‘Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum…’ came loud rhythmic thumps from the monster’s chest echoing through the ambient, above the sound of waves. The previously skinny arms of the monster were starting to bulk-up, his veins were popping up all over his skin, his neck was broadening.

‘Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum… Badum…’ his thighs started to expand too till they started looking like the trunk of a young tree, his claws grew in size till they looked the size of daggers. His eyes turned red and he slowly rose up from his place on the ground. The wound on his back had stopped bleeding but still there and his eye was still damaged. The power up didn’t seem to have healed him.

His imposing figure scared the shit out of the people seeing the monster, he looked like a giant ape as he put his two hands down on the ground with his fist closed and back bent and then… ‘BANG’ he thumped his chest, the sudden action shocked the onlookers and the guards felt weak in their knees and dropped to the ground. Brutus then put his hands down, he had lost his reason or rationality, with only his primal instinct now present. His world had been painted blood red with black outlines of figures the only things visible, he did not remember, his ‘paradise’, his hatred, his brother, his niece, his friend, everything to him was a black outline. But for some reason when he saw the outline of the queen covered in a flimsy piece of cloth, he raged and screamed and thumped the ground so hard the ground split and 30 m long crack originated from the point of impact, he then pulled with hands and pushed with his legs and within a fraction of a second he was in front of the woman.

To the trained eyes of the queen, the monster was there for a moment and the next he was there in air in front of her. His hands outstretched behind him above his head with his claws open, if nothing was done, he would be swatting her like fly into oblivion. The injuries, anger, surprise and fear had made her unable to respond to the gigantic figure in air in front of her which looked all black cause of the sun behind him. But before she could form another thought, a 2 m long black curved blade entered in between her and monsters with the convex end towards the monster. Like a hook the blade struck the monsters and then from behind them came the scream of a warrior “AAAAAAAAAAAAAA” as she used the end of the 3.5 m long handle to pull the monster from her friend and flung him using everything she had. The monster flung to the ground made a large trail as he was dragged in the ground. After stopping there didn’t seem to be any wound on his body but he felt excruciating pain as it flailed around the in sand patting the region he had been ‘cut’. After a few seconds the pain faded and the monster got up angry at the attacker and so it lunged towards her this time. The woman dodged and repeated the action. The monster had grown stronger and faster, but the blind eye helped her and she managed to dodge the attacks.

All the time she fought her eyes were trained on the muscular frame of the axe wielding lame warrior who was just standing there, just still. At first his expressions were peaceful, but slowly he started sweating and his expression were as if he was under a huge strain, his well-defined muscles taut against his skin and feet sinking in the ground as if under tremendous weight.

“He’s preparing something” she thought as she continued to buy time.

Every viewer in vicinity had their heads bowed from shame, relying on two such young people to fight for them, but this was reality and they couldn’t even make the monster flinch if they tried. Tara did not attack when Brutus was down, to preserve her strength for the next volley, because she knew her attacks were useless and could only buy time.

After a couple of minutes of the fight Tara seemed exhausted, it seemed whatever she was doing to fight him was draining her of everything she had. Brutus was once again flung on the ground and Tara stopped for a couple of minutes to catch her breath, the fatigue of the long drawn out battle and using her special gifts against Brutus at such an alarming rate had sapped her of strength and for but a moment, just a short moment her vision blurred… The monster used this opportunity to jump across the few 10 meters and almost approached her. Tara unconsciously tightened her grip on her scythe out of fear trying to build up that one last shred of defence against the incoming monster’s attack when he stopped at the last step. He was staring… staring daggers at the one armed man behind her who had an axe in his hand outstretched horizontally. The monster had lost all its senses since the power up but its instincts were telling it… the man was the real danger and needed to be eliminated and it immediately acted on it. Leaving the girl alone he pounced over her towards the one armed man in hopes to slaughter him.

Tara understood his intentions and reacted once again hooking the monster and using her scythe and concentrated hard to damage it and the monster screamed in pain but instead of attacking her he kept on his target. Everybody else realised what was happening too, so whoever could fight joined in preventing the monster from approaching. But monster as if sensing the danger from Kush ignored the attacks from others and just marched forward, he was hit on head by the axe, on the leg by a hammer, shoved using a hammer, stabbed by a sword, punched by gauntlets, smacked by a mace etc. but he marched forward towards Kush.

