The metal bar sat on V-shaped holders at each end. Above him was another pair of V-shaped holders, and another above that. This course was basically a ladder, only every rung had been removed, leaving the supports for the rungs in place. In order to ascend, he had to draw on every ounce of upper body strength he could muster, leaping upward with the bar in his hands. He had to not only leap a full pace upward with the bar, but he had to place it within the V holders. If he missed… well, it was a long fall all the way back down to the sand.
Actually, his fall would be even worse. This obstacle sat directly above the spinning blade posts—the second obstacle. If he fell, he’d land right into that death trap. He knew exactly how that felt… he’d learned it firsthand. Many, many times.
But things were different now. He wasn’t the same person he was just a week ago. He’d changed.
Vir grasped the metal bar and launched himself upward. It was like doing a pullup, but with far more speed and power. As he flew upward, he quickly raised his hands as high as they could go.
Clang!
The bar slotted cleanly into the next set of supports. Success! Now he just had to repeat the feat five more times.
Every rung became harder and harder as his muscles tired. But Vir was not going to fall into those bladed posts. He drew upon every ounce of strength he could muster and threw himself up.
Clang!
The left support caught. But his aim was off with the right one. It slipped out of its groove.
Vir saw the right side of the beam fall in slow motion. If he did nothing, the beam would slip off its other groove, and he’d fall.
Not today!
Vir shifted his left hand farther left on the bar and torqued it with every shred of power he could muster. The right end of the beam whipped up and fell into its V-shaped notch with a clang. He’d done it.
Vir straddled up to the next platform. In the past, he’d be heaving and retching by this point, but now he merely wiped the sweat off his brow, calmed his breath, and prepared for the next hurdle—the tightrope arena.
Nine tightropes, each a few paces in length, all arranged in a grid, suspended high above the sand below. Three across, three long. And above them, over a hundred blades of all sorts that randomly extended downward, mounted on a wooden lattice framework.
His goal was at the other end—a pole Riyan had installed that allowed Vir to descend back down to the first level. This wasn’t the end of the course… but it was the halfway point. He had to make it.
Vir hadn’t yet memorized the timing of these blades. In the past, he’d sit for hours, plotting out strategies and paths through. But he’d had a bit of an epiphany recently: life was not kind. It wouldn’t let him prepare and plan for every situation. He’d need to trust his instincts, and he’d need to adapt.
He took a deep breath and bounded onto the tightrope. Immediately, a blade descended from above. If he dodged it, he’d lose his balance and fall. Vir hopped over to the tightrope to the right, where the pattern repeated.
Vir’s balance was perfect. He bounded from one rope to another. Sometimes he leaped backward to avoid blades, his feet always finding balance.
It wasn’t just his endurance. Literally every physical capability he possessed had ballooned.
Jumping into the air, he executed a flawless front flip to land on the next tightrope. He’d flipped over the sword that dropped from above, bypassing the obstacle entirely.
Except this time, swords began dropping from the ceiling even before he’d landed on the next tightrope.
There was no hesitation in his movements. Vir deflected the first set of falling blades with his katar, then jumped onto the pommels of the swords, axes, and maces. All suspended by ropes, which made for excellent handholds.
With a final front flip, Vir landed on the opposite platform and jumped onto the smooth wooden pole, straddling it to control his descent back to the sand.
When he was five paces from the ground, he kicked off the pole, somersaulted midair, and landed on the tips of his toes, flaring his arms for a picture-perfect landing.
“How?” Maiya said, aghast at his performance. “How is this even possible? You’re cheating. You have to be cheating! Just when I finally start improving, you go and do this!”
Vir laughed, wiping a trickle of sweat off his brow—he wasn’t even breathing hard. He walked over to the hourglass. Two ticks. A whole minute faster than last time.
“I gotta say though, Maiya, your acrobatics really have gotten better. And your Kalari too. You’re smarter about how you fight these days. You really have improved.”
“You’re just trying to rub this in my face, aren’t you?” She pouted. With her hands on her hips, she looked more like an angry bandy puppy; the result just made her look cute.
“Wasn’t enough beating me in a sprint, was it? Then you had to go and beat me in our endurance race, too. And now this… I deserve an explanation.”
Vir put up his hands, conceding. “Alright, alright. Just wanted to have a bit of fun with this, is all. You’re gonna be leaving me in the dust with your magic pretty soon. Figured this was the last chance I had to show off. And it wouldn’t be much fun if I told you the trick right away, would it?”
She’d witnessed his transformed capabilities several times, but he’d held back his secret until now, much to her chagrin.
“Tell me! Tell me how you did it. It was a trick after all, wasn’t it? What, have you been faking your poor stamina all along? I find that hard to believe. You’re not that good of an actor.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s got to do with prana. There is prana inside my body. It’s just… different. And it was always leaking. Leaving me dry and empty inside. I just plugged that leak, and now my body’s full of it. That’s really all it took.”
It was obvious in hindsight—prana was the energy of life. His body was constantly being sucked dry, so of course he’d suffer for it. He’d just never realized his lack of stamina was caused by prana starvation.
As his prana steadily filled up, his physical abilities multiplied. And it didn’t even end there. His muscles had already grown larger and more solid in this past week alone. He was still on the scrawnier side, but he certainly wouldn’t be for very long if his body kept packing on muscle at this rate.
Vir wondered how much his physical development had been crippled by growing up in a prana dry environment. At least he could now undo all of that.
“‘That’s really all it took,’ he says. Vir… that’s not possible. Tanya tells me that the prana inside your body’s always at the same level as your surroundings. And here,” said Maiya, gesturing to the surroundings, “there isn’t much prana at all.
“I even asked her about it. She said a lot of famous mejai have tried to boost their body’s prana to try and power orbs. But it’s useless. You simply can’t control the prana in your body well enough to do that. Not even the strongest mejai… and what’s worse, you’ll end up saturated with prana, which apparently makes it impossible to use magic at all for a while.”
Vir’s brows furrowed. It didn’t surprise him that Tanya knew about equilibrium. He supposed it was a pretty basic concept. But being unable to control the leakage? That was… surprising. Was he unique in that way?
He shook off the thought. Vir wasn’t conceited enough to think he was especially smart. He was probably just messing with things expert mejai had tried and abandoned for good reason. But until and unless he found those reasons himself, he’d persist. He had to.