We followed Bhairava's footsteps through the caves in silence. Corpses of Yeti, either torn apart by his Trident-Twist technique or with a single hole in their faces, were left strewn behind in our trail.

Bhairava jogged over the dead monsters, crushing their skulls and bones intentionally, as he took out enemies swiftly, even when they were invisible.

He kept twirling my drill-earthworm triangular arrowheads between his fingers, waiting for his next target.

"You should try to pick up an accurate throwing skill like that. Your transforming daggers in the hands of Bhairava is an instrument of instant fatality." Pratyusha suggested while she kept up her pace beside me.

"I've been thinking about it. Even though I have some practice throwing cricket balls, this is certainly on a different level."

"You'll pick it up. Everybody does. One needs to give it enough time." She's being oddly supportive right now. "I somewhat did it, too. Ofcourse, with your help. If I could, then it would be much easier for you."

I remembered not praising her directly about her feats back at the village. Is she trying to coax it out of me by utilizing diplomatic flattery?

Let's leave some breadcrumbs.

"Coming up with a novel application of your barrier in such a short time certainly says otherwise. Your ingenious idea saved the villagers. Not everybody could've done that. Great job!"

My words brought an unexpected reaction out of her. She stared at me through the rectangular gap in her helmet with wide, sparkling eyes. Then, they squinted a bit, like they do whenever she smiles.

It now made me feel bad.

"Was it really this unexpected?" I was dejected yet amused, "Did I never praise you guys before?"

"Not once."

"Bhairava might have rubbed off me to have done it finally. But I remember praising my previous teammates often. Or maybe, I'm just saying things inside my head and not aloud." I reasoned. Bhairava has been very encouraging for the last few hours since I met him.

"You're welcome." Bhairava commented from the front, "It seems I have imparted some virtuous qualities to you. But it would help if you said a few important things aloud. People won't understand unless you tell them how you feel about them."

I nodded—another thing to improve.

Without Bhairava's help, achieving second place in our fifth-grade rankings might have been impossible.

I also got into a new ranking leaderboard with grades five to seven taken as a whole—Ashrama's junior section. Amidst an Ocean of Seventh graders and a few archipelagos of sixth graders, I and the first rank of our batch stood as lost vessels at the very bottom of the list.

I am currently at a whopping level 54 compared to my previous 31—one less than the first place.

As Bhairava used my daggers, he provided me with some contribution points, which would soon allow me to bag the first rank. Yet, a sense of foreboding kept tugging at my stomach.

If fate allows things to work too well, there's always a reason for it.

It's never to make an upcoming ordeal easier.

But to ensure we somehow survive through it.

"We are almost there. I can finally feel the Peeth humming with Shakti." Bhairava assumed a battle stance—Trident in his left hand and my daggers between the fingers of his right. "Get ready. Considerable horde incoming."

"I remember you telling me these Yeti and Lakeh don't exude any presence. Especially the primary forces here. How come you're sensing them?" I asked and pulled out four utility barrier fogs from my dimensional box.

After manifesting them in their spherical forms, I wrapped Pratyusha and myself around with a couple for each.

"I doubt anyone among you has already awakened your heart chakra. So it must be the sage who accompanied you. They have tagged a lot of our enemies with their Air-Kundalini. Concentrate on the energies around us, and you might be able to sense them." He answered my query and started engaging with the invisible monsters.

All his attacks were purely physical. I think he's keeping his Divine energy aside for the Boss, who might be guarding the source of their Myth at the end of these tunnels.

"Stay behind me." Pratyusha stepped out front, looking for a stray Yeti that Bhairava might have missed. "I gotta work for the Armor set you gave me."

"It's better for you to wear it since I'm going to use my limited barriers for myself. I want it back cleaned and washed after this mission."

Four long strips of a dead Yeti materialized in front of Bhairava, interrupting our conversation after getting slashed downward with his trident.

