If Rudvik saw him now, the man would be hard-pressed to recognize him. Vir’s entire body rippled with well-defined muscles. In place of bone and exposed ribs, strong pecs and abs, and thick biceps now bulged proudly.
No one would call Vir large, but a single look would make all but the bravest brawlers reconsider fighting him. While compact, he had become lithe and strong.
Vir didn’t bother grasping each monkey bar rung. Or even every other rung. With each movement, he bypassed two entire rungs, making short work of the course, throwing himself onto the vertical ladder jump obstacle.
Earlier, he’d paused for several moments between rungs, taking great breaths and planning each move with extreme consideration.
Now, he barely even came to a stop before explosively throwing himself upward, carrying the bar to the next V-shaped notch. Rung after rung notched before his might, and soon, the obstacle was behind him.
“Forty-five seconds,” Riyan said, looking at his Magic Clock.
The final obstacle was a grid of ropes, three by three, with dozens of deadly swords, spears, and axes suspended above. The blades would drop onto him at random, forcing him to jump from one rope to another to dodge. If he lost his balance, he’d fall all the way down, right into the maw of the first rotating blade course.
Vir had memorized the path through long ago, but this time, he didn’t bother completing the course—it’d have taken too long.
Sending prana to his legs, he Leaped off the first rope and sailed to the finish line even before the deadly overhead blades could deploy.
This was the halfway point. From here, everything became harder. Much, much harder.
Because every obstacle from here required the usage of Talents.
Vir wondered what Riyan would’ve done if he’d never manifested them. He somehow doubted the man would ever make the course easier out of consideration.
He High Jumped to the lowest rung of a ladder that hung from the roof of the dome. This was a brutal obstacle, similar to the vertical monkey bar obstacle he had to clear before, except this time, there were two ladders, one in front and another behind Vir. To make his way up, he’d have to jump from one ladder to another.
Except, neither ladder had any rungs—only notches. Which meant Vir needed to take the bottommost rung up with him, exploding upward, twisting in midair and jumping to the other ladder.
It was nearly impossible, especially since any fall from this height could be lethal.
Yet Vir made the impossible possible, jumping up to the next rung, then jumped across to the other ladder, the bar clanging into place.
To everyone on the ground, it was as if he belonged on those bars. Like he was a bird, and this aerial death trap was his home… because he continued jumping his way up and across with ease, hardly even breaking a sweat.
What observers on the ground couldn’t see were the ways Vir leveraged his arms to send him flying upward. Even if the ladders were suspended from the ceiling, the dome’s ceiling was connected to the ground, and so prana flowed. Not much, but enough for quarter-powered surges of energy, allowing Vir to Leap upward.
He surged up, clearing the obstacle, sailing right into the maw of the next one.
If this obstacle seemed impossible, the next one truly was. Another rotating blade platform was laid out before him, with swords embedded into cylindrical posts that spun at high speed. No matter how much Vir analyzed it, he hadn’t found a way through. Worse still, there was no breathing room between the ladder and the rotating blades, so Vir had been forced to study it from the halfway point, far below.
He’d eventually realized that there actually wasn’t a safe path through.
The second rotating blade course required Blink. A Talent that let its caster disappear in one location and suddenly reappear in another. When Riyan fought Vir in their duels, it wasn’t Leap he’d used… It was Blink. And it was a Talent Vir did not have.
No matter how much he’d struggled to learn the ability, it eluded him. After hours of analysis and experimentation, he’d concluded there simply wasn’t enough Ash prana in the ground to power it. Ash prana was more potent than the other affinities, but sometimes, there was no substitute for quantity.
It was a good thing had something even better.
Vir disappeared just before a blade could decapitate him… and reappeared at the other end of the course. In fact, he did one better. He’d completely bypassed the obstacle.
A battering ram swung harmlessly behind him as he appeared at the finish line of that course. No doubt Riyan had expected Vir to Blink past the swords, only to be slammed in the gut by the ram.
Too bad for him. Dance of the Shadow Demon was far more versatile.
He’d wallowed for ages over whether to use the ability here. Ultimately, he had little choice if he wanted to progress through the course.
After practicing the Dance over and over, he could finally activate it as quickly as Shardul had. The trick was in how quickly he pulled the blood from his feet up into his legs.
To all eyes, it looked identical to Blink—he disappeared in one location and reappeared elsewhere.
Unlike Blink, its range was far superior, and he could spend up to ten seconds in the shadow realm calmly gathering his thoughts.
“One minute, thirty seconds,” Riyan’s voice sounded from far below. It came a moment late. No doubt the man had been shocked by Vir’s move. He’d gone farther than what should’ve ordinarily been possible with Blink, but only just. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility.
Unfortunately, Dance wouldn’t help him for the next challenge.
Vir stood on a platform of wood, and in front of him… was nothing. Just empty space with ropes hanging from the ceiling far away.
Well within the range of Blink. Impossible for Dance of the Shadow Demon.
Because there were no shadows he could leverage here.
This was as far as he had ever gone. Everything from here was new. His first try.
Vir backed up, took a great breath… and Leaped.
Maiya watched her friend leap and bound, roll and jump with avian grace. Like a circus performer—a master of acrobatics.
With each obstacle cleared, her heart skipped a beat, thankful he was unharmed and well. As he inched closer to his goal, her hope and excitement grew and grew, until the tension threatened to seize her heart.
He’s gotten so good.
In the beginning, there had been hope for her. Maybe she was a slow learner compared to Vir, but she had made progress.
Then, months ago, she’d plateaued, and her magic training had begun.
But she’d never stopped training Kalari. After learning of her parents’ death, she’d redoubled her efforts. While she didn’t brave the course, each day, she diligently dueled Vir, improving with agonizing slowness.
At some point, she’d understood that no matter how hard she tried, no matter how far she ran, she would never catch up to her dearest friend.
Then she’d concluded it didn’t matter.
She’d never be able to beat Vir, but her skills had grown to a point where she could give even a Balar 10 knight a hard time. Without her magic. With it? She could easily decimate an entire squad. For the first time since training with Vir, she was proud of her own skills.
And why not? She’d spent every waking moment developing her magic. Even there, she was not a fast learner. But she didn’t need to be, not with the endless hours she devoted. After all, few things could resist sheer, relentless determination.