"Get up now." Dweep and Anik pulled me up to a sitting position, waking me up from my nap midway. I'm sure it was a pretty weird dream, but I just couldn't remember it anymore. Something about a spy crocodile jumping across the rooftops of a metro city.
"Bro, we are already done with looting and cooking. How much longer will you sleep for?" Anik kept shaking me even after I had woken up.
I was mentally fatigued having connected to so many people using Tethers and also because of using up my Prana continuously.
The set up was impressive. We had clean dishes, picnic rug, glasses, bowls and big sized spoons. There was a casserole filled with rice and a big bowl that had soupy chicken curry. Yashvi had delivered her promise.
"Esha gave our bodies a thorough check up. Some of us had those worms inside us... thank God they didn't attack the heart like your savage ones." Anik told me. "Trisha's anti parasitic medicines cured us."
"How does she check us? You sure she doesn't see more than she's supposed to?" I asked with caution. Thank God my auxiliaries were already empty. I'm not sure if she can see them or not though.
"Good question. I'm afraid to know the answer actually. " Anik whispered.
"Come sit!!" Yashvi's bright smile warmed me up instantly, "Have a taste and let me know how it is."
"Gladly ma'am." I answered with a smile.
We sat in a circle and gobbled everything up. I made sure to fill up my chakras first converting Prana into Kundalini before eating.
"It's really tasty. Got a nice homely feeling." I mentioned bringing out a smile from Yashvi. She's really precious. I have to make sure she's safe first not to miss any of these meals in the dungeon for the next few days.
She gave me two more pieces and an extra potato.
"Extra servings for those who'll compliment me!!" she announced as others joined in.
Shreya was eating slowly next to Saiyan, her waist now patched up with bandages.
"As things are going, the other girl got no chance I guess?" Anik kept whispering next to me. "You didn't see because you were passed out cold, but while I was toiling away looting and skinning the monsters, he was taking care of her while chopping up potatoes and chicken."
"You're our looting guy. Don't complain. Didn't anybody else help you other than the seniors?"
"Aditi came around to learn looting as their representative." he whispered much with an even lower sound this time, "You know how she is."
"Can't argue against that. Sorry for putting you through it. But what a nice nap I had. Thanks for being so reliable." I teased him.
"Next time I'll take you along. You also need to endure her grumpy expression." he threatened me in vain.
"But you were impressive. Once I get some time, I'll try making some exploding arrows and javelins for us so look forward to it. I'll program them to activate on a hit. Will require some experimentations though." I told him, "By the way, can you show me the basics of archery after eating?"
"I will. The more archers the better. You saw how OP Yashvi is right?"
"Yep, she only inspired me to try it out. I have only been thinking about it for a while without taking any action."
We finished our food, clearing out our bowls as good as new. Laksh's water based orange kundalini, which signified an awakened Swadhisthana chakra helped in cleaning the utensils. I'll have to ask for tips since that was the next chakra I wanted to awaken.
"How long did it take to clear out one section of the dungeon?" Vihaan asked Trisha who was apparently the time keeper.
"7 hours 36 minutes." she did some calculations on a wheel like device. It was probably called an Astrolabe or something. I wasn't sure.
"The next ones will get consecutively harder." Laksh mentioned, "So let's rest for 4 hours more. It's better to use up the moss we looted and make medicines before hand. Dhruva and Esha can help Trisha with that. The rest can laze around or do whatever you want. Vihaan, come help me setting up the toilet tent. Also make sure to be careful around the swamp. The leeches are still there."
As everyone dispersed, Shreya beckoned me to come closer to where she was sitting with a calling gesture.
"How are you feeling?" I asked while sitting down in front of her.
"Lighter on my left side. The organs are slowly regenerating I think."
"A good weightloss option then?" I asked.
"Indeed. On second thought, won't we be rich selling organs and regenerating them like this?" she asked with a smile continuing the joke.
"A like minded person!! That's a good business proposition. I'll gladly operate on you if you give me a 25 percent commission from your sales."
We giggled at our silly jokes for a while after which she got this serious expression over her face.
"Thank you. Now I get why your team had the least lives lost even after getting teleported to Sutala. I don't even feel like competing with you guys anymore." she said clearly, properly communicating her feelings of gratefulness.
What's up with all these girls and competition?
"If you ever need help in future, I'll try my best to help you depending on what you ask for. And I'm not sure whether the others will thank you or not, but I'm sure they too are grateful. I hope you understand that. Things within our group are actually not that good. After I took their lives, I feel like an invisible wall has developed between us. They care about and listen to Esha more than me. I understand why that's the case. She had tried her best to save them, while I only reduced their lives unfairly. Our team has already lost five lives in total. Two from Esha and Aditi. One from Jhanvi. Don't mind much about Aditi's attitude when it comes to Esha. She's really protective of her." she explained their situation.
