The heavy oak door of Amrit's chambers clicked shut, the sound unnaturally loud in the profound silence that had fallen over his corner of the palace. He leaned back against the cool wood, the adrenaline from the confrontation finally beginning to ebb, leaving behind a strange mix of exhilaration and a deep, humming awareness of the power thrumming beneath his skin.
He had won. More than that, he had dominated. He had dismantled his brother's pride and the kingdom's perception of him with two simple, system-enhanced actions. But as he stood there, feeling the immense, unfamiliar ocean of Prana within his dantian, he understood a sobering truth: the power felt borrowed.
It was like being handed the keys to a divine war chariot without ever having learned to drive. The [Infinite Crit System] had given him the engine, but he was still just reacting, letting the system's prompts guide his hands on the reins. The fight in the yard wasn't a display of his own skill; it was a display of the system's terrifying potential. To truly own this power, to make it an extension of his will rather than a series of fortunate accidents, he needed to do more than just possess it. He needed to understand it, refine it, and master it from the ground up.
His foundation was labelled 'Perfect' by the system, but it felt hollow. It was a perfect skyscraper built in an instant, without the deliberate, painstaking work of laying each brick. He knew that such a structure, while magnificent, could have hidden flaws, vulnerabilities that a true, patient-built master could exploit.
The rest of the day passed in a surreal quiet. No one disturbed him. He was no longer the forgotten prince to be ignored, nor the invalid to be pitied. He was an anomaly, a bomb that had just gone off in the center of the royal court, and everyone was cautiously waiting to see the fallout. He could feel the change in the palace's atmosphere through his heightened senses. The guards who patrolled his hallway walked with a lighter tread. The servants spoke in hushed whispers. His existence was a question mark that had been forcefully stamped onto the kingdom's soul.
Late in the afternoon, the summons he had been expecting finally came. A royal chamberlain, a man who had never before deigned to speak to him directly, appeared at his door, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the floor.
"His Majesty, the King, requests your presence in his private study, Your Highness." The chamberlain's voice was laced with a new, unfamiliar tone: fear.
The King's study was a different world from the austere grandeur of the throne room. It was a space of intimate power. The walls were lined with maps of Viraatkshetra, strategic charts, and shelves holding not scrolls of poetry, but records of troop movements and tax revenues. The air smelled of aged leather, ink, and the sharp, metallic tang of ambition.
King Vikram was not on a throne. He was standing by a large window overlooking the capital city, his hands clasped behind his back. The setting sun cast his figure in a long, imposing shadow. When Amrit entered, the King turned, and for the first time, Amrit saw his father without the mask of a monarch. He saw a man grappling with a reality that had shifted beneath his feet. The calculating glint was still in his eyes, but it was now tempered with a deep, unsettling curiosity.
"Sit," the King said, gesturing to a pair of carved wooden chairs near a low table. It was an invitation Amrit had never received before. He had always stood, knelt, or been absent.
Amrit sat, his posture straight, his expression neutral. He waited. The silence stretched, a test of wills. The King was reassessing him, trying to see past the son he thought he knew to the stranger who now sat before him.
Finally, the King spoke, his voice low and devoid of its usual booming authority. "The kingdom has two geniuses. Your brothers, Arjun and Bhim. I have spent decades nurturing them, providing them with the best resources, the finest tutors, the most potent pills. They are the twin pillars upon which Kshirapura's future was to be built."
He paused, his eyes searching Amrit's face. "Today, you disarmed one of those pillars as if he were a petulant child. You made fifteen years of his life's work look like a joke. Arjun's spirit is wounded, perhaps irreparably. His pride, which was his greatest weapon, has become his heaviest shackle."
Amrit remained silent. This wasn't an accusation; it was a statement of fact.
"I do not care how you did it," the King continued, his voice hardening slightly. "Demonic pact, divine intervention, a one-in-a-billion moment of enlightenment… the source is irrelevant. The result is all that matters. And the result is power. A power that Kshirapura desperately needs."
He began to pace, his royal robes whispering against the floor. "This kingdom, Amrit, is a rowboat in an ocean of warships. To the great empires, we are a backwater province. To the gods, we are ants. The coming War of the Crimson Twilight, the great conflict foretold for centuries, will swallow kingdoms like ours whole. Our only hope for survival has been to nurture a talent so bright that the great powers, or even the Devas, would see fit to shelter us under their wing. That talent was supposed to be Arjun."
He stopped and looked directly at Amrit. "But Arjun's light, as bright as it is, is a candle flame. Today, I saw in you the beginnings of a sun. Raw, uncontrolled, and dangerous… but a sun nonetheless."
The King returned to his chair and leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. "You have my full support. The Royal Treasury is open to you. The Alchemy Pavilion will concoct any pill you require. The most secret techniques in our vaults are yours to study. You will have everything your brothers had, and more."
It was the offer of a lifetime. A blank check from the kingdom. But Amrit knew there was a price. There was always a price.
