The pack had broken in twenty minutes. The shark had launched seven attacks and weathered twenty. It had wiped out over a hundred foxes, leaving seventy-six who were scattering into the desert. As they ran, the pack leader had run in their direction, with 6 loyalists following it, all near or above Stage 2. Even the fleeing foxes were turning towards the leader. In seconds the pack would reach their position. As they scrambled behind a dune to get their bikes out and ride away, Rudra said, "Do you hear that?"

"Yeah, those are the sounds of a…", Suvi spoke as she scrambled to the top of the dune to peek over.

"… fight", Rana finished it for her, following her, along with the rest.

The remaining foxes in the pack were attacking the leader's group. Seven Stage 2 beasts against seventy Stage 1 beasts. Seven fights broke out, each ten against one. The shark had downed a lot of their Stage 2 and peak Stage 1 fighters. The attacking foxes may have been weak, but they had the force of numbers. At base Stage 2, one had double the power of those at peak Stage 1. Even then, ten Stage 1 beasts could overwhelm a Stage 2 beast, if all their attacks landed at once.

The fights were a frenzy of anger and desperation, many techniques were flying around. Earth affinity techniques and sonic techniques were the most common, followed by shakti based techniques. Rudra and his friends also saw air affinity attacks and stone affinity attacks. The techniques had simple forms, as expected from beasts at a low stage, making it easy to analyse and gain pointers from. Beasts did not develop complicated, high-powered techniques till they reached Stage 5 and above. All beast races had a set of innate techniques and abilities which improved in power and form as they advanced. Most such techniques were simple, aimed at maximising affinity-based abilities. Rare beast races often had more complex game-changing innate techniques that would manifest at a low stage, even at birth, and then grow in power and capability as the beast grew. Red Armoured Fennec Foxes were not known to have innate abilities.

Rudra wondered if he would gain any of the innate abilities of Siyah or the Volcanic Lightning Tiger race. She was a powerhouse acknowledged across the galaxy. She had grafted her or her son’s DNA into him and acknowledged him as her son, if only to Yashi. He had mixed feelings on this since he neither met nor spoken to her. Yashi believed that the existing bio-adjustments he already had, combined with the change Siyah caused, accelerating his growth and base attributes.

Levelling wasn’t a simple affair. Attributes didn’t start at 1, all species had base attributes values set, and could increase up to 4 attributes with every level they gained. For some, the attributes that increased were already set, for others the attribute set affected at each level changed. For the two level increases he had been through, he’d been free to assign his attributes, which meant his human parts held precedence in that area. His base attributes were well beyond human, even with the most expensive bio-adjustments currently known for humans. His base attributes put him above Stage 1, at 5 years old, like a Volcanic Tiger. He wouldn’t be as strong as someone at his level who had advanced with shakti enabled enhancements and could use shakti, but he wasn’t far off. And then there was his boon…

The biggest lessons for the humans were in watching the leader’s group fight their many attackers. None of the followers went down easily. They were all skilled fighters, skills tempered with talent and experience. The two least skilled fell within 20 seconds, along with five from each of the groups attacking them. Three lasted for almost a minute. All had dodged the multiple attacks with varying degrees of ease, taking one or two hits, while killing one of their opponents with every other blow. From one battle none walked away. From the other two, three survived. The sixth stood victorious, killing six and beating the remaining four into submission.

At peak Stage 2, the leader was close to three times as powerful as a peak Stage 1 beast. The strongest of the rebels faced it, to no avail. The pack leader dispatched seven attackers within a minute and turned to help its followers, to see only one standing at the top of a dune, besieged by seventeen rebels. The leader ignored the remaining three attackers and raced towards his surviving follower.

Even as he started, the dune the follower was on erupted, all the sand shooting straight up and forming a cloud of sand a hundred metres above. Most of the dune was gone, a shallow plateau of sand remained, and all the beasts were lying on it. The pack leader’s follower in the centre, his attackers in a broken ring around him. The follower appeared spent, but his eyes blazed with fury. And then the chain-sand-lightning started. As the cloud thinned, a barrage of strings of sand, following the haphazard path of lightning, with the fury and speed of lightning, struck the follower's attackers. Their skin started breaking, it blasted their fur off, some had their limbs chopped off, one had its head cut clean off, fountains of blood spewed where the sand lightning struck them.

It impressed Rudra, with his enhanced shakti and prana senses, he could work out the energy patterns of the attack but couldn’t figure out how to duplicate it. Having faced many beasts and some human fighters, he had picked up their techniques and seen them use those techniques. He saw common patterns in invocations and techniques worked out how to invoke techniques based on their energy signatures. He started experimenting to see how the different parts of an invocation affected various aspects of a technique. He could do this for simple techniques, but it got difficult with more complex techniques. This was clearly a top tier technique or could be one. Even though he couldn’t figure out the invocation, he could sense what might improve the technique’s power and efficiency.

The leader reached his follower in a moment. The follower’s attack happened in that moment. It was spent, panting, lying there unable to move. Eleven of the seventeen facing him had perished. Four were alive but out of the fight. Three heavy injuries, but had launched their own attacks, two sand spikes and a stone spike. The leader rebuffed the stone spike as he reached and heard the thunk of the other two spikes driving into his follower. Everything went quiet for a few moments. You could feel the light breeze, see the sand move, but there was no sound.

Then then the leader stamped its front legs and raised its head. A furious howl broke the silence as the sand around the leader. The wind and sand were driven out from it in a storm that washed over Rudra and his friends, the power in the shock wave driving them off the dune they were on. The top third of the dunes in a two hundred gaz radius around vanished. The pack leader then turned towards them.

Amita and Suvi looked at each other, then at Rudra, and nodded. He didn’t sense their looks but knew what was coming. He groaned in annoyance but was secretly excited. This would not be training or a test.