The large pair of translucent fully open ancient yellow eyes, saw what was happening. While Kush was still on the ground, suddenly the 73 mana receptors on his body went into override, absorbing copious amounts of mana from the ambient. “Heh… kid is not done yet”. Soon the mana from the veins instead of going towards his chakra points went to the axe on his back, slowly all the mana stored in the mula and svadhi chakra point started moving out, his muscles which were aching for mana were continuously absorbing it, his body was hungry for mana and it was absorbing mana from everything in the surrounding. Despite such tremendous mana gathering rate, there was not a speck of mana in his body. The dark axe was full to the brim with mana from Kush and Kush almost devoid of mana entirely, in term of mana, one was the sun while other was the black hole. Normally when using mana to attack, a person uses some part of his mana into the weapon and unleashes it. Kush had put in all his immense mana into. This worked on two levels. One was the sheer quantity of mana being stored and second was the humongous potential difference which is created; shifting the natural balance in a locality to such an extent that nature would try to rectify it the best it could. The best nature could do would be to push ether towards the black hole zone to reduce the potential difference, but Kush was acting like a conduit transferring whatever ether he received to his axe in form of mana. This unnatural potential difference made natural ether crazy. This continued for the period Snoopy was getting pummelled by the orc.
“Hmm… this power looks similar to the Hero Poseidon’s legacy, as I thought, I was not the only one who came to this back water planet. Show me kid, was it you I have been waiting for?”
The amount of concentration and pain bearing capability which is needed for this attack huge, because the starving mana veins ache for ether, it was like chronic alcoholic going cold turkey thousands of time over. Mermaids were blessed in it cause they had blessings of the ocean making healing and pain relief a speciality for them, as they grew stronger, pain relief became more pronounced for them, but to a human the pain was like pouring hot lead down his throat, the mental capacity required to maintain this was impossible to obtain for anyone. Kush was in such a situation that he had lost all his senses, hence he could not feel the pain, but his mental capacity was such that he could maintain the potential difference.
The crazy movement of natural ether had only one other way to solve the issue and restore natural balance and that was to help release all that mana and push it as far away from the black hole as it could and destroy whatever got in its place, so 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. It was worse than being exposed to a nuclear bomb cause if you were in range and were lucky enough (extremely), the gamma rays may pass entirely through the gaps in your atoms leaving you intact not even hurting your DNA, but this mana slash had only one principle behind it and it was to obliterate things and erase their existence. Said to the be strongest attack of one of the strongest heroes to ever exist, the strongest attack of the Hero Poseidon!!!
The large yellow eyes was sort of delighted to see the attack and then it said “Kid you are first one to reach here, clear this and I will give you a gift” saying so the eye disappeared from the sky. Even when it was there; nobody could see it.