He then held the trident horizontally to the ground and charged forward, manifesting two more dead bodies out of their camouflage, impaled by his weapon like a couple of marshmallows on a stick.

Pulling his weapon back, he kicked the two bodies away and swung his right arm like a whip.

Three more Yeti manifested and collapsed, with my daggers turned earthworms wreaking havoc inside their skulls.

Green brain juice erupted from my daggers' access points like fire extinguishing sprinklers, creating a horrifying image.

"Pratyusha, I missed one." Bhairava gave a heads-up.

"On it... Wait. I can sense it! Should it be this easy?" She jumped over to her right, holding her rectangular shield over her head.

"Either you are close to awakening your heart chakra or have an affinity with Air." Bhairava answered while cutting down several Yeti with a horizontal swipe of his trident.

A force from above brought Pratyusha down to her knees. She pushed it upwards and rolled back towards me, holding her shield now to her left in an instant.

An impact on her shield arrived as anticipated, but it still sent her flying into the cave wall on our right.

By then, I had already guessed the location of the Yeti.

An earth javelin manifested over my head and shot off towards the invisible target.

The body of an eighteen-foot yeti collapsed after glitching out of the matrix with a hole in its neck.

"Lucky shot." After dismantling it to its foggy form, I breathed a sigh of relief and summoned the chipped, half-broken projectile to my side. Only after the dead body appeared out of thin air did I realize how close the enemy had gotten after swatting Pratyusha away.

She took her position in front of me again after gathering her bearings.

Even if the barrier I provided Pratyusha absorbed most of her kinetic energy, being subjected to opposite forces within a short interval is never a great experience.

"You okay?"

"Hmm." She nodded silently, her ears red.

I guess she's embarrassed getting tossed around right after declaring she would hold the line.

After deploying her leg-chopping tactics she perfected back at the village, Pratyusha felled multiple stray enemies by herself, allowing me to conserve my Kundalini for later.

"Dhruva, provide me with more daggers. The ones I had..." A resounding crunch interrupted Bhairava's request.

His body flew past us in a split second and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel behind us.

The ball of light he had summoned to provide us with visibility followed him like his loyal mount and left us to fend for ourselves all alone in the suffocating darkness.

Without giving myself time to breathe, I pulled Pratyusha back and detonated all six of my fogs into blooming spikes in the space where Bhairava was before he got thrashed.

An inhuman cry vibrated the walls of the cave, broke down my urchin-shaped spikes, and sent wave after wave of traumatic bass tones crashing into our ribcages and rattling our eardrums.

It ground my first of the two-layered barrier into dust, leaving Pratyusha and me vulnerable to future attacks.

I had no idea what was happening in the pitch-black environment.

I usually transform my fogs into earth spears to reduce the cost of Kundalini used for their manipulation. But now was not the time to pull back my punches, especially when I was blinded and unable to hear properly in the aftermath of the monster's roar.

I covered both of us with a healing aura to mend some of our sensory functions.

I could feel the energy in my almost-filled gem depleting as soon as I reduced the broken spikes back into fogs, rejoined, and reactivated them.

Earthquakes trembled the cave as my urchins bloomed once again, breaking down the floor and ceiling of the cave.

A notification arrived soon after. I had caught up to the first-rank guy. My spikes must have killed the majority of those still left in the horde Bhairava was taking care of.

But the bloodthirst kept pursuing us like a crazed hunter.

Another roar appeared in the darkness, a little too close to us.

Pratyusha didn't take chances. She grabbed my elbow and started sprinting away towards Bhairava.

"How can you see in this darkness!" I asked, consuming more of my Kundalini to repeat the transformation and repurposing process.

My gem now had about 16 out of 24 points of Kundalini left.

"I can't, but I'm sure we are not a match for it! All we can do is run. Don't blame me if we stumble over something!" Pratyusha apologized in advance, "I'll break down the stalagmites in our path, so stick with me."

Heavy footsteps bolted towards us in a wild stride and started reducing the distance since it was much more familiar with these tunnels than us.

