The grove was eerily silent for a day, though considering only four people lived here it was always supposed to be this quiet but considering there was a fight just recently going on here it was eerily quiet, the wind flowed through the trees as the leaves rustled. This would have been a pleasant scenery had the wind not been carrying a pungent smell of blood and disgusting smell of gore with it, if there were no skid marks of intestine of dead bodies being dragged, if there were no bloodied animal broken bones here. In the center of it all was another body, though bloodied and battered it was that of a 5ft tall boy with no right arm. His knee on his left leg was busted and his torso on his right bitten through and he had a huge gash on his back staring from his right shoulder to the bottom of his spine. His body lied on its back with his left hand inside the mouth of a seemingly iron back wolf which seemed like it was eating it, blood coming from its mouth.

“So it’s finally over huh, son” said an extremely muscular one handed man who came and sat next to him.

“Khow……” coughed the wolf, spitting out blood.

Rewinding time by a few minutes……

The two wolves were smart enough to realize the injured hand meant; the weapon of mass destruction (for the wolves), the axe, was now out of commission. Their target had an injured leg and his only hand was injured, he was just standing there immobile waiting to be taken down “Auuuu…… Auuuu…… Auuuu……” cried the wolves preparing to leap at him. Seeing the current condition of his body, Kush decided to dodge the attacks of the wolf, but he adult wolves proved to be far too quick for him, after the first wave of attack from the two wolves, one them managed to latch on him with a deep bite into his sturdy torso, right below his liver “AAAArrrgghhh…...” he screamed again. Kush became immobile, if he moved even a little the wolf was prepared to tear away and run with its pounds of flesh. The wolf too was surprised at the sturdiness of its opponent’s flesh, which was torn apart again and again by numerous beasts and had been rebuild by help of mana as many times. The rich nourishment of re-build by means of mana had toughened up his body at various locations and because it was targeted by almost all who wanted to kill him Kush too had always been alert for an attack at that location. But did his concentration let him down just now “I think not buster” he said as he tightly grabbed the knife in four of his fingers tightly in an inverted fashion, put his thumb on the hilt’s end, since it was no help in gripping he used it prevent it from slipping out of his hand. He stabbed it into the eye of the wolf’s eye “Kyu…” cried the wolf, as it loosened its grip on his torso and fell down as its eye slipped out of the knife. The final wolf on seeing its comrade die like was stunned and for a thought about running away, but seeing the wobbly opponent it went for the kill while the other wolf still slipping out of its knife. The wolf being wary did not go for the kill used its claws to smack the opponent on its back and left a huge and 3 cm deep gash starting from the right shoulder of the human to his to the bottom of its spine. The wound was such that you could even see the bone protruding out from his spine. The blood was flowing out non-stop, his inner organs were shaken from the impact. The hit almost made him lose his consciousness, loss of blood made him lose all his strength in his legs. To cushion his landing, he went down on his right knee first, and fell on his left shoulder. The final hit or the one on the torso would have been enough to kill anyone a super powered adult as well, but Kush still maintained his consciousness trying to keep his open as much as he could. The wolf on seeing the copious amount of blood did not falter and went in for the final blow to the neck. It dashed immediately jumping at the human male “Atlast the victory is mine” it thought. Just as its maw was about to dig into the bare neck of human, the human used the last bit of his strength to jam his hand and the knife he was holding into the open mouth of the beast. Though in the process the teeth of the beast had ruptured the skin on his forearm, cut every fiber of muscle in the boy. It was a pyrrhic victory for Kush. One which he could not even celebrate.

The wolf was coughing blood as a reflex, it was unknown how was the its own blood and how much was that of the human’s. Kush pulled the knife and his arm out of the wolf and lied down on his back. Now he was in a state where could not feel anything, the pain had gone away taking his consciousness along with it, his blood forming a pool with brain matter from the second last wolf and innards from the last wolf. As his consciousness was fading, he could not even muster up a coherent thought something like ‘never give up’ or ‘is this how I die’, all he could involuntarily do was to not lose consciousness and unconsciously start the process of mana absorption. As this was happening, his heart was pumping blood in futility pushing him more towards his death with every ‘Lubdub…...’. Trying to pull the ether in to the mana sacks Kush’s system was absorbing like crazy, it was then that he broke through to his fourth vein, then his fifth, then his sixth. His body was doing everything in its power to survive, but slowly his heart was getting tired cause there was not blood left to pump, the frequency reduced “Lubdub……” broke through the seventh vein “Lubdub……” broke through the eighth vein “Lubdub……” broke through the ninth vein “Lubdub……” broke through the tenth vein. Then suddenly the amount of blood flow to the heart increased, it was like the body was starting to increase the blood creation capacity rather than repairing the muscles and tissues.

As this was happening Sagar and Alicia were fighting “Why the fuck do you have to take things so far all the time? It’s like you want him to die” they were fighting for the past five minutes while trying to stem the blood loss from his body. “I am giving him the elixir”

“No wait Alicia, just hear me out. These damage and repair cycles using mana have made him tougher. You should have seen how much the magic beast was suffering”

“This barbaric method of strengthening was crazy from the get go. I should not have believed in a psychopath like you in the first place”

“But babe listen to me. Both of us have suffered consequences in our li…”

“Shut up!!” said the hysterical wife “you fucking maniac, you think an adult and a child is the same? Or do you think just cause you have suffered in life, your child has to suffer as well. There has to be limit…”

She was cut-off by the raised bloody palm of her son on her cheek “Mom…” he said weakly.