Kush fell on his butt “Haah… haah…” breathing deeply, his body was aching and contorting in weird angles, the mana deficient body was rapidly absorbing ether from atmosphere in world fully made out of mana. The loss of sense had made it so that he did not feel the pain in his body, but slowly the senses were coming to him and pain was emerging “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa………………………………” he screamed rolling of the ground. The scream was the only thing audible in the huge obliterated sector of 20 km radius arc, his mouth was foaming and his eyes were blood shot, his endurance prevented him passing out and his pain receptors kept sending extreme signals to his brain. Imagine the sort of pain which would cause him to scream so much, a person who did not even scream when he was impaled, stabbed, cut, sliced, skinned and burnt. He continued screaming for an hour, all the pores on his face were secreting fluid either, blood, sweat or mucus of a mixture of in some ratio. He was rolling on the ground, screaming, screaming for some help to come by. But none did, slowly he started to get used to it and his mana less body was filling up with mana at a very rapid rate, the rate at which he was stomping his feet and hand was reducing, things were becoming clearer in his vision “Haah… haah…”. His injuries were still leaking blood like a broken faucet, his innards were in a twist and he had survived “Heh heh” he laughed at the moment of respite, his palm’s injury was finally healed, he could hold his axe again without any pain and the hole in his shoulder was almost done too, his back still had the two big slashes and leg injuries were still there. The sudden surge of mana in his body allowed him to open another mana vein in his body taking his tally to 74. The mula chakra point responsible for his nourishment was practically empty, meaning he was really hungry, he got up to a sitting posture and with great difficulty started walking to the forest Snoopy in hand, he went back to the trees with edible bark, he had to stock up for the next wave, he did not know when they would come back. The bark was especially rich in sugar, the two ate and sucked it dry. Kush especially ate the entire 3 m high and 2 m wide tree bark. This was his first real break. He then set the axe to the side and threw off the chainmail and donned two new chainmail. He put the dagger in his leather belt which was almost done for now. He fashioned another skirt for himself from the deer skin he had left and sat down at the foot of the hill watching a line of black ants make their way towards their nest, each carrying a load many times heavier than themselves. “Ants live their life for other ants, theirs is not a selfish like that of animals or humans. They live and die by order and never fear was destiny has in it for them. Oh well… not like they have the brains to register such complex things”. Snoopy looked fine to him, he would live if allowed to live peacefully. It was better if he split up, but if left alone, the dog would become lunch for the beasts of the forest. So he couldn’t do that. “Next ones pretty much going to be our last huh buddy, what say you and I give them hell and destroy them once and for all” he said. Snoopy was too injured to respond but without looking at Kush he barked in agreement “Woof” after which Kush made his way back to the hill and he put his back against it. He couldn’t stand and the injury on his back was just under unbearable to him, the bark sap was sweet and the only source of water for the past more 8 days.
Tryst was overwhelming when he heard marching sound of a platoon, in front of him. The two parties met each other and stopped. In front of Kush was a platoon of 32 rows each having 16 meatal orcs and 16 meatal archers and behind them was a red being. The being was 30 ft tall, and 15 ft wide, he looked powerful with gigantically muscular hands, barrel chest and thick thighs each 6 ft in diameter meaning, barrel chest, pot belly, the being had the face of human with red skin, wide lips from one corner his face to the other, small ears, round nose and red eyes. Its teeth were sharp and like elephant two tusks came from the corner of its lower jaw and jutted upwards. Its head was bald, its eyebrows were thick like a bush and its eyes were midnight black like death. It was as tall as a hill, Kush was shorter than the being’s shin, barely higher than his toes when sitting slumped from being spent. It was wearing what looked like skirt made out of bark of large trees sewn together from wines which hung from trees. There were gap in the skirt through which you could his large penis hanging, though the Kush was pretty sure the ogre did not really care about public indecency. In the ogre’s hand was a large blunt sword about 16 ft in length from hilt to tip. It was made from the same metal the metal orcs’ axe, arrows, chainmail and bows. The ogre was carrying it around with ease, Kush figured the ogre could extinguish hills from existence.
While the platoon was approaching Kush put his hand on the axe when gap between the two parties was less than 50 m the red ogre stopped and talked to Kush. “This is your condition… when you only faced a thousand odd of my men, what do expect to do when you have to face my entire army?” asked the ogre in a deep sonorous voice. There was no anger or arrogance in its voice, the disinterest in its voice was evident. Kush looked around him and saw that even though all of these metal orcs or archers the number was still thousand it was still game over and even if the ogre is really strong, Kush did not really think that an individual being would of harm to him. The red ogre saw Kush peering at the orcs and went “Heh…”. He brought the pointer and thumb on his empty hand together making an ok sign and brought his hand towards his mouth. When the orc started moving this surprised Kush as his hand suddenly tensed and went on to place his hand on his axe. Ogre on seeing this smirked and continued with what he was doing, its placed the thumb and pointer in that shape below its tongue and blew. The sound was not a high pitched whistle but a really sonorous booming sound, one which you would generally expect from a tuba, it was loud, really loud. Louder than anything one could hear, it could drown out, a huge water fall, a volcanic eruption, Kush couldn’t think of anything louder than this sound but strangely it did not hurt his ears, after his immediate reflex action, he stopped and looked up and was shocked to see an emerging legion of ordinary orcs. It took them 30 min to arrive from the horizon in disorderly fashion and organize themselves into 32 platoon of 16 rows of 63. Once they were arranged the former thousand odd metal orcs and archers took their place at the front of the rows. The rows were in neat file. It was humongous army larger whatever Kush could imagine. North of 32000 orcs were standing in front of Kush, but instead of despair and hopelessness, Kush showed something different, he tightened the grip on his axe and bowed his head down in between his knees.
