Ashborn Primordial

Chapter 87: Empowered

Vir greeted the dawn with a heavy heart and bleary eyes. Having given up on sleep, hed left the sleeping Neel in his room and relocated to a nearby rooftop to Daha as it woke up.

To think that a mere seven months after Rudviks death, Vir was about to claim the lives of those whod perpetrated that atrocity.

It wasnt about revenge. At least, he tried to convince himself of that. While the head priest angered Vir, he wasnt motivated by hatred, nor was he consumed by it. Rather killing them simply felt right. It felt like closure, like he needed to do this to close one era of his life to begin another.

Vir was Ashborn. He was the reincarnation of the Primordial. Whether he agreed to Shardul and Ekanais requests or not, there was a life for him beyond Brij. Beyond even Hiranya.

But before he could turn the page, the current chapter had to be written. And its climax would occur in just a few brief hours.

The meeting with prince Sanobar had gone well. Surprisingly well. Not only had the prince given Vir information about Minas quirks, habits, combat style, affinities, and weaknesses, hed even arranged a plan.

A plan whose timetable was moved up, owing to the head priests calendar. The man ultimately responsible for the deaths of Apramor, Aliscia, and Rudvik was about to retreat to his vacation home to the north, near the inland sea. Tomorrow.

Which meant tonight was Virs only opportunity. The prince had panicked at the suddenness, but eventually agreed to Virs terms. Tonight, he would eliminate both princess Mina and the head priest in one fell swoop. For better or for worse, it would all be over soon.

The plan was simple, as most good plans were. Prince Sanobar would have a sedative sprinkled into Minas food. Vir would wait until the dead of night, entering through the secret passage. He worried a bit about whether he could bypass the hatchs lock, but if he couldnt, Dance would allow him inside.

With luck, Minas death would go unnoticed for hours, giving Vir free rein to infiltrate the royal temple where the head priest slept.

The priest was the main reason Vir went along with this. Hed seriously considered ambushing Amin when she was alone. Ideally in the sewers, where no one would notice. But if he offed the princess, what of Harak? Castle defenses would be bolstered, and his chances of taking down the priest would plummet. It was safer to kill both in one fell swoop.

According to Sanobar, Harak retired early and snored up his entire quarters. Killing him should be a simple matter. Vir would then escapeeither back through Minas room, or to the District of Internal Affairs, whichever was more readily accessible.

Vir smirked. Since when did things ever go according to plan?

Riyan was right. This would take everything he had, and then some. Hed have to transcend his limits and step outside his comfort zone.

Worrying about it wouldnt change a thing. Preparations would, and there were several actions he could take today to ensure his success tonight.

Vir stepped off the fourth story roof and fell into the alley, leveraging Light Step to turn his fatal fall into a small hop.

The veiled receptionist waved Vir down as he entered. Acolyte, a package for you, just this morning, he said, passing a rectangular object to Vir.

Thanks, Vir said, leaving the package sealed until hed reached his room.

Neel woke up at the noise and lazily sauntered over, brushing up against his leg.

I feel like you keep getting left behind on these missions, boy. Dont worry. Thats gonna change.

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Vir was hoping to be rid of this assassin role hed somehow grown into.

Arooo!

Thats right. Its all gonna change soon, he whispered, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a wooden box.

Inside, he found ten silver coins, a velvet emerald-and-gold robe, and a folded piece of paper. The robe was the same one Mina had given him weeks ago when hed first arrived in the city. San had altered the garment, removing the insignias that marked it as a royal heirloom. Now, it made the perfect disguise to infiltrate the royal grounds with. It marked him as someone of prestige, trusted by the royal family.

The coins were downpayment; hed receive far more upon completion of the task. It was a nice show of faith from the prince, but what interested Vir more was the paper.

It was a map. A detailed map of the castle grounds. Every floor was there, including the basement floors and the temple building. And marked with an X was the royal priests room, on the sixth floor of the tall temple building.

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Of course it has to be all the way up.

The robe was his backup disguise. Another tool he might use to keep himself hidden.

Vir spent the next hour committing the castle map to memory. It helped that hed already visited once, allowing him to link the halls from his memory to the lines drawn on the map.

The money, while appreciated, wasnt immediately useful for him. With the new coin, he could afford that brigandine hed been eyeing, but there wouldnt be enough time to have it fitted. Going on a high stakes mission with unfitted armor he hadnt grown used to felt worse to him than going without it.

It was the same for his chakrams. Though hed longed to upgrade his rusted iron ones for superior steel, chakrams werent widely available weapons. Theyd be a custom order, which meant waiting a week or more.

Instead, Vir spent his time on the upgrade that would bring him the most benefits.

Feel like some exercise, Neel? he said with a grin. Ill race ya!

Woof woof!

It was time to remove the thorn in his side. It was time to master Empower.