"Things make sense now. Everybody's got their own circumstances so I usually try not to judge much. I was actually much worse before, talking about others' flaws behind their backs, without even trying to understand why they acted like that. Well things didn't turn out well. So I have decided not to expect anything out of anybody, anymore."
She thought about what I said for a few seconds and changed the topic, "You guys have a good bonding among yourselves. I'm kinda jealous." she mumbled her voice laced with longing. She might be missing her previous school's friends.
"If you don't mind us treating you like our probable sister-in-law, you can come hang out whenever you want." I laughed watching her ears getting red. "You'll have to work quite hard to capture his heart though. In fact I'm sorry to say that I support him in his other endeavour more." I continued.
"It's Somi isn't it?" she asked suddenly.
"Naah, that's just a misunderstanding. He was spying for a stupid guy. You have to slowly make him talk about it yourself. Some things can't be said even if we are close to them. I hope you get it."
She gave me a suspicious look for a while but let it go sighing with acceptance. "Work as a wingman for me then."
"I might, depending on what advantages you are willing to provide. We are supposed to run an organ business in the future right?" I smirked.
"That can be arranged. My family is quite well off in Satya." she clarified.
"Ohh, which family are you from? The one which bullies Somi's family?" I asked casually, not letting my intentions out in the open.
"Nope. We don't associate much with the other families. My family manages a huge library and are a bunch of scholars. If you ever visit Satya, I can give you a tour of Takshashila. Or I can provide you with enlightenment books if you want from there. Your choice." she gave me a business like smile.
We shook hands right after her proposition. "Deal."
"I'll make chances for you to spend time together with him. The rest depends on you. But still, I support the other person right now. There might be some bias on my end, can't help with that." I double checked with her.
"Well, I'll change both of your minds then. You can atleast wish me luck for now."
"Best of luck."
I stood up with a goodbye nod and walked away.
I walked over to Yashvi who was chilling at the edge of the camp, her legs hanging from the cliff from where we kept jumping down on to the marsh.
"Do you have any fruits with you? I need two Prana to fully recharge myself." I asked her for more food.
"Can you do that for me too? My 4 points of Kundalini is 0 now, but my Prana is filled up."
I complied with her request as we sat side by side eating an apple each.
"Your Kundalini arrows were interesting. Are you using extra Kundalini to imbue it with the blooming properties?" I asked.
"Yeah. Basically that's it. After practicing it enough times, I managed to change it into a more efficient Skill version where the energy requirement was reduced to one third but with a cooldown." she explained.
"That's a thing? It opens up more avenues then... if my repeated tasks can be converted to a skill then it will be really helpful." I got excited hearing that, "How long did you practice this for?"
"Right from when I started learning how to shoot. It is something I have been envisioning for a long time. It will only get deadlier later on. Can't wait." she wished for such a dangerous thing so innocently.
"You kind of inspired me to try out the bow. I'll be taking classes from my friend after this. Thanks again, you were too cool during the Boss raid."
She laughed, patting my head. "You know how to butter up a person. I hope you were genuinely complimenting me. I'll make sure to give you more meat during dinner, so cry your tears of happiness..."
"I was serious. Doesn't matter if you believe me or not." I insisted strongly.
"Thank you. But if you get to know other Dhanurdhars from seventh standard, don't get disappointed in me, okay? They are much more impressive..."
"It's like music. Depending on the situation and one's mood, someone can have a piece really close to their heart even if it isn't critically acclaimed by others." I tried to give an analogy.
"Now you're borderline flirting with me. Nice try though." she giggled making me embarrassed. It was not my intention. Not to make matters any worse, I said my goodbyes and retreated from the scene.
I met up with Anik and learnt how to hold a bow. How to stretch and release an arrow. Everything one by one. I shot a few dozens of arrows after that, gradually getting a feel of it. After getting the beginner Archery skill, I fished up my Javelin from wherever it was lying about and kept chucking it as far as I could. Vihaan and Laksh were sparring with each other at one corner. Saiyan and Dweep were following their footsteps. I made a Tether for Anik that he could use to pull back a single arrow which he kept shooting continuously. I needed to make it after losing five or six arrows to the swamp because of miss fires.
Soon it was time to move again as we gathered around the camp. In the meantime people visited the bathroom tent in regular intervals to get rid of their wastes.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
I also talked with Laksh about awakening Swadhisthana when he said that it happened automatically for him. He's usually not interested in most things. Excluding dangerous things that give him an adrenaline rush. Hopefully he doesn't resort to racing cars in future... He also advised me to try awakening it before the onset of puberty. Because after that it'll become exponentially harder to keep my mind focused. If I don't get to level 20, how will I be able to awaken a new one? I'm still at level 12 for Kalpa's status which is responsible for chakra awakenings.