“Kuu…” went Snoopy, visibly disturbed by the scene. The ogre was visibly surprised by the boy’s reaction and asked
0 seconds
“Now boy, tell me what will you?” asked the ogre waiting for a response “I saw you fight my soldiers to the very limits of your power…”
10 seconds
“Tell me why you engaged them, when you were not attacked first…” the ogre paused
20 seconds
“Why did you attack us? Is it because we look different from you…?” the ogre paused
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
30 seconds
Kush did not reply, he just sat there with head bowed nestled in between his knees, his hand on the back of his head grabbing his hair tighter and pulling on it harder with every passing second. His axe was supported by the handle by placing it under his forearm and over his left shoulder
40 seconds
The ogre saw Kush behave like he did and “There is no use regretting your decision now, weaklings have only two options in life either knuckle under or die”
50 second
The red ogre stood there silently noticing something was wrong with the boy it didn’t seem like the boy was regretting type, from his aggression he expected atleast some type of retaliation, but the boy just lay still. Suddenly a feeling ran up his spine, something was wrong, he took a step back. While the red ogre was blabbering on, Snoopy looked up from Kush’s lap. He could see the distorted expression of Kush’s red face, his eyes watery, the mouth bleeding from gritting his teeth so tight that they cracked and gums were bleeding. His eyes blood shot from, veins popping there, his neck black from being tightened just cause he did not want to let the scream loose. If a person looked at his mana veins right now they would see that they were entirely empty, dry of any mana in his body, his chakra points which were completely filled the last time he tried this were now entirely empty too. Maintaining a differential mana potential in his body was impossible now. Mentally he was fatigued beyond measure, but he knew… he knew this was his only chance of survival fighting these many people was impossible for him he would die for sure and he had to be quick, so he gritted and developed potential with all he had. The ether around him was vibrating again, going crazy at the difference in potential of mana. ‘Thump… thump… thump…’Kush realised the red ogre was walking towards him so he sped up ‘thump thump thump thump thump’ the red ogre started running towards him Kush realised he was running out of time. It was now or never; as if in slow motion, despite the pain, he lifted his head. He could not stand up from the sitting posture cause his legs were done for, so while sitting he swung his axe sideways from right to left, but before he could complete his swing, a gray pillar like sword collided with his axe. This disrupted Kush’s already weak concentration, he was only able to swing his hands by 30 degrees before he was stopped, the arc generated included a very small angle and at the end, since Kush lost control a huge explosion occurred at the location of impact of the axe and sword. The sword was blown to smithereens and axe was flung away 100s of meters. A pillar of dust cloud 500m in diameter at the ground rose up from the explosion about 50 m from where its diameter increased. From afar it looked like 100m a mushroom. It took the almost 15 min the heavy wind to clear the dust. The formation of orcs was destroyed beyond recognition. Only 319 orcs survived the aftermath. The arc of mana was only able to clear 70 % of the closely spaced orcs, which were turned to vapours. The rest of the 10000 remaining orcs were, became fodder for the uncontrolled explosion which did not have a point of release, so nature laws made it to disperse as soon as Kush let go of control. Since it was an uncontrolled release, it did not follow the rule of obliteration, it simply destroyed all in its path, it destroyed all it could. So all the orcs in the radius were destroyed, their blood and gore sprayed all over the place, turning the former forest from its lush green colour to red and black. All over you could smell the metallic smell of blood and sickening smell of charred flesh. The hill was