It took some time to find the ideal spot. The rooftops made prana channeling more difficult, so hed opted for an alley in the Upper West Side district, far enough away that his experiments wouldnt drain the prana near Minas secret hatch, which was also in the same district.

The area was defined by its larger homes, which meant a lower population density, allowing Vir to practice in peace while Neel roamed, poking his nose into everything he found.

Empower would serve him well for his upcoming operation. It was an ideal counterpart to Toughen, which was another side of the same ability.

With Toughen, Vir supersaturated his blood with prana to improve his resilience. It was essentially natural armor, but it was one that had to be activated manually.

For Empower, Vir relied on the same technique, except instead of focusing his will on tanking hits, he surged the prana in conjunction with a strike. Now that he thought about it, Leap and High Jump worked similarly.

He was learning that what appeared to be unique Talents were really just different applications of the same underlying principle. Just that they appeared distinct since no one seemed to understand how Talents really worked.

The issue with Empower was the prana he sucked in from the ground would dissipate into his bloodstream as it traveled from his legs to his arms.

By the time the supersaturated blood reached his arms, it was no longer supersaturated.

Until now, Vir had relied on a crutch to make up for this. Since he lacked the skills to conduct ground Ash affinity prana up to his arms, hed been forced to charge the Talent by placing his hands on the ground.

This was less than ideal. In combat, hed rarely have that luxury, and Empower was uniquely suited to combat. He needed a way to charge it as quickly as he charged Leap.

Which meant conducting the prana through his entire body, and on that front, hed made progress in two areas.

The first was a continuation of what hed been doing the past several monthsmapping out his bodys blood pathways. Prana was bound to blood. Blood carried pranathey were inseparable. Which meant if Vir wanted to optimize the flow of prana from his legs to his arms, he had to understand how blood traveled through his body.

Mapping out the largest arteries hadnt taken him too long. After all, they had the most blood and prana in them, making them easy to detect. It was the smaller pathways that had taken him forever.

Vir retrieved a piece of parchment from his sack and unfurled it. It vaguely resembled the human body, but instead of showing flesh, it showed the pathways hed mapped until now.

The sheer number staggered him. Many were so tiny, he only found them by intentionally diverting prana and seeing the motes travel through the tiny tubes. They were otherwise invisible.

Ordinarily, such small capillaries would be useless to himeven if he could shortcut blood up his body using those, they were too tiny to carry a significant amount of blood.

But hed been working around that. After trial and error, hed learned to expand the pathways. By regularly shunting prana-soaked blood through them, they slowly expanded. The process took weeks, and Vir had only stumbled upon it by chance as he practiced his prana control.

It did work, however. After months of practice, hed finally expanded the proper blood pathways to streamline the prana flow from his legs up to his arms.

Taking a deep breath, he grasped the blood in his foot, pulling it up higher into his leg. He left enough blood behind to conduct the ground Ash prana that rushed into his leg. Losing no time, he guided the supersaturated blood up his leg, then through his enlarged blood passages that connected to another artery, shortcutting the path.

Almost there!

The supersaturated blood traveled up his gut, then to his chest

But by the time it reached his arm, it was barely more saturated than the rest of his bodys blood.

Grak it!

His path optimization wasnt enough. Another failure.

Vir shook it off. Hed hoped optimizing prana flow would suffice, but he had another trick up his sleeve. Just that, unlike his first solution, hed never attempted this one before. And Vir had a track record for blacking out whenever he did something new.

Clearing his mind, he refocused on the problem. The issue he faced was twofold. First was the long path, which hed already shortened as much as he could. The other problem was the leakage. That was the root cause of his troubles. If he could stop prana from leaking to the rest of his body, then the path length didnt matter. A longer route would hinder the Talents charging speed, but only slightly.

The key lay in how prana traveled into his body. Namely, it required blood. If Vir evacuated all the blood from his footnot only would it be painfulthe ground prana would have nothing to conduct it. Blood could only hold a certain amount of prana. To conduct more, more blood was needed.

In which case, a complete absence of blood would have the opposite effectit wouldnt conduct prana at all.

Rather, it wouldnt leak prana at all.

Vir tried again. This time, he created a bubble devoid of blood around the supersaturated blood as it traveled up his body.

Easier said than done. It took far more concentration to keep the blood surrounding the pathway away. There was just so much more to manage.

But it worked. The supersaturated pranas dissipation rate plummeted. Earlier, eighty-five percent of the prana had dissipated, but now, less than twenty-five percent was lost.

Not ideal, but

Hiyah! Vir roared, swiping an Empowered katar into the air.

It wasnt perfect, but it was good enough.

All he had to do now was reduce the mental burden required to perform the ability, and to speed it up as much as he could.

Vir looked up at the sky to find the sun was still low. More than half a day remained until the operation.

Half a day to train.

With a grin, Vir activated the ability again. Come nightfall, hed be ready.