“Thanks,” Vir said, pausing before springing his next question. “Amin, what do you think of King Rayid?”
It was an innocent enough question. He didn’t feel comfortable divulging his mission to Amin just yet—there was no way for Vir to tell who exactly he was working for besides Riyan? But everyone was interested in the king.
“Mediocre at best. He ain’t the worst king Hiranya’s had, but that is a very low bar. Nation’s better off with a better ruler. I mean, just look at this city. The Warrens practically say it all.”
“Oh yeah? Who would you rather see on the throne?”
“Dunno. Prince San’s a decent guy. He’d do well, I think.”
“What about his sister? Princess Mina?”
“Weak. Spineless. Wouldn’t be my first choice, that’s for sure.”
That was a take Vir certainly wasn’t expecting. “She seemed pretty regal during the procession, though?”
“They’re all like that, the royals. They all wear different faces for different occasions. Heck, I do too. Don’t believe everything you see.”
Vir decided to change the topic. “You know your way around the sewers pretty well, yeah? I know you said it was dangerous, but do you have a route to the District of Internal Affairs? Is there any way to get there underground?”
“There is,” Amin said, though he grew visibly nervous. “But it’s real dangerous, y’know? You’d have to go deep. Deeper than you ought to.”
“Would you mind showing me? I can pay you.”
“Sorry, man. I don’t got a death wish. The monsters down there… Balar 45? You’d be dead in no time. I won’t go down there without a Balar 200, at least.”
“I see.” Vir didn’t want to push the boy. While Vir wanted to be done with Daha as soon as humanly possible, he couldn’t afford to burn his bridges at this juncture.
“Welp,” Amin said with a nod. “About time I head home. You should get some rest, too. Have fun being a Brotherhood drone. Those guys freak me out.”
Vir waved as Amin left, leaving him alone.
“Well, I suppose I should get this over with…”
And so, for the next several days, Vir’s life entailed rising at dusk to enter the sewers at night, descending into the wet tunnels that made him want to puke, slaughtering prana rats by the dozens. He returned to the surface only when he couldn’t bear the stench any longer.
It was a small blessing that the Executor would judge his efforts based on the number of prana rat sightings aboveground, and not the number of corpses he brought back. He didn’t know if he could handle the stench of dozens of rotting rat corpses polluting his rucksack.
His reward for enduring such torture? A single paltry silver.
It wasn’t long ago that Vir would’ve salivated over an Imperium silver, but as his combat power increased, so too had his standards. He blamed Riyan. The man’s abode had spoiled Vir rotten.
As the Executor said, killing prana rats wasn’t difficult. Though they were about twice the size of a normal rat, they possessed no additional weapons apart from their larger claws and fangs, which Vir handled with ease.
Prana Vision revealed the Shadow prana coursing through their necks as their primary vulnerability, and once he’d gotten the hang of it, he didn’t even need to rely on his Talents to take them out—a single slash of his katar usually did the trick.
He didn’t even need to chase them down. The foolish rodents were only too eager to attack him. Vir had soon tired of the novelty after dispatching a few dozen of them individually. The task was less like combat and more a chore, so he sought to up the ante wherever he could.
He fought left-handed. He entered narrow tunnels where his mobility was restricted, and he allowed them to surround him—all to create enough of a challenge for him to improve his skills.
While they may only have been rats, a thousand enemies were a thousand enemies, and Vir wasn’t going to waste this golden training opportunity.
The only one who really lost out on all of this was Neel. Vir refused to bring his precious friend down here, lest the bandy develop some incurable affliction from the insanitary detritus. To his four-legged friend’s chagrin, Neel had spent the last few days cooped up in his room.
Initially, some situations he got himself into devolved into chaos, forcing him to rely on the Dance to extricate himself. He wasn’t afraid of succumbing to the rats’ attacks—that was unlikely, even when surrounded.
The real danger lay in the afflictions they carried within their maws. One bite could mean death, unless Vir sought out a Brotherhood Life Affinity mejai. And, after his first bite, he’d learned their services were not cheap, nearly bankrupting him.
Ever since then, he’d been far more cautious, only engaging when he knew he could win. It slowed his progress somewhat, but the alternative was far worse.
At least, that was how he’d operated until now. Yesterday, he’d located their primary nest. The source of the infestation. While the contract hadn’t specified any extra reward for eliminating the entire prana rat colony, Vir was sure it’d put him in the Brotherhood’s good books, accelerating his goals.
It was his only hope at this point, as Amin had been oddly missing, and Vir had no way of contacting the boy.
With Prana Vision flaring, Vir turned the corner into a half-height tunnel that led into the prana rat lair.
Vir had already scouted all the entrances he could find, choosing this one since it was the least guarded. It was also the longest, forcing him through many twists and turns to reach the core of the compound.
Coming across his first prana rat guardian, he activated a Micro Leap, dispatching the beast before it even knew what hit it.
He took out every rat along the way, barely even breaking stride to end their lives.
Would Reaper Ekanai be proud if he saw Vir reaping their lives? Or would the demon scowl and say he was wasting time? Either way, the voices in his head remained silent.
When Vir came across a tunnel leading to another entrance, he took it. It would lead him back away from the nest, but this was part of his plan. If he killed all the rats in the entrances, they couldn’t ambush and outflank him.
His tactic worked—right until he encountered a group of six. Vir lay into them, slicing their necks apart like a wraith, but he wasn’t fast enough. Two prana rats shrieked, bolting down the entrance to their brethren.
Vir killed them before they made it even ten paces, but their cry had alerted the colony.
A cacophony of shrieks and squeaks signaled the impending horde. Vir sprinted through the tunnel directly at them.
After getting as close to the enemy as he could, Vir activated Dance of the Shadow Demon, sinking into the ground. The rats, suddenly missing their target, panicked.
This was Vir’s ace up his sleeve. Instead of exiting the shadow realm, Vir remained within it. Here, in this pitch-black tunnel, the entire space was his domain.
His katar extended from underneath a rat, killing it before retracting into the shadow. He did it again, and again. Dozens of times, before his time was up.
All of this was possible thanks to the discoveries he’d made about his ability over the past few months. Ten counts was the maximum length Vir could remain within the shadow realm—if he kept his entire body inside. During those ten counts, time outside would stand still.
However, the more of his body that protruded outside, the longer he could stay in. On the other hand, the less of his body that occupied the shadow realm, the faster time flowed outside. In this way, Vir could control both the flow of time and how much of himself he hid within the shadows.
Crucially, he could extend different parts of his body through different shadows at will. He didn’t have an inkling how it all worked, but so long as a shadow was within range, Vir could poke his legs out of one and his arms out of another.