against was blown to bits and Kush was lying right next to the point of explosion, his black axe was flung over nobody knew where, his left hand an inch below the elbow was missing, his right leg was entirely charred and all his skin and muscles were missing from the leg, only the heel from the left foot was left and his entire muscles on the inner side of his left leg had been charred off. The right portion of his chest. It looked like he was lying on something as he was on his left over left forearm, as if protecting something. Snoopy was lying there unharmed entirely and the only one that was awake in all the events. He looked at his master, shock in his eyes, the entire surroundings were noisy from the continuous explosion, just when he thought he would die, his master would save him again and again. A scream came about 50 m from where they were lying.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…… you bastard what have you done!!!!!!!!!!!!” it was the red ogre. He had just come to and saw that his right hand and his 16 ft pillar-esque sword were missing entirely, his body was skinned all over and bleeding profusely from all his pores, he had too many injuries all over and he was really angry. Rolling on the ground like a child “I did not fucking attack you, why the fuck did you attack me? You fucking cock sucker!!!” he looked towards his army and was shocked to see only a couple hundred orcs left. He was a bit scared of Kush now and wanted to confirm he did not any other trump cards left, which why he commanded from his sleeping position “What the fuck are you fucking motherfuckers gawking at my face for???” pointing towards Kush with his left hand he shouted “I want that fucking motherfucker dead this instant you get me? Each second he lives I am going to murder an orc, now go!!!” The orcs too were reluctant to move forward cause of that display of power from Kush. “If you don’t plebs don’t start moving now, I am going to start shoving molten lead up your ass”
The orcs now one by one started moving towards Kush who looked more like a ghost than ever, more than half his body was now a skeleton and of the other half 30% was blown or burnt off. He was not moving right now, had it now been for his now visible lungs expanding and relaxing it would have looked like a dead body. Seeing his dilapidated condition from close distance, they gained confidence and went on attack him. Kush was attacked by a continuous barrage of 10 axe attacks, but he still did not move, he could not feel any pain, his bones had become weaker from being under continuous stress for the past 7 to 8 days. “so this is how it ends huh” thought Kush, his life was not flashing before his eyes like people generally say happens. He did not have anyone specific he missed, except for tall, large, muscular man and the woman from his recent dreams. He did not know why he missed them but he did. Snoopy had made his decision, he lifted his body on his fore limbs.
‘Thump’ came the sound of the giant red ogre getting up on its foot and using it and make his way slowly towards Kush it had realised that Kush was really vulnerable right now. Slowly it approached Kush with tremendous confidence ‘Thump… thump… thump… thump… thump…thump…’ “Kid you are done for now!!!”. He said as he prepared to stomp Kush below his foot. Just as he jumped, Snoopy turned into a black light and entered Kush’s body. All the orcs and ogre were pushed back by something like wind pressure but they were unhurt. The ogre was surprised and asked “What the fuck now???”
Kush’s was enveloped in a black pod and was floating in air.
As soon as this happened the yellow eyes appeared in air once again, open all the way excitement visible in them. “Finally after millions of years!!! Father… I did it!!! After waiting for 10s of millions of years, I finally managed to find to him, finally managed to find the successor, now I can peacefully ascend as well. Thank you lord… I was starting to lose faith but patience finally paid off.” The floating eyes became watery at the edges. The supremely divine patience was not easy, especially when he not the person who would receive the inheritance, he finally achieved it.
