Rudra chose the fifth path and started walking. He was silent, mulling over what he was caught up in and whom he was involved with. Little Sara hummed to herself as she hovered above his shoulder in a seated pose, enjoying the scenery. As they continued in silence, it soon became clear that it wouldn’t last. She had moved around more and her humming had picked up a notch. A quarter-hour later,

“The first circuit in your mark seals the kund, since it redirects all shakti coming to the kund to the second circuit and balance to the mani. It prevents the shakti from being stored or under your control. In your case the mark was modified to shunt it away to your god. I’ve fixed that.”

“The second circuit is sensory. It runs constantly to sense attacks in advance and the level of the attacker. One can only sense another’s advancement level if it is the same as one’s own level or lower. You need specialised techniques to detect higher levels. For rare cases like yours, with prana senses, the mark uses your own senses to detect levels, attributes and skills.”

“The third circuit is for power. It unlocks the mani, only up to the level of your attackers and enhances your body. In your case, the power source was your god. Not good for obvious reasons, so I’ve fixed that.”

“The fourth circuit is for protection. Your body and nadis are not strong enough to withstand shakti at levels higher than the body. This circuit protects the nadis and your body, to prevent them from breaking down and dissipating.”

“The first and the third cannot work independently, both are needed for either to work. The second and fourth can be used independently and have been incorporated into yantras, however there is a heavy shakti cost to using them.”

She stopped, but he could see an eager look in her eye. Despite his curiosity, he decided not to oblige her. But she didn’t lose her enthusiasm, “You don’t want to know why it is useless?”

Rudra didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking, so he answered, “The mark was designed for children… for bullies, and can only be used for defence, not attacks.”

“It is a bottleneck to be overcome at lower levels… no all levels. At lower levels, it is an increasing drag on advancement, which might be useful. At higher levels, it becomes a liability.”

“It relies on an external source, this means that there will be a time limit before the source runs out, possibly hurting the mark holder, definitely leaving the holder weakened, during a fight.”

“The body is not ready for shakti flows well above its level and needs protection but shakti needs to be in contact with the body and nadis to affect the host. So the protective mark limits the damage but can’t prevent it and damage would be more and accrue faster at higher levels. This would put a time limit before the accumulated damage becomes critical.”

“At higher levels having access to a deep shakti source would seem preferable to using the mark to deal with opponents at higher levels.”

Instead of having the wind taken from her sails, her face was beaming. “Good. The mark matches the host’s advancement to their opponent’s. Where the host is already at a high level, there will be conflicts between their own advancement and what the mark overlays. This can prove dangerous.”

Rudra groaned. Rudra had fallen into her trap. They walked in silence for a few more minutes when Little Sara spoke again. Her tone was wistful, “Balance. The universe doesn’t give power easily. It always takes something in return. Always.”

Rudra stopped. The words resonated with him. There was a lot unsaid, but he knew that within these simple words were deep secrets about his new existence. He considered whether to maintain the silence, but that no longer made sense. So he asked, “How do you know our language?”

“Gilli, my pet. The guardian you met at the entrance to my domain. We share a bond that lets me see and sense whatever it sees and senses. The suppressive circuits prevented me from communicating with it but not the information flow to me.”

“Was the Collectorate an empire of humans?”

“The Collectorate was not an empire. It was a collection of individual clans, sects, families that banded together. Do you want to know if we were humans or giants or something else?”

Rudra smiled weakly.

“I am human. Bio-engineering. Initially, advancement with shakti meant a gradual increase in average height and build. In time with advances in various sciences, we learned how to increase our genetic baseline, which coupled with the multipliers of shakti enhancement took men to an average height of fifteen feet and women to 13 feet. I of course preferred to keep a shorter stature.”, she winked at him.

Sara’s answer made Rudra think about his situation. She gave him a few minutes before piping up, “Now, tell me why are you being so stupid.”

Rudra looked at her in annoyance.

“Don’t give me that look. Your unit lists under Abilities ‘Mental Processing 4x’, looking at your Intelligence score and age,” she snickered. “it should at least be 8x.”

Rudra sighed. “I never understood that. I can only split my mind into three parts, not four.”

“Hm, so which of these three parts supervises itself and the others?”

