“Bhaiyya!!”

“I am here” shouted Parth.

Following the source of the sound, Kush limped a couple of steps and found a hole in the ground and could barely see Parth lying underground. It was dark all around him and it was starting to get dark outside too. Parth got back up and was about to come up when he realized there was tunnel of sorts going in one direction.

“Hey there seems to be something down here” he said as he made his way slowly in the direction of the tunnel.

Kush put the lower edge of the axe on top the ground and swung using his axe, so that he could land on the tunnel floor without much impact.

Seeing the strain on Kush’s face, Parth said “Kid I think I need to rest here”

Kush surprised by the sudden request but said “Then bhaiyya, I will continue investigating the cave.”

Miffed by the response Parth replied “Kid I would advise ‘I’ rest here for a few hours” now looking at the gaping wound on his biceps which had started to bleed again.

Kush realized the context behind Parth’s rest and acquiesced. This place had firm footing and was a good place as any to rest, he was rushing to reach Udaipur, but he had to stop. He was going slower due to injury and Parth seemed concerned now.

Kush simply thanked Parth for his concern and sat in Padmasana and closed his eyes. He had to speed up his recovery. Slowly his bleeding stopped. Parth on seeing him quietly sat down with his back against a wall. The darkness didn’t hamper his vision and he saw Kush starting to heal himself. “Foo (whistle) … that’s fast, though what he did during our fight was ridiculous” he thought to himself.

Visible to naked eye muscles were starting to wriggle and develop of out nowhere, they were developing over his bones, his jaws, his teeth, his calf, Kush could feel his mula chakra point pumping like crazy; absorbing and releasing performing its task to its fullest slowly the cold night had passed and it was the warm dawn. Kush got up from his sitting position and dusted himself. He was feeling a lot better. He had recovered around 30% of his muscles in his hands and his legs were now in their optimum condition.

“I never really got how you managed to open your Mula Chakra point at without formal education and your regeneration without any Karmic or characteristic powers are exceptional as well. I doubt I know anybody who could achieve that level of regen rate at your age”

Giving a cheeky smile Kush replied “Bhaiyya just for your info, I managed to open my Svadhi chakra point as well”

Parth’s jaws hit the floor, his surprise hit a new height, it takes people years to open the second chakra point, and this… is ridiculous!!!

Parth looked at him again and said “Man… you must be some sort of geni…” then he saw the braces still on his body despite his battered state and continued “once in a generation Ox damn it!! You out grew me in just a few years” pointing out the fact that Kush was taller than him.

Kush gave a big wide smile and laughed with great difficulty

As they were chatting the weather within 2 km of them had grown really bad. The sand was revolving in air at tremendous speed, forming a wall of about 50 m above the surface. But the surprising thing was, beyond this 2 km the sand was calm and not a speck was moving. It was like beyond a boundary the cyclonic wind was not working at all. Suddenly the sand stopped revolving and just stayed in air and formed a dome like structure over the entire 2 km area blacking out any speck of sunlight possible

The two men underground did not realize the massive changes happening around them went out and simply continued walking in the dark underground. Their mana powered sights meant the darkness did little to hamper their movements, Kush could now walk properly, so he kept his axe in its holster and was on his way, after a few hundred meters they noticed something at a distance and increased their pace rapidly. On reaching their Kush was surprised by the sight, this was exactly like the small pool of liquid he had seen in the previous allotment at Bhasmachal capital city. The same 2 m diameter, a few meters deep white boundary etc.

Kush informed Parth of the pool and how Brutus was first seen emerging from a similar pool there. They then saw the what looked like a splash of green gelatinous remains on the floor. It was really old from the amount of sand covering it, but it seemed like something had emerged from the pool. Its foot prints, in green goo, were still there for a few steps and then only sand was all that remained, so much that it had packed all of the road along the way. When they tried to push it they realized that probably the roof caved in and the sand from above had filled the entire pathway.