Inside the pod hidden from everybody’s view, Kush’s body had disintegrated to its constituent elements. Afterwards ether from the surrounding was being absorbed into his body, yes ether was being absorbed not mana or life energy and slowly re-forging of his body, or rather his body was being re-built, his skeleton made entirely of ether was like a pitch black metal cage, then came the mana veins of his body which started out as small straw like tubes extending in length and pooling into 7 small ellipsoids, which were now pitch black as well, next came blood vessels, then blood red eyes were formed in his socket, then came the muscles each sinews formed one by one, strand after strand, sinew after sinew, weaving itself into a formidable steel net capable of trapping the world within. Then came the organs each with pitch black walls like the muscles, finally to enclose it all came a thin layer of epidermis, again pitch black. When everything was put together the standing in the black pod was dark skinned muscular being, no light escaped him so it was difficult to discern and red eyes were completely circular like there were no eyelids. Majesticism was at its epitome in the form…
While all of this was happening, in another corner of the universe sat a young man sitting on a rock floating in space, his skin all dark, his eyes like that of a beautiful doe, his red lips stood out in contrast to his dark skin. He was probably the most beautiful being the world could produce, his black hair was made into a bun and on it was a peacock feather which stood out in contrast to the surrounding, like a twinkling star. The young man was playing a flute in space, sans any air. But for some reason you could hear it. The sound of the flute travelled millions of lightyears almost instantaneously and people could hear it without needing to listen to it and the ones fortunate enough to hear had felt the eternal bliss. Suddenly the flute playing stopped and the man looked in a certain direction, he slapped his head with his palm in exasperation, “Which dumbass gave ‘IT’ to him??? Sigh… someday I am going to… sigh… oh well he wanted all this…” saying so he continued with his flute playing.
Back on Bhoomi, slowly the black color on his body receded and his eyes returned to normal as well. The black pod in air slowly lowered and dissipating at the same time. The final place they receded from were his feet, Kush slowly emerged from his black pod as the darkness around him dissipated. He stepped on the ground slowly from air, coming down slowly as if he was flying. To the orcs and ogre, it seemed as if a divinity had descended. Slowly his eyes opened, and looked at the beings in front of him. The ogre saw him and was stunned at the sight which he could not explain, he went down on his knees and bowed his head in front of Kush, touching it to the ground. Following him all the orcs too imitated the gesture and bowed their heads. Kush looked at them, no malice in his eyes for the creatures, but he was no saint and crushed all their heads under his feet. As he was done, the vision in front of his eyes became blurry again and he stood on water in front the large island he was on what seemed like more than a decade ago, but he was gone for but a couple of weeks. As he waited there, the water in front of him parted for almost 7 km the water in width, something was coming out of the water. It was watching a hill rising up from the parting of water, which was generating one of the largest waterfalls known to man. As the water thinned out from the ongoing water fall, something recognisable emerged. It looked like a giant dark green ellipsoid ball about 7 km wide and 10 km long. It was connected to a 7 km diameter cylinder coming from the its back which in turn was connected to the front of the island. The island was hollow from which the head emerged. The giant ellipsoid in front of him had a beak at the front, narrow set eyes, two holes at the front of it beak, the surface of the ellipsoid and the cylinder was green wrinkly, like when the skin gets when soaked in water for too long. The beak did not have teeth in it the maw was empty. In order to see the being coming out of the water you had to zoom out and look at it as a whole and then you would realise that the whole thing was a giant tortoise. In front of the tortoise was Kush standing there naked with an axe in his hand, mouth agape at the gigantic being, a being too far beyond human comprehension, perhaps is a celestial being. The pressure of being in its presence made Kush fall on his knees. The tortoise then shut its mouth and its ancient yellow eyes about 500 m in diameter were open. Then a deep ancient and booming voice rang in Kush’s head directly “So youngling… how was the lesson for disrespecting your elder?”.
Strength: 2700*
Speed: 900*
Agility: 250*
Regen: 7004*
Magic Regen: 20209*
Toughness: 3703*
Skills:
1. Heavy Swing*
2. Dodge*
3. Horizontal Slash*
4. ???*
5. ****