Maintaining the posture and potential difference in mana was a huge mental tax for his brains, probably the toughest among any attack he did. Just he was finished he could see monster in a slow march towards him about a few meters away, a man half corroded clung to his thigh, with his feet dug in the ground trying in futility to stop the onward march while another man stuck to Brutus’s other foot, his left hand already corroded and the right on its way there. Kush recognised them to be the soldiers from the queen’s personal guards.

He was ready now, his powerful attack ready to kill the beast. As soon he opened his eyes people from behind the monsters started running away, as if they were aware of how bad the attack would be. They dove into the ocean to escape, the ones who could swim despite the injuries swam while others just sank, hoping the swimmers would come later to save them.

Kush then seeing the monster approach swung horizontally…

‘When Kush slashed the axe horizontally in air an arc of mana was created which was running away from him as much as it could, obliterating whatever came in its path, obliterating anything that hindered, obliterating the carbon based life forms to carbon-di-oxide, oxygen, water vapour, nitrogen and sulphur-di-oxide, obliterating rocks to gaseous silica and other its metallic constituents.’

The wave of mana travelled for but a few a seconds but the end result was devastating. The people there were standing with mouth agape. The first island behind them was now a series of rock jutting from the ocean floor and it was acceptable to a certain limit cause the two monster like warriors were fighting there for close to two and a half days, but the other two islands were pretty much pristine before the attack, too were obliterated till a depth of 3 m below the sea level. When the mana wave dissipated in ambient, there was a huge about 2 kilometre by 5 kilometre area where there was no water in the sea. As the mana dissipated waves immediately followed and moved in to fill the gap left, but the people seeing this forgot for a moment who the real monster amongst the two was. The island the fighters were on was obliterated too; starting from the place Kush was standing. But once the dust settled, they saw something weird, Kush was on the ground on his stomach and the monster had his foot on Kush’s back. The monster’s left hand was missing, the large chuck his torso from his left was missing too, his thighs and butt on the left were missing but it was still alive and kicking. The rage in its eyes fuelling his next action as it lifted Kush using his neck from behind as Kush screamed in pain.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

His mana levels were down to nil… he was like a life doll. Even uttering a syllable was almost impossible for him let alone screaming, but the pain was so primal that his body involuntarily tried to exhale as much as possible causing him to scream without energy. Bit by bit his neck and spine were corroding. The monster not torturing and went straight for the kill as it used its mouth to chomp down on Kush’s head when…

“NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” screamed Tara jumping in and stabbed through his mouth with her blade managing to plunge it inside by about 12 cm. The muscles on his face were strong as well, so instead of getting torn from the inside, the monster got pulled along the trajectory of Tara’s swing and let go of Kush as he dropped to the ground. The monster was in pain… a lot of pain… but seeing the threat eliminated it eased up a little but didn’t slow down in attacking Tara. Marcus the two ministers and the leftover soldiers joined in trying to keep the beast away from Kush trying to hold on to the last vestiges of pride they had left by handing over the entire operation of killing a soulless monster to a kid who had just reached adulthood. But it was too much for them. Brutus before was playing around with them, but now the even stronger version of him was just swatting them out of air. Their bodies were corroding on touch, even zorax was like a tin sheet getting thinner every time they got hit. It wasn’t going to be long before they would die. They did not know what they would achieve from this but they were going to die today.

After a few minutes Marcus screamed “Tara, take your majesty and the boy and leave. If she survives we might have shot at a future. Please I am begging you”

Tara chose to ignore the old man’s request and continued fighting. Cause she knew, they were but a paper dam in front of this tumultuous flood. If she left, they would just be steps for the monster to follow after her when she was not ready. Atleast like this she could stall the monster for a few more minutes.

She thought to herself “Cmon!!! Dumbass!!! Don’t tap out right now. Oh lord in the heavens, I can’t die right now, just this once… just this once pull a miracle…”

As she said so the wind started picking up and clouds in the sky started moving and churning and losing shape and reforming…

A few minutes ago…

The queen had the Kush’s head in her lap using her hand to support his back. Her tears were running endlessly as things were coming to an end, an end she had prepared herself for but couldn’t accept once it was in front of her, so she fought but lost the fight and then went back spiralling down the slide taking her to that deep dark place where she was afraid to go. But then she was handed a life line by probably the unlikeliest person she hoped from and again she started dreaming, dreaming of being able to go home and raise her country from the ashes once again, but again fate punched her in the gut. Brutus stepped in and almost killed the one handing her the life line.