"Duck." Bhairava's voice echoed.

A neon purple trident emerged from the darkness upfront, flaring up like an ethereal torch.

As soon as we crouched, a massive airburst traveled overhead, tussling our hair and releasing a shockwave from whatever it had impacted.

We heard several such bangs even through our busted eardrums as the trident made its way through the tunnel, grinding anything on its path to dust.

"Bhairava!!! The results will be the same as last time."

A desperate cry appeared this time, and a series of retreating footsteps followed. The breathless gasping sounds kept reaching us until a loud thunk interrupted it.

"As if I'm going to let you retreat this easily." Bhairava appeared from the tunnel, his ball of light illuminating the top of his head and shoulders.

"Great job Dhruva. Your spikes, in a moment of desperation, took out most of his minions." He extended his arms, pulling us to our feet, and continued walking towards the final Yeti, still banging on an invisible wall that cut off his retreat.

Sensing Bhairava approaching, the Yeti gave up and faced his enemy.

Reflecting the light of Bhairava's floating ball, we finally saw the monster for what it really was.

An ape so tall he had to slump his shoulders to fit inside the cave.

Covered in blood-red fur and with multiple broken earth spikes sticking out of his body, it was hard to discern whether the crimson colour was natural or came from the blood trickling out of his wounds.

I must have lost my connection to the spikes that had entered his body for some reason to be unable to reconvert them to their fog form.

Since we can finally see the enemy, is getting hurt a condition to undo his camouflage? Or did he disengage it because he knew it wasn't working?

"How did you sense us, Bhairava? Last time, all you could do was run away like a coward, leaving behind the corpses of your followers." The Yeti taunted Bhairava.

"You were just as hard to sense as before. But your subordinates, not so much anymore. Say, does your Myth hide everything in contact with you?" Bhairava asked calmly, but a bitter look soon spread across his face.

He never told me in detail what had transpired during those four days and nights of battle here.

"We don't have much time for this." Pratyusha was feeling jittery from the way Bhairava was taking his time handling things.

"Don't worry. Your friends are still alive. These monsters require them to be so." Bhairava replied, not breaking eye contact with the Yeti, "I can feel their life force, but we must indeed hurry. The rest will be a breeze once this guy is taken care of."

"You never met my wife, did you?" The yeti started laughing. "I forgot! You couldn't even reach the main tunnels with your pathetic followers."

A series of events followed in quick succession, registering in my vision as blurry images.

Bhairava changed places in a blinding flash. He reappeared near the face of the blood Yeti and clobbered him down flat on the ground with a single punch.

The Yeti got up in a hurry and threw a punch at Bhairava, only to get blocked by his palm.

Digging his fingers into the Yeti's right fist, Bhairava twisted it and pulled back while using the Yeti's arm like a support to propel himself forward, kicking the Yeti square in the chest.

A flat sonic boom originating from his hit carved a circular indentation on the cave walls and sent the blood Yeti tumbling into the dark oblivion, crashing through the space barrier Bhairava had erected.

Leaving his right arm behind in Bhairava's hands, he disappeared like Bhairava had been catapulted before.

"Follow me. Let's rout them all out from their hives. They shouldn't have messed with the remains of The Devi." Bhairava threw away the detached arm and charged into the deeper sections of the tunnel while continuously threatening the Yeti.

Something about dragging them back from the corners of the earth even if they were invisible.

"How many do you think are still left?" Pratyusha asked nervously in the darkness. The slight fluctuations in her usual calm and collected tone gave it away.

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"Let's not assume anything. Imagine there are still thousands left, and we have to use our stamina and energy in moderation." I replied, preparing myself mentally.

"I'll try deluding myself with that. Let's go take these apes out, no matter their numbers." She tightened her gauntlets for the nth time.

Are my hands even smaller than hers?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The tunnel opened up into a massive dome-shaped cavern. The scene of a Blood Lake with an ongoing waterspout rising to meet the center of the curved ceiling greeted us as soon as we entered the cavity inside the mountain.