As we gathered our belongings, Esha and Aditi decided to leave the dungeon. They reasoned that the first section was too much for us. And it will get harder later on. That it was reckless of us to enter a dungeon that seniors who are two years older usually enter. It was mainly Aditi who was doing the talking though. She tried to rope in Jhanvi but she refused, saying that she wanted to learn more from Yashvi.
I now understood Aditi a bit since she only had a single life left. I might also become like that in a possible future.
Aditi said it's better to enter the dungeon multiple times and only clear till the first section each time.
"Let's just touch the Blessing Orb and say our goodbyes." Aditi ended her one way rant.
Vihaan brought out the Orb from his dimensional box. Anik explained that it was actually the chakra core of the Boss. Once touched, we will get a random Active Skill level up and 5 usable stat points. But only for Kalpa's status as things turned out.
The two Rakshaks disappeared after touching the Orb and checking their status.
"Let's all touch it too, and keep moving forward to the next section." Laksh said nestling the Orb in his hands.
I grabbed it without any expectations, to avoid getting disappointed and found that my Javelin Throwing skill had increased by one level.
It's fine I guess? But internally, I still got disappointed. Human mind is unbelievably fickle.
I allocated all 10 stats in Panna's status to Strength, for increasing the velocity and damage of the Javelin Throw Skill. The 7 points, 2 for level up and 5 from the Blessing Orb in Kalpa's status was also allocated to Strength.
I realised that Javelin Throw required a mixture of effects from Strength, Agility and Dexterity. I had enough Dexterity to properly hit my targets, but not enough of the other two, essentially dealing negligible damage. I have to start physical training to increase my natural strength and agility as far as I can take them.
We entered the exit tunnel and arrived into a bigger cavern. If the last one was half a football field, this one encompassed a whole stadium. My intuition suddenly tugged at my stomach violently.
"Something's wrong." Yashvi muttered as our eyes settled on the massive purple colored carcass that was lying in the middle of the space. Numerous other bodies were littered all around.
"12 hours for only the first section?" A voice appeared from the carcass of the Boss monster. "Ashrama Rakshaks seem to be regular flies then. Aren't even worth my time. Let's just take whatever measly experience they have accumulated in their puny lifetimes..."
A figure appeared above the Boss monster's dead body as it glared at us. A human adorned in gold jewellery and Armor stood there, with beautifully carved crescent swords in his two hands.
One more figure appeared, jumping up from below, and landing on the carcass right beside the young man. It was a woman, with long flowy raven hair. She was wearing a long skirt, that reached down to her shin, and a red round necked shirt that exposed her belly button. Jewellery adorned her hair, and she moved with the grace of a noble lady.
"Honestly, I expected more." she said, "Forgotten pigs in Alik are only good as a nutrition for us."
Is this how the people of Satya viewed us? Are they talking about killing us and gaining experience? As soon as my intuition started acting up, I started preparing myself and designed a burst arrow using Akshara skill.
0.5 for the arrow. 4.5 for the burst property. It was a huge cost. 5 points of Kundalini were gone just like that. 3 more left.
I placed it inside Anik's quiver discreetly.
"Let's return." Vihaan whispered, "These guys are from Satya."
"We can't, I already tried." Yashvi stammered, sweat forming on her forehead.
I opened Kalpa's status and saw the emergency exit button missing. A whole lot of questions assaulted my mind.
"We can go back to the first section and use the leeches in the water." Shreya suggested, whispering.
"What the hell are you guys chatting about?" the woman shouted, clearly annoyed.
"Let's do that." Jhanvi said as I saw the young man's arm disappearing for a few milliseconds, as if it glitched.
Covering my arm with Wood Flesh, I put my palm infront of Jhanvi's face as the other agility based teammates also reacted, but we're unable to reach her in time. But I was luckily standing right behind her. Just a second later, her face was splattered with my blood as the curved sword penetrated right through my palm, appearing from its other side.
"Run back!!" I shouted as we started bolting down the tunnel back towards the first section. I felt shivers creeping down my spine as I sensed two massive presences following us from behind.
Pulling out the sword, I threw it into the pool as soon as they appeared from within the dark tunnel into the first section, making sure that they saw me doing that. If they wanted to retrieve it, they needed to step into the water.
Vihaan himself stood in the water to make sure they didn't find anything amiss as he kept stepping back maintaining a constant distance with the unwanted guests.
