It was the middle of the night, when the father son duo coming were back from their training session. Kush was sleeping on his father’s back; “You know you are not supposed to help him during his training sessions.” Coyly “I didn’t know my hubby was such a softy”

“What do you mean softy?”

“Come onnn… master everybody here saw you helping him out there and that too twice!! First was when you kicked the stone in front of him making him trip, when the wolf was just about to get him while he was running towards the rock and second was when you kicked the stone he used to kill the dumb dog, in his hand making it feel like he found it by accident”

“Dumb dog?? Says the girl who could barely take care of it at 18 years of age”

“Hmph!! Like I had a choice, all my power resets to zero and I lose all my characteristic and Karmic power after shedding my scales” said Rhodos turning her face away in annoyance. Placing his powerful hand on her head, he tussles her hair and says “Haha, I am kidding with you”

Placing the kid on his bed the trio went to their own rooms. On their beds the couple started discussing about the events from the day before when they went to a town in the mainland. When on mainland they generally split up to buy what they need to and gather information, cause they were completely cut-off from the world right now and this was a good method of information gathering right now other than buying the newspapers when possible.

“Did you about the legendary boy born on the day of disaster 6 years ago?”

“You mean the boy born in the ancient city Kashi in Bharat?”

“Mhmm… they say he is going to be the next hero”

“But babe you know birth of a hero is accompanied with a divine sign right? And I thought Bhoomi was an abandoned world”

“No people thought Bhoomi was one because in the eons of its history never has a hero been born here and they think no one saw the sign was cause of the disaster that occurred at the same time.”

“They say that no other child survived the disaster that day as well, the regression or rapid aging, both turned the babies born on that day to nothingness”

“Hmph… just cause I don’t flaunt my son around, these people make whatever assumptions they want” said the Father

Sagar continuing on “I heard he killed a diamond boar at the age of 5 years without the use of any weapons”

“He could learn and recite the scriptures since the age of 3 and could use high level elemental magic by the previous month. They are calling him the future hero who will rival the hero Krishna”

“hmph… like genius ever matters for a hero. What matters is the conviction, hard work and indomitable will power”

“You can say whatever you want, but even you could not have slayed a diamond boar at that age” Said the wife

“heh… who knows??” he replied

“His name is Kartikeya, seems he is a great devotee of the Mahadev. He will be going to Nalanda University for his education and fight training”

“Phe… (spitting sound), bunch of snobs think themselves to be hotshots, turn out to be useless bunch of skirt chasing bastards without a dick hanging off of them. In my couple decades, I used to smack the proffs of the university around just cause they saw me wrong. My son will not be losing out on anything.”

“The thing is, the Chacellor of the uni, came to invite him up to the university”

Lowering his head, he said to his wife in a low voice “I heard it too. Pissed me off when the old guy from Nalanda went himself to offer him a position as his student. Looks like his life is coming to end as well. Bah… this kid had all luxuries of this world at birth itself. But I still don’t get it, he still must have a couple of years before he joins the uni right? How did get to strong then”

“I asked around to know why as well, turns out he was the king’s Nephew and seeing his talent the king used all the resources of the palace to train him”

“Hmph… born with a golden spoon, doesn’t really matter how much you are given at birth, it how much you can give at death is why you will be remembered. I WILL BE THE HERO OF THIS AGE, IF HE HAS A GOLDEN SPOON I WILL BEND, IF SOMEONE WITH A DIAMOND SPOON COMES ALONG I WILL BREAK, IF SOMEONE WITH A PLATINUM SPOON COME ALONG I WILL…”

“shh… you will awaken the kids. Huhu… never thought I would get to say that” with a happy smile on her face

Grumpy from not being able to say what he wanted, he puffed up his face and looked the other way but saw no attempt from her to placate him, he was not really annoyed cause he loved his son an student as well. Slowly placing his hands on her thighs and he kept of going up on its inner side, till he reached a moist hole, he kept circling his finger along rim.

“So how about having a few more?” he said as he pushed her down on the mattress.

Next day onwards Kush’s training was continuing at full force, the weights of the braces were increased by 100 grams on each brace each day using sand for the running part of the training and the weight training exercise rock was made heavier by 0.5 kgs every day. The track in the field was made longer by 100 m every day. When the track length encompassed the entire circumference of the old Kishunpali land and peak-island land, it was 20 km long he was running with ~80 kgs of iron on his body and using an 80 kg iron ball for his weight training. By now it had been close to five months since he started his training. His body was worn out every day cause of physical training, he had fracture 6 of his bones in the process, 5 ribs and once his collar bone. But he was able to complete his impossible training faster and faster each day. What regimen took him upto 3:00 in the morning the first day, he was able to complete till 10 in night now. Every day he slept of 5 hrs a day and the rest of the time he was always absorbing mana. By now he could simultaneously absorb mana along three of his veins, he ate buckets of food and would always use a mana vein in the stomach and intestine after eating the food to practice absorbing from each mana vein daily. Peers his age had yet to even start mana absorption. The effects of his training were starting to show. He had grown half a foot higher than he was before, standing 5 ft tall now, in the searing heat sweat dripped down his chiseled v-shaped body which he arched to the side, to support himself against a cliff, he had a well-developed body for, if not for his height (though tall for his age), he was now approaching a body shape of stereotypical body builders, though not as bulky.

