a claw, an open maw would be diving for his neck. Ducking that only put him face-to-face with two more sets of claws.
Vir had wondered why the Ash Wolves’ Balar Rank soared so dramatically in a pack. Normally, the effect was additive, but not so with these beasts. Together, they were more than the sum of their parts, acting more like a single entity with five bodies, rather than individual units.
They fluidly and seamlessly pressured Vir, reminding him of Spear’s Edge and also the two Hiranyan warriors who’d ambushed him in the Godshollow.
True teamwork is terrifying.
It was something he’d never quite achieved with Spear’s Edge.
Vir dodged claws and maws, blocking the ones he had to. He was losing, and his enemy knew it.
I need some way of isolating one from the rest, he thought furiously.
Easier said than done. In the few instances where Vir attacked a wolf, it always moved in a way that kept it close to the pack.
After defending an onslaught of claws, Vir glimpsed the slightest opening, lunging forth with his katar… only to find another pair of claws lunging at him from the sides.
A trap!
Vir slammed his leg down, leveraging High Jump to abruptly change course. Even then, he wasn’t fast enough.
Claws slashed across his armor, leaving scratch marks along the pristine seric.
“These things are way too smart,” he muttered under his breath.
The attack brought with it another consideration—he needed to be far more careful about damage to his armor. Without a means of repairing it, any damage would be permanent. Haymi’s magic had protected him before, taking damage before the actual armor took damage, but now that he lacked that boon, he’d need to consider when and where he took hits.
Vir wasn’t skilled enough to dodge every blow, but he started focusing on evasion more to protect his armor. Which meant he had even fewer opportunities to strike back.
He needed time to come up with a fresh strategy.
Reaching for his ultimate weapon, Vir pulled prana from his legs and tried to sink into the shadows… Nothing happened. The Shadow Realm remained firmly shut. Then he looked up at the sky and understood.
It wasn’t so much cloudy as it was murky. In the Ashen Realm, day and night didn’t exist. The lighting was always hazy and dim, obscured by the unending ashfalls, which meant Dance was far less reliable.
Sweat built up along Vir’s brow and his breaths grew increasingly labored. The wolves were wearing him down, and if he didn’t do something soon, they’d win.
“One minute,” Cirayus called from some distance away.
Desperately, Vir created more of a suction, pulling so much prana from his feet into his legs until it was practically dry.
It was not an easy task. Ground prana threatened to rush into his body, overloading the wall he’d erected next to his skin.
Finally, just as an Ash Wolf lunged at him, the shadows opened, and Vir sunk, freezing time.
Not doing that again, he thought, taking a breather.
Though pain couldn’t find him in the shadows, the throbbing sensation he’d experienced right before lingered in his mind. Forcing Dance to activate like that came with its consequences. It might work for emergencies, but it wasn’t something he could rely on continuously.
It left a sour taste in his mouth knowing his most powerful ability was crippled in the Ash, especially considering all the gains he’d just made.
That said, in the Human Realm, it would’ve been impossible to brute force the ability, no matter how hard he tried.
Just means I need different strengths to compensate. He’d come to rely on Dance heavily lately, and that worried him. In case it ever failed him—like just now—he’d be dead in the water. Or worse, actually dead.
Now that he was inside the shadows, he had a choice: either do what he’d always done, leveraging the shadows to decimate his enemy, or challenge himself to exceed his limits and grow.
He took the latter. Was it even a choice?
His mind turned to speed. Haste would’ve been nice, but as a Rare Tier Talent Vir had no familiarity with, he doubted he’d learn it in the few seconds he had before the shadows ejected him.
Blink.
An ability he’d craved ever since seeing Riyan use it. It was like Leap, just faster than the blink of an eye.
Vir imagined there wasn’t much that differentiated it from Leap, other than the prana it consumed. Vir settled on a plan, but first, he’d even the odds a bit.
Vir snaked a hand out of a wolf’s shadow and skewered its soft belly. It tried to run, of course, but there was no outrunning one’s own shadow. Vir’s arm followed the beast, plunging, retracting, and plunging again with the efficiency of a machine. Tireless and unrelenting.
The wolves’ pack mates froze, unable to understand how the disembodied arm had murdered their brother.
They didn’t have long; Vir’s katar soon found its next target and began the brutal assassination again.
There wasn’t a third. By the time he’d killed the second, the wolves had shot away at top speed, leaving only one behind. The perfect test subject.
There was just one problem. With the wolves gone and Vir in the shadows, he didn’t have a full shadow to emerge from any longer. He picked the next closest one. Cirayus.
Vir jumped out of the demon’s shadow, but the wolf had already put distance between them. He needed to close the distance and do it faster than Leap would allow.
“Time!” Cirayus called.
Vir didn’t listen. He’d already committed. Vir surged as much prana into his leg as possible, but this time, he focused not on sheer distance, but raw, explosive power. He envisioned instantaneous transport.
The Talent responded. It yearned for more, sucking prana voraciously through the ground and the air both. It even sucked prana from the rest of his body.
Then it activated. Vir didn’t quite move instantaneously, but it sure felt like it. It was as if he’d taken a punch to his gut, such was the force on his body. That was before he crashed into the fleeing Ash Wolf at incredible speed, sending them both to the ground.
When he rose, he found his katar buried in the wolf’s head. Pure luck, more than anything, but he’d take it.
“Badrak’s Blasted Balls, Vir!” Cirayus thundered, catching up in no time at all, and slapping him on his back. “Now that was a show. Well fought, lad. Well fought.”
“T-thanks. But I didn’t make it in time.”
“Bah. You had a whole minute left. I took a minute off the timer to push you.”
Monster.
Vir didn’t have it in him to reply. His leg throbbed and his whole body ached.