"What do you ask in return, Father?" Amrit asked, his voice steady.
A slow, wolfish grin spread across the King's face. He appreciated the directness. "Three months. The selection for the Sky-Piercing Academy. I do not just want you to attend. I want you to be the brightest star there. I want you to dominate the selection process so thoroughly that your name echoes from the Divine Courts themselves. You will become the new pillar of this kingdom. You will be the shield that protects us from the coming storm. Your glory will be Kshirapura's glory."
The weight of an entire kingdom was being placed on his shoulders. It was a suffocating burden, but it was also the key to the resources he desperately needed.
"I understand," Amrit said simply.
"Good," the King nodded, satisfied. "The cultivation chambers have been repaired. Chamber One, the one with the highest Prana concentration, is yours to use exclusively. Do what you must. Become what you must."
Leaving the study, Amrit felt the invisible chains of his father's ambition wrapping around him. He was no longer a forgotten prince; he was the kingdom's prized racehorse, being fattened up for the ultimate race. But a horse could still throw its rider.
He did not go to the treasury or the library. He went directly to the newly repaired Cultivation Chamber One. The stone door, replaced with a heavier, rune-inscribed slab, opened to his touch. Inside, the energy was even thicker than before, so dense it felt like breathing water.
He sat on the central cushion, the world outside fading away. The King wanted a sun. The system had given him the raw material for one. But his current state was like a stellar nebula—vast, powerful, but diffuse and unstable. He needed to ignite the star. He needed to consolidate his foundation.
His intent was singular and pure. He wasn't aiming for a breakthrough into the Spirit Sea Realm. He wasn't trying to absorb more energy. He was aiming for perfection. He would take the boundless ocean of Prana within him and compress it into a single, flawless drop of divine liquid.
He closed his eyes. His mind became a mirror, reflecting only the perfect, transcendent understanding of the Lotus Breathing Compendium. He focused not on the first stage, or the ninth, but on the core principle that united all of them: Harmony.
He took a single breath.
It was not a gasp for air or a desperate pull for energy. It was a slow, deliberate, and impossibly long inhalation that seemed to stretch for an eternity. He did not pull Prana from the room. Instead, he drew his own vast, internal sea of Prana into a single, perfect cycle.
This was an action of pure refinement. An action of self-mastery. It was the most fundamental act of cultivation he could perform.
And the system responded.
[Profound Action: 'Perfect Foundation Consolidation' initiated through a single breath.]
[Host is attempting to refine a 'Perfect' foundation into a 'Transcendent' one.]
[Crit Chance detected… Extremely High.]
[…Triggering a Qualitative Crit: [Perfect Harmony]!]
There was no multiplier. There was no 'x10,000'. This was a different kind of crit. It wasn't about quantity; it was about quality.
As Amrit's breath circulated the Prana within him, the [Perfect Harmony] crit took effect. The vast, chaotic sea of golden energy in his dantian began to move. It did not rage; it swirled, like galaxies forming in the primordial void. The energy began to compress, to fold in on itself under an invisible, conceptual pressure.
Every wisp of Prana was polished, purified, and stripped of any lingering impurity. The energy became denser, heavier, and more potent. The golden sea, which had filled his dantian to the brim, began to shrink. It condensed from an ocean into a lake, from a lake into a pond, from a pond into a small, spinning orb of liquid light, no larger than a pearl.
This pearl of energy glowed with an internal brilliance that was blinding. It was pure, unadulterated power, concentrated to a terrifying degree. The sheer amount of energy contained within it was the same as before, but its quality had undergone a metamorphosis. If his previous Prana was a river, this was a single drop of water with the mass of a mountain.
The breath that had seemed to last an eternity finally ended. Amrit exhaled, a slow, quiet release of air.
He opened his eyes.
The world looked different. Sharper. He could see the intricate patterns of energy in the runes on the wall. He could feel the faint life force of a beetle crawling on the outside of the chamber door.
He lifted his hand and focused his will. A small, loose stone in the corner of the room trembled, then floated silently into the air, hovering before his face. He made it spin, first slowly, then faster and faster, all with a single, focused thought. His control was absolute. The power no longer felt borrowed. It was his. It was a part of him, as natural as his own heartbeat.
His foundation was no longer a hollow skyscraper. It was a single, flawless diamond, forged in the heart of a star.
He had not advanced a single stage in his cultivation realm. On paper, he was still at the peak of the Body Tempering Realm. But he knew, with chilling certainty, that he could now defeat his brother Arjun without even using the system.
A single, perfect breath had given him what fifteen years of labour had given Arjun. And he had just begun.
Three months, he thought, looking at the levitating stone. The King wanted a sun. Amrit would give him a supernova. The Sky-Piercing Academy was no longer just a goal. It was the first step on a path that would lead far beyond the confines of Kshirapura, and far beyond the notice of mere gods.