When Rhodos saw this she was momentarily stunned and sucked in deep breath for cool herself down. With a flushed face she crossed her tempting milky slender long legs where she was sitting and was leering unknowingly, her hands on her thighs griping the strong trained and toned muscles tightly unconsciously. Just as she was starting at him, he looks back and waves his hands at her with a wide smile shouting “Hi” at the top of his voice, seeing this Rhodos is nudged gently out of her reverie, she waves back at him and goes “Ha ha”, after he turns around to continue his training he snaps at herself “I know it’s been long, but this is low even for you!!”

After his physical training sessions were over, every day he would duel an or a few beasts that his father would bring from the Dandakaranya Forest. They were vicious and powerful, living a life of ‘The strong will eat and the weak are meat’, thing that surprised Kush were these big beasts which he fought were really powerful working alone or in packs and his said they were weak ones. How powerful are the strong ones then he thought sometimes, but then he left it there cause in time he intended to surpass them all. Over the period of five months to identify what he was more comfortable with, his father had fabricated for him a large variety of weapons which he used. His first fight with the knife proved to be futile cause he dropped in the first few seconds and couldn’t find it for the rest of the fight. In the later fights, he discovered that using a small knife was not as beneficial for him, because it did not cover the right side of his body entirely, he was not preparing for a structured competition rule bound fight where he would be facing one opponent and could face him with only his left side (trying to explain karate pose wherein people try to minimize the exposed area of their bodies). Using a knife, did not allow him any reprieve in that matter cause depending on the speed of the attacker his right side is just up for pickings, he learned this the hard way, when a ‘long arm baboon’ got a good hit in his ribs, breaking three of his bones and putting him out of commission for three days. All he did at the time was absorb mana to repair himself, training after that was hell cause his father did not relent on reducing any difficulties. He lost all subsequent fights with beasts in the following one month, cause beasts noticing that he was injured purposefully attacked him at the same spot on his chest and his back, he punctured his lungs once. During this time, he experimented with swords of varying lengths from a foot-long knife, at 60 cm long Xiphos, a 90 cm long estoc proved useful when he was fighting beasts with thick hides cause of it penetrating effect, but its edge-lessness made it so that any beast with moderate agility would treat it like a stick and putting an edge on it reduces any strength the blade has in addition to the fact that his father said that the blade would require specialized technique. Due to a lot of injuries during his fights with the beasts he started tending more towards defense than offense and trying to end the fight in a single attack. He requested Sagar for a broad axe. Sagar as usual arranged for a monolithic two sided plane broad axe made out of the black material which was harder than any material Kush had seen. This axe was heavy, weighing around 95 kgs, so heavy that leveraging it from the bottom end of the handle made his forearms hurt. The same forearms he now used to lift 80 kg weight more than 150000 times every day. The axe handle was a 1.5-meter-long i.e. it is just a few cm shorter than Kush himself. The handle diameter was approximately 4cm making it fit perfectly in his larger than normal hands. The axe head was in the shape of an approximate eight i.e. the cutting edge on sides was 75 cm and curved and place it joined with the handle was 40 cm wide, the axe head itself was 1 m long. Without any adoration and joints it looked like barbarians butchering instrument, Sagar liked it a lot and was hoping Kush would like it. Kush did not really have an opinion on whether he liked it not, he was sure about one thing, it very difficult to use for a noob like him, most of the time he would miss his swing giving an opening to the opposing beast which was very easily exploited. These beast being among the weaker ones in the forest of Dandakaranya were among the agile and alert ones, never missed an opportunity should it show itself. Making life difficult for Kush one way, it did cover of one of most important weakness his right side, the massive blade acted like a shield in emergency when he lifted it high enough. So he decided to keep it temporarily, to make him get used to it his father had another training to his regimen a hundred thousand swings of the axe the in a day.