Rudra almost stopped walking. Sara kept talking, “As your attribute scores increase, it means you can do more, in more ways than one. As your Intelligence increases, your brain’s capabilities increase, including its ability to multitask or process things in parallel or both. The way to develop this is…”

In the next hour, he learned of exercises and techniques to train his mind and increase its splits, or cores, as she called them. In the end, she told him to always use his conscious mind to focus on the present, to let the other parts handle ‘distractions’ and use at least one part of his mind to execute the mental techniques continuously, more when feasible. Every advance in his mental skills would double the parts.

Then she spent the next two hours giving him exercises to enhance his senses and vitality. Agility, speed, endurance and strength were better served through skills and techniques. Just as she was talking on these, Rudra stepped into a clearing in the forest. It looked just like the one he had encountered in the beginning, but instead of six paths, it had only one leading out… exactly where the fifth path had been in that first clearing.

Rudra didn’t look at her, but he knew she was suppressing a smile and waiting. As if he would give her the satisfaction. He gritted his teeth and walked on the sole path out of the clearing.

After a short distance, the road seemed to change. It did not differ from the road he had already chosen and even the surrounding forest looked the same. Even then, everything seemed different. After a while, Rudra noticed a man standing on the road ahead. Not just standing, he was blocking the road. He looked to be a foot taller than Rudra, suave and clean-shaven, completely clean, with no hair anywhere on his face. His head sparkled like a stone polished by a running stream. Rough. The second most striking thing was that he was heavily muscled, half as broad as he was tall. He was dressed in simple but clean clothes.

Rudra sighed and turned around. He heard a surprised voice, “You don’t even want to hear me out.”

“Don’t care. Not in the mood.”

A moment later, Rudra turned and stretched his right hand out. He caught the large rock that rushed past him, ducked and turning back up, smashed the rock into the surprised face of his attacker who was closing in on him with a lunge and fist pulled back to deliver a punch. Part of the rock crumbled and part of the attacker’s face and chest burst into blood and gore, the rest of the rock and the attacker sailed through the air into the forest that laced the path.

His boon hadn’t kicked in, indicating his opponent was at his effective level or lower. And he was still going to think of it as a boon, not a mark, as he always had. He stood looking back down the path he’d come from for a few moments, then turned around to keep moving forward. His experience at the start had clarified that once something started it would continue, whatever direction he took. He preferred to keep advancing.

Rudra’s boon kicked in with the fourth opponent about a quarter-hour later. His opponent was a few levels shy of Stage two and well above him. He found it interesting that he could sense a linear progression in the power of his opponents, he guessed that the levelling metric of the Collectorate differed from that prevalent in the Aryan Sector.

Another change was that his opponent was wielding a gadda. All his opponents till now had been brawlers trying to use their strength to overwhelm him. It seemed that trend would continue. The gadda was a weapon for strong men, using strong tactics, good for shattering defences and delivering crushing attacks. It was simple enough to use as a force multiplier with just brute strength and no training. It was devastating in the hands of anyone who had mastered the gadda-yuddha-koshal, the gadda fight skill with over thirty-six stances. He smiled. He’d picked up gadda skills in this life. He still liked a staff more making it his first choice. But sometimes you just had to smash things.

His opponent was not trained in the use of the gadda. The swing was a basic bash. Rudra spun into the blow, narrowly avoiding the gadda and he struck the gadda, pushing at its head, keeping it moving on its original trajectory. For a gadda to be useful it has to weigh just that much less than the maximum weight one can wield. His strike caused the gadda’s effective weight to exceed his opponent’s ability. Rudra caught the gadda as it fell and, keeping its momentum and spin, struck his opponent directly on the torso, making him stagger back a few feet. Rudra then spun the other way to smash the gadda on his head, then he stepped over his crumbling opponent and kept walking.

Little Sara went, “Ooooof”. She’d been observing his fights keenly, with nary a word but with a strange glint in her eyes.

Rudra had pushed his movement speed to the max. His opponent didn’t even realise he’d lost his weapon before the lights went out. Rudra kept the gadda. Its weight was at the limit of his physical abilities and it didn’t have any carry yantras inscribed. He didn’t mind. He was looking forward to the next fight. The next one used a spiked mace, the sixth dual-wielded, and the seventh had a massive hammer. Rudra powered through them all.