The pain had almost knocked Kush out, but he knew, if he passed out now he would not wake up again ever… so he kept his thoughts going.

“Man… dad would have been able to pulverise this guy with a single punch… he is going to mock me my entire life for this fight I am not going to…” a pause “tell…” another pause “Him”

Kush realised he wasn’t able to maintain consciousness tried to jolt himself awake but couldn’t. It was like sinking in quicksand, the more he struggled the more he sank. He kept on sinking into oblivion till his outstretched hand sank in the dark gooey lake that was unconsciousness. In a corner of the darkness a deep guttural voice rang, “looks like I get to play a bit sooner.” But just as it said so… a couple of drops of water dropped on the surface of the dark gooey lake of unconsciousness, making it clearer. Kush could see across the lake now and could swim. He swam like his life depended on it (it did) and made it out.

Kush slowly opened his eyes, only to find himself smothered in Sylvie’s breasts and a couple of cold tears drops on his cheek which had been half corroded which he could barely feel. He said something lightly

“……”

But Sylvie had believed him dead and didn’t listen to him over the clashes of the battle going on. Kush tried a couple more times but she didn’t hear him again, so he opened his mouth and bit down on the soft plush breast of the queen of Bhasmachal, taking in the pleasures of heaven while he was about to head there himself. Devoid of mana the queen winced in pain and looked down at the perpetrator. Not a lot of people had done what he had done and it had been a long time since she felt this pain, under normal circumstances she would have murdered the person but she was out of sorts.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Kush had done this only to attract her attention and nothing else so as soon as he felt her gaze he mouthed again

“Ma… na…”

Sylvie instantly understood his request and looked around for potions. But there were none nearby, they had all been consumed to treat her wounds, which now she thought to be prodigal waste, as she would have survived with only a few and she was not an able to fight anyway. She turned her head from side to side and said “I don’t have any potions for you right now. I am really really sorry for being of no help right now” pearl like tears flowing down her cheek only added to her beauty.

Kush on hearing this gave up and was about to let go of his consciousness when it struck her.

“The guy asked for mana not healing potion. Does he mean to heal himself up?”

“Kush!!” she tried waking him again and asked him “Do you mean mana potions and not healing potions? Do you mean to heal yourself? Hey… hey…” but she got no response.

“a person’s fate is not always in their hands, they may win or lose depending on a lot of things, but if you don’t do anything you are definitely going to lose”

“Why am I remembering that right now?” and tore the arm band off of her hands and wrapped it between his fingers.

“Listen to me Kush and follow my voice” she said

Kush was once again given consciousness for a few seconds but he didn’t have the neck muscles to nod.

So Sylvie simply continued “In front of your Mula Chakra, is a small blue coloured pot. Generally, people don’t have another vessel in their body to store mana, but the armband in your hand allows you store it. This absorbs mana from the ambient naturally and is practically endless for our purposes. It stores a ton of mana and you can use as much as you want, all you have to overturn it. The more you spill over the more you can use. Kush immediately went into action and pushed the pot over so that the mouth was now over turned. For a second nothing much happened inside his body, but the one time use crystal shattered in his hand.

‘BANG’

Pressure threw Sylvie about 50m from Kush. But she got up immediately flabbergasted at the event. She was one of the most gifted mana users she knew across the continent at her age atleast. But even she could not shatter the crystal, how the fuck did a back water hick manage to do it? What the fuck has he been doing his whole life to make his body into such a large vessel? All she could do was tip the pot over a little, but the fool managed to overturned it entirely. This guy… was a monster… of great proportions…

As soon as this happened all the mana veins in his body opened up once again, something people standing there had never experienced in their lives, something one in a million people experience once in their lives before all their mana veins are opened was happening right before their eyes. Had they known this was third time Kush was experiencing this, they would have dropped to the ground in awe. All his mana veins lit up like a Christmas tree in the night and his neck started healing in real time at a speed visible to naked eye. Sylvie standing nearest to the man was surprised and once again the word slipped her mouth “… monster…”

Kush’s eyes lit up too and after but a few moments he managed to get up and the deep guttural voice in his consciousness once again rang out “looks like I am not yet needed… heh…”

Kush once again held his axe horizontally outstretched and closed his eyes. His mana veins all lit up, this time he had to move a huge amount of mana, more than what he had ever before, the good thing about this was that he didn’t have to absorb mana from the ambient cause he already had a huge quantity of mana coursing through his body but the bad thing was creating the potential difference which was crucial to the attack became equally difficult.