It seemed like we were inside the Roman Colosseum, with multiple holes dug into the walls, from where spectators could watch what was happening in the lake.

The stalagmites rising from the water body broke away from the intense water pressure of the waterspout while the blood-red Yeti struggled to wade out of it.

Bhairava must have kicked him away a few more times while he was being pursued.

"There!" Pratyusha pointed at Aditi, Jevin, Vivikta, and Sickle Man, who were surrounded by Bhairava's silver barriers.

"Yeah, I can see." I got to work without wasting time after giving her a flat reply.

An enormous amount of energy will be required to send my healing fogs to those injured, but I already felt changes in my body.

My absorption vessels which have been experiencing a drought for the last few days, started sucking up the newfound Shakti pulsating in the air.

During the previous altercations with Bhairava and then at the village, my Muladhara Chakra provided me with Kundalini, so only my distribution vessels were working overtime.

The Muladhara chakra I had started humming like an engine under the weight of fifty Rekhas congregating at the base of the waterspout now containing the stolen Remain of a Goddess.

I sent my healing fogs without worrying about energy costs and examined the battlefield to decide a course of action I needed to take next.

Since my friends' protection had been taken care of by Bhairava, I only needed to heal and support them to bring them to a condition where they could join this fight.

Jevin and Aditi are hanging without their limbs. No, Jevin still had his arms.

"What's he doing? Wouldn't he fall if he breaks off the stalactite he's hanging from? Wait! There's a shield underneath him like a floating platform." Pratyusha understood what was happening.

"Keep away the Yeti that will soon be rushing at us." I ordered Pratyusha and opened up my dimensional box. "That staff-wielding white Yeti is conjuring up some weird magic. While Bhairava is taking care of the blood Yeti and the majority of its subordinates, we have to defeat the mage Yeti by ourselves."

Pratyusha summoned her Lakshman Rekha around us in an instant, keeping me in the inner circle and herself in the outer one.

"Let's get out of this in one piece." She tightened her gloves and gripped the handle of her one-handed war axe, giving me space.

What's in my inventory currently?

Thirty-five blooming and earthworm arrowheads in total.

Eight utility fogs, excluding the three I currently have floating around me.

Four weapon fogs, again excluding the ones I was using right now.

Two healing fogs.

Both Pratyusha and Bhairava engaged their invisible enemies. She struggled, unlike back in the village, even while fighting one at a time using her barrier restrictions.

Meanwhile, Bhairava took on multiple Yeti at once, shredding them and going through the wildly undulating blood lake where his primary target was.

The only things left in his trail were dismembered limbs and floating bodies, which got swept away by the swirling waves to be carried into the waterspout.

The roaring sound and metallic smell of the magical phenomena kept getting stronger, drowning all other sounds and sensory inputs from the cavern.

"What happened to the final two sacrifices?!!" The Blood Yeti, surrounded by his subordinates as meat shields, asked, glaring at the White Yeti.

"I'm not sacrificing my children." The white one argued back with a stern voice before resuming her incantations again.

"Bloom." Without caring about their argument, I commanded my six fogs to erupt near the two Yeti, allocating three for each.

An invisible barrier around the white Yeti shattered from the impact, and earth spikes penetrated her torso in multiple areas. She collapsed on the ground while bleeding profusely and crying her heart out.

The Red Yeti got blasted back along with his subordinates, disappearing into the waterspout from the force of the blooming explosions that rammed earth spikes into their rigid bodies.

The watersprout collapsed, sending out a fifteen-foot wave in all directions. It crashed into Pratyusha's barrier, flooding the entire region for a few seconds before slowly retreating to the pool.

Silence descended over the cavern.

Bodies of hundreds of previously invisible Yeti now lay scattered on the banks of the lake.

I checked my friends' conditions in a hurry and relaxed after finding them where they were previously, protected by Bhairava's barriers.