His eighth opponent on the road wielded a gadda with a carry yantra. He’d also had decent skills with a gadda. The fight lasted about four minutes, and he enjoyed every moment. The carry yantra meant the gadda presented itself at the optimal weight to its wielder, whereas the wielder’s opponent felt the full weight of the gadda. The eighth fighter had been a tall, scrawny man who had made full use of the yantra. He was close to Stage four, and adjusting to the increased speed and power had been difficult. The twelfth fighter was the most challenging. At just over Stage six on both sides, the power in play during the fight had been phenomenal. Adjusting to the enhanced speed and power was even more difficult. The fighter was just a little less skilled with the gadda than Rudra. The fight lasted an hour long. If Rudra did not have his enhanced healing factor, experience from constant battles and training over the last two years, that little skill advantage and his sstubbornness,he would have lost well before that. In the end, what gave him the advantage to end the fight was a lucky hit that landed as the twelfth fighter slipped on the blood that spread around on the road.

This time Little Sara cooed, “Oooooh”.

Rudra found it difficult to stand, but he managed to last long enough for his healing factor to do its job. He then picked up twelfth’s gadda and left. This gadda was a beauty that weighed over sixteen times his limit, but the carry yantra did its job well. The material was unknown, but it was covered with gold, silver, ruby and sapphire inlays creating entrancing patterns and various yantras. He could sense additional yantras that could be unleashed with just enough shakti. The twelfth opponent had not used them. This had not been that kind of fight.

Rudra felt that this stretch was at an end and something new was around the corner. He wished it wasn’t archery related. He sucked at it.

As the path and forest changed without changing, he was greeted with a bow and arrow set sitting in the middle of the path. About fifty feet away was a massive door over the path, standing in the middle of a pond. A bridge led from the path to the door. Fish with silver scales and a metallic sheen jumped over the bridge. There was a depression in the door and any of the silver fish would fit in it just nicely.

Rudra tried walking past the bow and arrow, but no matter what he tried, the bow and arrow stayed at his side, and the door rested fifty feet away. He gave up and tried shooting an arrow. He missed the fish, and the door, by a lot. The arrow went into the forests on the side of the path. In frustration, he fired a lot of arrows as fast as he could, all missed. None could snag a fish. None hit the fish-shaped indent in the door. The few that hit the door bounced off. Most went into the forest on both sides of the path.

Rudra could sense Little Sara stifling her giggles, but she still bounced about in the air, acting as if she didn’t even notice what he failed to do. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said, “Frick it, I am going to Robin Hood this shit.”

“How? You can’t even hit a barn. If a barn was the target and had two barns on either side, you would still miss hitting a barn.”, a voice trilled from a little above his shoulder, before dissolving into laughter.

Rudra grimaced and got to work. The sheath seemed to have an unlimited supply of arrows and various types. He could select any type he wanted by touching the sheath strap. He took out seventeen one gaz long arrows, as that was the longest arrow the sheath would provide. He then used a small knife from his storage ring to inscribe a specific circuit on each arrow, going from the arrow’s end to its tip. Rudra fixed a shakti crystal to the base of one arrow, and the circuit on it lighted up. He then put impaled another arrow onto this one till he had all seventeen connected with their circuits lighted up. The circuit ensured the over fifty feet long and thin rod of arrows was perfectly straight and hard. It took a little trial and error before he nailed a fish in its eye and then stuck it onto the door. In a flash of light, the door and the pond vanished. He had already slung the bow over his left shoulder. He stored the sheath in his storage ring and started walking.

“Nice trick. The fastest and easiest this test was completed was by a student who took an arrow and walked up to the door with it. Passed this in a minute. He realised with a bit of testing that an arrow could reach the distance, and anything attached to the arrow.”

Rudra stopped and glared at Little Sara.

She continued, unconcerned, “After all, the students who came here can’t be experts in everything…”, she stopped when she saw his look and flashed him a grin.

Rudra grunted and turned to see someone on the road. Even as the man opened his mouth to speak, a heavy bow crashed angrily into his face, caving it in and dropping him to the path.

“Ok, that one is new. Kudos to you.”