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, and 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 principle 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 principles. 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 them.
Cirayus mentioned as much, and it also 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 spent the past days concentrating on the Foundation Chakra, though the pain assaulting his body hadn’t helped any. While his progress proved 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 do that, Cirayus?” Vir asked, pointing to the gate that 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 a coincidence that it closed right when that Ash Beast got close, right?”
“If it happened once, I might’ve not believed it. Though 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 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 stood.
“You’re not planning on fighting the next Domain Lord, are you?” the demon asked.
“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, allowed him to defeat the Shredder in his last battle. Going forward, he wanted 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 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 retreated into its cave, except 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 faced him. A whole colony.
“Well, this should be interesting.”
23A BATTLE OF WITS AND STRENGTH