She immediately put her mana through his body only to see that his blood pressure and heart beat were rising and most of all he had broken through and opened 10 of his mana veins. The amount of mana he was absorbing was crazy for the person his age. A mana regen characteristic person should also be long left in dust behind him. But this still did not explain the heart beat and blood pressure. But she did not care and continued stemming the blood. This method though barbaric was awesome for sure, her greed for her child’s progress made her stem her anger and for in a growling voice she said “Last time, this is the last time you take it this far, else I will show you how it feels to be in this condition”. She agreed to not give him the elixir.

Kush passed out from fatigue. For the next two days he was in and out of consciousness but was continuously absorbing and releasing mana from his Mula Chakra point, to the extent that it seemed ridiculous to people seeing it, for child this young to be able to this, was he a genius, but everybody here on the island knew that it was like rote learning for Kush to repeating the same thing again and again for north of 140 days every day. These two had been uneventful, with even Rhodos not doing any training cause the parent were really concerned for their son and so was she. Over the period of last seven years she had become very close with the couple and the child. On the night of the second day, Kush regained consciousness and asked for his mother “Mom…” it was a very low tone sound probably one which would not be audible even from across the room but his mother out in the kitchen came rushing in like the wind. She heated up in her hand a bowl of porridge she had prepared for him if he woke up and sat next to him on his bed.

“how are you?” she asked knowing full well how moot this question was but still asked

“Fine” he replied in a hoarse voice

“Food” he said

She started feeding him the porridge which had the meat of beasts he had killed. The beasts’ meats are filled with mana so this was a delicacy in the city, but here it was made into common everyday meal.

After eating and drinking some water he went to sleep. She stifled her tears and retained her strength. Next day onwards Rhodos’ training started as well

A week passed, and the damage he received from the fight was almost over the course of his sleep he had broken through again and unlocked his eleventh vein. Not even a Hero would have achieved the feat at this age, but then again a hero wouldn’t have survived the pain of the cuts and lacerations, but then again a hero even at this age might not have faced so much difficulty in taking care of a few pups. He stood-up on his own to head to the training field where the three were to start his own training. His knee was still not a hundred percent, cause even with mana bone take a long time to heal but he could bear the pain. Seeing limping kid come to them the trio who were busy training Rhodos stopped. His mother came to him to support him walk which he denied and started to put on his weights. His father then said, “today and for the next few days you exempted from training. “

“Why?” he asked. His progress had made him greedy for strength as well.

“It’s your birthday tomorrow” he said with his hands up in the air. No one knew when he was born so they celebrated the day Sagar found him as his birthday.

He smiled and raised his arm into the air shouting “hurraaahhhh!!!”

It was a family tradition of their’ s to go to the mainland on this day and enjoy for a few days there. It was nothing special cause did go on other days as well, but this was a special day for him. Seeing the child act like one put smile on the face of everyone present.

Taking the support of his mother he started limping back to the house. He rested on the bed for a few hours until lunch and chowed down on the monster meat Rhodos managed to kill. The ones she killed in her training were more beneficial to him cause they were stronger and the continuous wear and tear of his body meant he ate this meat in large quantities and absorbed the mana from them. With eleven mana veins being used simultaneously from his stomach to intestine, no mana from the beast would go to waste, that is to say he was continuously storing a beast worth of mana in his body every day for the past 140 days, even the son of a king would not be this lucky but there were benefits of being the son of the strongest beings on the planet.

He went to look at his axe which kept in the drawing room of their house, for some reason. He lifted it up and started his swinging exercise, this practice is what had given him strength and he did not want to lose touch with it. He was able to stand with nominal pain, would have been unbearable for most if they had a fractured knee, but he could bear it. He started his 100000 swing routine. His mother had taught him about the 14 Lokas created by the creator God. Of them Swarga was the fifth among the higher Lokas. It is residence of the people re-incarnated with good deeds performed in their past life. The people here are born powerful and the king and ruler of this entire realm is Lord Indra, the king of Devas. He carries two weapons on him one is the mighty and powerful ‘Vajra’ with the power to shake the heaven. This is well known weapon of mass destruction he used multiple time to slay many powerful daityas and rakshasas who had set their eye on claiming the entire plane of Swarga. He is so immensely powerful that no one faced him one on one or some other reason but he never needed to use his second weapon, hence only way to know about it was through reading the scriptures. Said to be the most powerful weapon in ‘Swarga’ and hundreds of times more powerful than the ‘Vajra’ itself, it was his axe the ‘Tanka’. It is said to have the power to cleave what may come in its way, anything below the plane of Swarga-Loka even an entire lower Loka as well will be cleaved in clean halves using the ‘TANKA’. “The Tanka, seems like a good name for my first weapon”. He looks at his weapon in his hand and say from now on you will be called the ‘Tanka’”

Strength: 90

Speed: 64

Agility: 120

Regen: 1000

Magic Regen: 1700

Toughness: 324

Skills:

1. Heavy Swing