Today he was going to face six adult iron wall wolfs and meaning the one Kush fought the on his first day was only an adolescent wolf. Since then, he has now seen these wolves a few times, growling as they come near him in the flatland, as soon as the fight start the wolfs run so as to surround from all sides, Kush knowing that it would make this fight one sided starts to run towards one of the wolf trying to break their attempt at encircling and hits out with his massive axe the wolf side steps him easily which was within Kush’s expectations. He uses the axe as a leverage to hoist himself above the wolf and starts running away from all six wolfs. Surprised what the human did the wolfs start chasing him down the field. Kush holding the axe such that joint of the axe head and handle rests on his shoulders and he grips the handle somewhere in middle, starts running towards the grove of trees in front of him, this time he is fast enough to not be over taken by the dogs before he reaches his destination about 3.5 km from him. He used giant tree about 2 meters wide to have his back and turned around. The wolfs had now almost reached him and were about a meter from him when he turned around and swung his axe, the wolf standing at the forefront jumps back to avoid the blade letting it hit the ground collides into another wolf which was unable to stop its momentum ‘BAM’ tumbling and arriving right at the location where the axe dug itself into the ground. The axe’s collision with the ground had let out a cloud of dust engulfing Kush, the other four backed away to safeguard themselves, the collided couple were a second too late to react. Using the awesome power of his chest muscles and biceps and using the stuck blade like a spring board for accumulating potential energy, launched the axe at the collided wolf who were just starting to stand-up, one of the wolf side stepped but got nicked on the rear of its hind leg but the first wolf which was had backed up from first swing, got the brunt of the full force of axe. The axe hit it in the wolf on it body with the flat part of the axe head “Taaannn” came the sonorous sound of a humongous bell ringing, as the metallic hardened skin of the iron wall wolf was broken apart. The noise made the other wolves with really sharp hearing cower over, stunning them for a couple of seconds. The wolf which was hit was lifted in air and thrown about 15 m from them. It had fractured a couple of its bones from the impact and was now immobile for the most part. Before the others wolves could act up Kush launched himself into the injured wolf, it took him a couple of steps to reach the wolf with his raised axe from where he let it drop, the injured wolf as if seeing the grim reaper saw the life in its eyes escape “BOOM…...”. Meeting no resistance at all in its path the axe went through the iron wall wolf like knife and got stuck in the soil. Hoisting back on his shoulders, Kush looked at his opponents. This was his favorite part when fighting a group of beasts, it was the part where they realized what would happen to them should they misstep even once. The dead wolf was cu at the center of the body it still pumping heart trying frantically to maintain pressure in its body to keep the brain engaged, it had not yet realized that the brain had stopped functioning due to the pain from the pain impact. Its intestines were and other innards were flowing out at the partition, losing control of the bowel and bladder the wolf had made the whole atmosphere smelly, but no one here cared about the smell. Living beings are afraid of death there are two opinions about that but this was not death, they would have preferred being prey to the beast of Dandakaranya forest, atleast their they are killed a little less mercilessly. Blood spattered all over Kush and his axe painting them red. The axe with its black color and dark red hue in the broad day light looked like a beast in itself making the beasts lose their will to fight. Seeing them hesitate to attack Kush dives at the second wolf which had a bleeding hind leg. The injury to the wolf had been more of a hit from a club than a cut from a sharp edge, because of it sturdy iron skin, but the nick had been at its ankles and the cut their had considerably reduced its agility. This also would not have been a problem if it was the alert but it was scared shitless by the slaughter of the other wolf, it just stood there for a moment too long and that was all that needed for Kush to cast a long slender shadow of the axes blade on its fore head. Intimidated by the reaper incarnate Kush the wolf just stared at the incoming axe, it was like looking into the headlights of an incoming truck, unable to decide what to do next “SLAM…...” landed the axe on the head of the wolf splitting the head and a little torso behind front legs apart. It was like a one of those alien beasts from movies whose mouths open in four different directions. The wolf’s snout was cut longitudinally and then it was like a fountain of entrails vomiting out of the flower-vase-esque figure of the wolf. “AAAAUUUUUUUUUUUU…...” cried the surviving wolves as they launched themselves at Kush simultaneously. He was distracted from killing two wolves in succession so much that his reaction was delayed but he still managed to get a horizontal swing in time. This deterred two of the incoming four wolves, and using the momentum of this swing he went after one of the other two wolves. The wolf dodged the swing by jumping on the axe and the second one the second pair to wolf jumped to attack his throat. Kush ducked the wolfs attack at his neck and went full circle with the axe and wolf in hand, he let it go at one of the first pair of wolf while the second one of the first pair bit down on him at his thigh to immobilize him, Kush bent his legs to make so that wolf got his knees on his left leg instead of his thighs. The wolf bit down on it, but after its power jaws penetrated the skin easily, it found that it had gotten stuck after penetrating a few millimeters in his bones. “Aaaarrrggghh…” screamed Kush more like a beast than perhaps the beasts themselves. He brought the small knife from his belt and stabbed it into the eyes of the wolf beast. Blood from its eyes was gushing out when he removed the knife and covered his face. The axe he had sent flying had entered the wolf in its belly right below its front legs partially. Its enormous defense and vitality had kept it alive for now but Kush he had it pinned and out of commission. He started limping rapidly towards the axe but was interrupted but the wolf he dodged before which went for his hand which was moving to grab the axe. The maw of the wolf had nicked him slightly making feel pain “Shit” it had torn the skin/ webbing between the thumb and the other four fingers. He knew that swinging the hulking weapon in normal cases itself was difficult and now it was impossible. So brought his knife out and made sure he was facing the wolves with only his left side (the Karateka thing) to fend them off. This was a small respite for the un-injured wolves as the weapon they were afraid of was literally out of commission.