They returned the way they came. After walking for a few minutes they realized that there was no light, this was an underground tunnel without a flame torch so by reason shouldn’t be any light but, it was still day and the light from the hole they fell out of should be clearly visible. Something was odd. Did someone cover the hole? They weren’t worried about being trapped in the tunnel, since both of them were capable of breaking through the roof, but still wanted to see who else was here and why was he trying to trap them in here. They walked to the hole in the tunnel where they dropped from and saw it wasn’t covered.

“Then why is it dark?” asked Kush

“…” Even Parth was not aware.

It must have been a little more than a few hours since dawn that they dropped in the tunnel, it shouldn’t have been enough to get dark.

Parth without responding simply jumped out the hole in the roof trying to figure it out. People might call him foolish to simply jump out first, without thinking about the confidence, but for him, it was a no cause. There were very few people that could hurt him.

Kush followed him out.

It was then that they saw, that the entire sky and horizon had turned dark, mana powered eyes had limits at their cultivation so trying to understand such a large event without having faced such an incident before, they couldn’t figure out why the sky was dark. It took them a couple of seconds to realize that there were no stars in the sky and the reality of the situation hit them, they had been covered in a dome from the outside world.

“Bhaiyya”

Parth gave a nod, Kush simply held up Tanka and stood with his back to Parth they were both on high alert, this seemed like a powerful foe…

Suddenly both Kush and Parth looked northwards and Kush launched himself at it, his near dead muscles meant he was not healthy but he was sure killing him wouldn’t be easy and Parth was backing him up. When Kush had launched himself towards the sudden movement in the sand about 500 m north, he didn’t realize the movement would be so huge…

The sand suddenly turned into a huge pillar as it shot straight at where Kush was going to be, to the surprise of both Kush and Parth the sand pillar was faster than Kush’s jump and harder than what Kush expected as he crashed into the pillar in a

‘boom’

Due to his presence of mind he put his right shoulder in front to take the impact and man it hurt… as he bounced back, the crash almost knocked him out but he still managed to keep his wits about himself and landed on his feet, but then he was on one knee and his breathe ragged. Parth was not surprised by Kush’s panting, rather he was surprised such a young kid could even stand after taking that much punishment.

The pillar too continued moving, it seemed Kush has interrupted its completion. The pillar kept on growing and growing, becoming larger than the worm monster Kush had fought in Barmer, as Kush and Parth saw it forming into a familiar shape of a human forearm. The mighty arm immediately after forming rammed its closed fist into the location where Kush had just landed

‘crash’

speed was really fast but Kush was prepared as he jumped out the way and returned the attack with swing of his axe and

‘slam’

Once again the axe crashed into the fist and all that happened was Kush felt a tinge of vibration in his palm. The fist did a brushing action blowing Kush away from it. Kush was flung in air as the forearm went at him in a grabbing motion to arrest his movements, but Kush came down with his axe on the palm with a monstrous force again, but all it did halt the motion of the hand for a sec as the Kush was flung still further away. Very rarely had he faced people stronger than him so he was annoyed by the way he was flung around by the palm made of sand. He couldn’t control himself in the air as the palm redirected itself towards him. Kush smacked at the bottom of the palm with Tanka and tried to change his direction towards the ground. The palm too followed suit, before reaching ground Kush dug his axe in the ground and sped in a direction away from the palm, as it continued to follow suit. Suddenly right in front of Kush there came a wall made of sand, Kush used his reflexes and slammed Tanka into the wall digging it far enough to anchor himself and turned mid-air again. Sand walls kept on forming wherever Kush went. Later walls started forming in all directions trapping him. Kush initially wanted to escape in the gap between the walls, but the sand barrier started forming there too; like a coffin made of sand, only one he couldn’t penetrate or bisect!!