Slowly he transferred the mana to Tanka from his body and thus created the potential difference between his body and the axe. Till now there hadn’t been any major physical deviations in the ambient because of horizontal slash but the quantity of mana was so huge that ether in the atmosphere became violent and started pushing the physical matter along causing the winds to pick up and ionisation of the air molecules around him started to happen. The winds caused the cloud to move and arrange themselves in a concentric circle in the sky and vertically below the centre of the concentric clouds was a huge black monolithic axe poised horizontally. The circular clouds grew denser by the minute. Nerves were starting to appear on the surface of his skin on his forehead, neck and left shoulders. They were visibly pulsing.

Tara looked up at the thundering clouds from her position on the ground and looked at the man standing right below them. He was standing just like before, his corroded and half consumed neck was healed, his eyes glowing golden and a blue translucent flame like apparition on top his muscular left shoulder, it was like seeing a God standing there ready to smite evil into extinction. A cold sweat formed and dropped down her back. She was considered a genius by any standards achieving Adept level strength in Karmic power by age of 43 years having opened her Mula Chakra point too and her mana storage capacity was awesome. Though she was not strength or mana based fighter, but this was simply ridiculous. “Where was such a monster hiding to begin with? But this is what we need right now!! Cmon Kush take care of this and I give you a reward you will never forget (;P)”

By now Brutus had noticed the thundering clouds as well, which drew his attention towards Kush. As soon as he saw Kush he launched himself in his direction. This alarmed Tara as Kush still had his eyes shut, she launched herself at the monster and blocked his path. But the monster let the attack hit his body, ignored the pain and continued on its path. The urgency in its attack was palpable, to all. Brutus used his longer reach to jump at Kush and punch at him and reached him uninterrupted till his punch was only a foot from Kush. Kush aware of the incoming threat and he opened his eyes and immediately swung his axe horizontally right into the monster’s fist…

KABOOM

A pulse of air the radius of 1500 m originating from the point of collision pushed all living being in the radius outwards, the ship holding injured and immobile soldiers too was blown in air due to the air pulse. Then came a pulse of heat which vaporised everything in its path, be it water, metal, soil, silica, fish shark etc. a huge dome of 3000 m formed and persisted for a period of 25 mins in the ambient. The difference in temperature in such a huge area set off a short term cyclone the radius of 150 km. the effects of which were felt in the entire country of Bhasmachal. The ensuing lightning storm made it feel like the end of times for the locals of the country who still remained, causing them to pray for the first time in their life. They had stayed in the country for a long time, suffered horrible consequences, raids from goblin-eque creatures, sailed through a long period of lawlessness and acute poverty all so that they once again they could see the light of prosperity. Something they believed would come till the bloodline of the Rhineland remained in the country.

When the heat wave dissipated the view on the island cleared. Of the four islands present only a tiny piece of rock the area of 15 m remained in the area. Huge tumultuous waves of water filled into the gap in sea created due to evaporation of water and earth. The waves on the hitting the foothold of the two warriors broke and fell like rain. The sky cleared of any clouds was visible and the afternoon sun shone brightly. The people of Bhasmachal seeing the rapid change in climate were flabbergasted to say the least. On the last remaining part of the islands were two beings. Kush seemed to have broken every bone in his arm and left half rib cage laid on the soil unconscious in a coma-esque state he had a satisfied smile on his face. Next to him about 10 m from him was the body of the monster. The body did not have any limbs only the chest and lower part of the head as it laid there on the piece of rock, its organs spilling out and charred at the end. It was not moving but green blood was flowing out at a rate which should not be possible for a dead body...

The first person to come back to the piece of rock was Tara who was carrying the queen with her. They dragged their broken and battered body across the surface of the rock to Kush’s body lying there. Seeing the smile of his face they let go of their breaths which they had held back and started inspecting each other’s bodies for injuries. Slowly the rest of the people join them, including Marcus, Augustus and Brachios. The ornament around Marcus’s neck, carrying Julius’s blood had shattered, though small it held a large quantity of Julius’s blood which spilled all over his clothes and his sword. He was a mess in all respects. They stood around the comatose sprawled body of the warrior with obviously mangled left hand and left part of the chest. He seemed to be breathing easily causing them to not be concerned about him for the moment. They accounted for all the 23 people to be present, though no one was in position to help another. Their spirits were lifted as the personal guards discussed the battle among themselves and the awesome figure of the hero who saved them at the end. The translucent flame arising from the left hand the churning concentric clouds and hero-esque attack and the ensuing climate changing disaster. No one could believe what they witnessed today, the fighters were in a plane of their own. They were rejoicing at the completion of ordeal when…

‘Badum…’ came the sound from the other end of the 15 m long surface of rock.