"Pick my weapon up and return it to me." The man shouted, "I won't repeat twice."
"Take it yourself if you want it that badly. You were the one who threw it away." I retorted back at him.
"I said, I. Won't. Repeat. Twice." he grumbled the words one by one.
"Okay, okay..." I said, "Wait just a second. I'll go pick it up."
"What are you doing?" Shreya asked worriedly.
"Do I look like I have a choice??" I pretended to be afraid, "They would kill us all if we don't listen to them. What can we do? We haven't been in the Ashrama for more than a week."
"Makes sense." The woman giggled, poorly acting as if she was enjoying this, "No wonder you're so weak."
I felt the leeches grabbing onto my legs but I covered them with Wood Flesh to keep myself safe.
I put my hands inside the water, pretending to look for the weapon and started kneading two Akshara animals. One a drill Earthworm, another a leech like the ones that were inside the water.
More and more leeches bit onto my hands, but I had no choice other than enduring it. Carefully placing the drill earthworm inside the hollow leech, I wrapped it around the hilt of the curved sword that I was standing upon having already found it, programming the leech to latch onto the closest flesh after I broke the Tether. The drill earthworm inside the leech is supposed to make its way inside the body as usual. Hopefully the leech can act as a decoy, distracting him from his true enemy.
"Here!! Take it!" I sent the sword flying towards him like a boomerang, breaking the Tether midway. Please... for once, let this work. Oh Lord Vishnu, please!!!
He caught the handle of the sword and jerked his hand away.
"Be careful. There's some leeches in the water." I showed of my arms filled with wiggling worms, as I started ripping them out one by one.
"Such Savages!!" he followed my action and ripped out my Akshara leech away from his flesh. But there was already a hole where the leech was attached to.
"Shit. These worms are good at making holes. It fucking hurts!!!" I cried out, "Are they poisonous???"
I started walking back while facing him waiting for my Earthworm to complete its job.
"Ughh, I feel like my whole arm is on fire..." I again cried out in pain to make sure he thinks that we both were bitten by normal leeches. In truth, it wasn't even hurting much.
"Don't worry, it also bit me. It'll subside in a few minutes." Vihaan joined in, assisting me properly.
I'm sure he has already got what I did after I mentioned the hole. Leeches leave circular teeth marks, not holes.
"That was a nasty prank you played on me, Alik spawn. I might have spared you all if you had returned my weapon properly, but now you will be the reason your friends are going to die." he said.
"Will they?" I smiled, gaining a bit more time. Any time now... "I thought you were planning on slaughtering us anyway like pigs? Isn't getting farmed by you our sole reason to exist? I feel nauseated thinking that these are the people I'm risking my life to protect them from the Asuras."
Green Kundalini burst out of his body, as he crossed his two weapons.
"You've spewed enough bullshit, Savage. Time for you to respawn." He announced and started running towards me, only to suddenly stop after taking only a few steps.
Thank you!! I'll pray to you everyday from now on. Oh Lord Vishnu. I truly thank you from my heart.
"What's happening...? My chest..." he muttered weakly, clutching his hands over his heart.
Coughing out blood as his lungs and heart were punctured with holes, he fell to his knees.
The young lady suddenly appeared right before him, taking him in her arms.
"Sagar!! What happened to you? Get up!! If you die, it'll cause a huge trouble for me!!!" she kept shaking his lifeless body only to suddenly push it away.
The drill earthworm had pierced right through his chest making its way towards her next. She caught the worm with a swift motion and gripped it so hard that it burst into pieces.
"Such a cowardly trick... And you fell for it. How pathetic can you be???" She shouted, anger rising in her voice. "Your arrogance... was your downfall." she suddenly got quieter, "But I also need to take revenge for the sake of my family's reputation... Why did it come to this?"
In the meantime, I saw 6 level ups all at once for Panna and 4 for Kalpa.
Level 22 in Panna's status and 16 in Kalpa's.
What a crude timing. Again. Let's meet after this is taken care of, okay? I sent a message to Panna.
I couldn't get happy in such a circumstance as intense pressure fell over us.
Blue, green and yellow Kundalini sizzled out of her like smoke floating over a disco floor as it spread out in all directions.
Vihaan and I hurried back to the banks, rejoining my friends. All of them were sweating and gulped as the Kundalini smoke condensed to form different sharp ended weapons that pointed at us.
"Thanks for increasing our chance of surviving the situation by 0.5 percent." Anik muttered with a dry voice.
"Kavach!" Dweep and Vihaan shouted, overlapping their shields.
"Disappear." A cold and cruel voice emanated from the young woman as dozens and dozens of sharp weapons bombarded against our shield.