All Kush could do now was dig deep into the wall with Tanka and send himself up. At first he was able to jump high enough to escape the walls but suddenly the closed fist was right in front of him and it punched him right into the boundary of the walls and then disintegrated into a roof. Then the walls started to close in…

Parth had activated his eagle eyes as yellow pupil shown in the dark leaving a dark outline of his body and he was looking around him trying to find the person controlling the sand. To him with his eagle eye the world seemed different than what normal people could see. He could decide what plane he wanted to see, be it the physical plane, mana plane and soul plane (refer chapter 50: The world 3) while a normal human could only see the physical plane. Generally; when looking outward in mana plane he would only see living creatures and fog of diffused mana in the atmosphere which people all over the world absorb and cultivate. Things also have mana stored in them but they are distinctly less dense unless they have deviated from normal condition, meaning hot things have more mana, similarly cold things also have more mana than normal temperature things, so the hot sand in Thar had generally higher density mana than normal places, but mana in living things was distinctly evident cause of even higher density!!

When he started looking around him he was bewildered to say the least; cause everything around him lit up in deep shiny golden hue like the entire sand was a living being!!! “Impossible!!!” he thought as rubbed his eyes in futility like what normal people would do.

“Is everything here infused with mana?? If so who could it be possibly for him to have such a large mana tank. Has a ‘Guru’ (Karmic power rank of sixth level which is also the second last level) come here to deal with us. If so why is he taking so much time? Is he toying around with us??”

“No… that’s impossible!! A Guru will not have time to waste on us!!”

While all of this was happening…

In the hearts of the city of Udaipur chronicles had started to flow in carrying news of ‘The hero of Bhasmachal’!! Almost every chronical across the country had an article about it, but this news was the front page headlines for this region, since it was about the local town from the Punjab region of Thar. It was about Kush had defeated worm monsters single handedly and saved the people of Barmer. This wouldn’t have become such a big event if not for Kush’s popularity as it is. People of Udaipur were discussing about it everywhere. Some articles also detailed about how he managed to apprehend a corrupt Tyrese family subordinate at the Kutchhy port, who tried to smuggle more mana stone consignment under the people’s nose and sold it illegally. How the accident happened and how Kush managed to save the port workers with limited destruction to property.

Rupali was going through the streets running her daily routine keeping her ears on the street when…

“EXTRA!! EXTRA!! NEWS ABOUT THE HERO OF BHASMACHAL. HE IS NOW HELPING PEOPLE OUT IN THAR TOO. TYRESE FAMILY GOON CAUGHT IN HIS ACT EXTRA!! EXTRA!!”

This call pulled Rupali’s attention towards the crowd of people ganging up on the chronicle seller boy trying to clean out all the remaining paper on him. Before the last was sold Rupali managed to get it. Seeing her clothes and dress crowd parted to give her space to leave. Reading the article, she was a bit a flustered. She was sure Tara had told her that ‘He’ was going to Kashi; “Then what was he doing up Barmer, unless…” something came across her mind as a mischievous smile crept up on her face.

She paced back to the Marwari palace and straight to Tara’s chamber, where she would find her at this hour. Tara working on the contracts with the clients; clearly the decade away from work had made her less inclined to this stuff. Seeing Rupali just barge in miffed her a little, so she looked at her with arched eye brows.

“Did you read it?” Rupali enquired

“What?”

“There’s article about ‘The hero of Bhasmachal’”

Tara jumped off of her chair and grabbed the chronicle from her hand and sat down to read it. A sigh left her mouth once she read the entire article.

“He seems fine… it’s not like anything happened to him. The worm thing was something a lot of people can take care of. The chroniclers are printing this just cause of his fame from Bhasmachal. They are revving up attention and sales.”

“That’s not what I am here to talk about”

“Then what?”

“You said he was going to Kashi right?”

“Yep”

“Why’s he heading north then?”

Tara’s head jerked up in surprise as it struck her what Rupali meant.

“Leave…” she said lightly

Rupali surprised by the response thought she heard wrong when Tara put a bit more weight in her voice as she said “Leave!!”. Her eyes welling up. Rupali realized she had committed a mistake and quietly took her leave.

Tara alone in room sat there quietly in her own melancholy…