Then came a louder sound ‘Badum…’ and the subsequent evenly spaced sounds came from the same source.

In their reverie people had forgotten about the body which had remained at the end of the rock and hadn’t checked assuming it could not have survived the explosion.

‘Badum…’

‘Badum…’

‘Badum…’

Chills were sent up their spines every time the monster’s heart was beating. It was growing increasingly louder but seeing that even if it survived it would not be able to attack set their hearts at ease.

‘Badum…’

‘Badum…’

‘Badum…’

The beat continued growing louder with every subsequent one and slowly a golden light started emanating from place where the heart was supposed to be…

Marcus was the first one to realize something as his face put on a sombre expression. Realization slowly dawned on everybody standing there. With every beat the mana emanating from the heart kept on increasing but never left the confines of the heart and the amount of mana that was accumulating was horrifying. Even the mana which Kush was using towards the end was incomparable to it. Brutus was told this when he was given the power for the first time, if he ripped the seal open, he would receive enormous power for a short duration; but only for a short period after which he would explode and destruction following the explosion would be enormous. People standing there had never seen so much mana in one body and were certain about one thing: ‘If the monster exploded, their homeland would not go unscathed’.

The queen who had just regained strength enough to stand on her legs dropped on her knees once again. She lost all sense of reasoning and surrounding, as she beat the ground with her fist

“No” she banged the ground again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

She was not a defence oriented person hence after the 23rd time she hit the ground as hard as she could, the skin on the forearm broke and she bled. Her hair, already dishevelled from battle, had fallen in front of her and touched the ground.

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

“No!!” Again

Blood from her arm stained her hair and ground crimson. The queen who entered the battlefield like a warrior was now on the ground dressed worse than a beggar. The cruel twists of fate had plunged her down into a never ending pit. There was nothing they could do.

She then clawed at the ground with her broken nails hoping to grab something that could help her now.

She had lost all her regal sense of self.

Marcus too was spiralling out of control before he remembered what Julius had said to him before leaving for the last time ‘his blood will be what will fertilise the lands and sweat will irrigate the farm and from it our land will be re-born once again’

He saw his sword painted in Julius’s blood, “The fool thought it was my blood… heh…”

He looked at the devastated distraught Julie on the ground, pity in his eyes “Sigh… such young child bearing such a burden”

Then he replayed all of Julius’s decisions through his head “Is this why Julius pulled the monster to the volcano so far away from country? This made the battel logistical a nightmare.”

He stepped forward and placed his hands on his niece’s shoulders, Sylvie looked up from her position on the ground and saw tired broken and battered body of the old man with kind smile. He bent down and told the something in her ears, she looked at his face in surprise not understanding what he was trying to convey. Doing this picked up his blood soaked sword and pierced the skin of the torso on the rock and stopped before he pierced the heart. To everybody’s surprise it went in like cutting through butter, he then picked up the torso and jumped into the water and started swimming. His untrained bones were cringing from the strain and water pressure, but he kept on swimming till he reached the volcano Mount Solaris and saw the huge top the radius of atleast 3 kms. He was as insignificant as a bacterium in front of the massive natural disaster, he had never prayed to anyone before but when he saw the solidified yet hot magma on the top of the volcano, he felt the need to bow his head and he did…

He then further plunged his blade further in the torso and put his sword in front of him and like a bullet swam into the hot surface of the solidified magma of the volcano. Breaking the surface of solidified magma using the mana which started emitting on from the monster’s he entered the magma. His final thoughts were “I truly wish a monster like you were never born…”. The massive mountain, 15 km high, burnt the body of the monster and its heart. The massive amount of ether in the monster’s body was dissolved in the volcano not even amounting to a bubble on the surface of the mountain. Behind them the sea water once again cooled and solidified the magma on the volcano’s.

Sylvie just sat there on her knees, unaware of what to do should she rejoice at her victory or should she lament the death of one history’s greatest men who ever lived. Her eyes were dry of any tears…