Vivikta, with her regained consciousness, stared back at us with surprise in her eyes.

So did Aditi and Jevin. All their wounds had already closed up, and they only required someone to feed them organ and limb regeneration potions.

A healing fog worth 96 points is no joke.

They had stopped whatever they were doing and looked around to find how easily all the enemies were wiped out.

"It's scary how lucky we got." Pratyusha smiled back at me after removing her helmet and putting it between her arm and ribs.

"Get us down, will you?" Jevin asked from above.

"Give me a min..." Bhairava's voice broke down in the middle.

A purple energy burst out of his trident, propelling him into the air and away from the pool. He crashed into the thin stretch of land among the corpses of the Yeti.

His legs were nowhere to be seen.

A deep rumble originated from deep within the lake, sending another tidal wave crashing into us.

"Bhairava! Use your golden aura to heal all of us!" I shouted.

"Divine energy takes a while to regenerate! I've been using my Kundalini all this while." He answered back apologetically.

"They are different?" I was perplexed.

"This is not the time for a lecture." Aditi complained from above. "I can see a humongous dark shadow inside the pool from above. Leave us here and run!"

As the wave retreated, all the corpses of the Yeti disappeared along with it, creating bubbles on the lake's surface.

"How long do you think I've been injecting my own Kundalini into the blood lake? Long before we stole the Peeth. Only after getting assimilated by it did I realize the kind of power I can wield." The white Yeti's voice echoed through the cave, rattling our brains.

A feeling I was pretty familiar with.

It reminded me of my discomfort whenever the Gods or Higher Beings talked with us telepathically.

The pool's surface heaved up and down before rising like a dome without breaking through it.

"Just as Narada said. To evolve, we needed to become one. I wondered whether it was a metaphor for employing our strengths together and uniting multiple tribes under the same leadership. I guess it was not what he meant. I'm sorry, my children, but this is what needs to be done..." The voice trembled and sobbed uncontrollably.

Giant tentacles burst out and entered the caves, pulling out anything and everything living inside them and breaking them down into food for the living blood lake. They even tried to breach our shields only to retreat in vain.

I went over our chances of defeating the things inside the lake.

Five members of our team were now missing legs and arms.

Bhairava had depleted his Divine energy to help Pratyusha and me.

The only plus was the Shakti Peeth, which kept providing us energy to filter into usable Kundalini.

I exchanged glances with all my teammates.

My blooming spikes and the resulting wave that wiped out hundreds of invisible Yeti fighting with Bhairava at that moment were counted as contributing actions in taking out those Beings.

I was now at level 59. I was almost on par with my seventh-grader teammates during the Inter-Gurukul League.

But I knew it was not enough against the Monster born inside the sacrificial lake.

"Narayan, Narayan." A cold, threatening voice behind me interrupted all activities in the dome.

"Narada!! Why did you share information about such a ritual with monsters!" Bhairava shouted, glaring at the person behind me.

I couldn't turn around.

Goosebumps kept popping up along my spine, shaking my soul to the core.

My legs went numb, yet they somehow stood upright.

"The ritual was to transfer the myth onto the Manavas that would be present there during its completion. That's why I asked them to sacrifice only Manavas. Narayan, Narayan." The voice behind me answered in a frustrated tone.

"You." Narada suddenly whispered near my ears, "This is your and Bhairava's fault. When will you stop using the only thing you ever learned? Your attacks mixed blood from the Yeti into the sacred pool."

"You call that sacred?" I hissed, yet I felt like pissing my pants.

"Yes. You see, the Shata-Sahasra Lotus is adamant about becoming a True River—instead of serving as a reservoir to feed Saraswati. The ritual would have extracted its myth along with its stored water forcefully. Narayan, Narayan."

"So all we needed to do is sacrifice a couple of our lives here." I realized his plan and stared at the rising lake with horror. It had finished giving birth to a monstrosity unheard of even in the myths.

"No. Jamadagni's schemes to protect his subjects put a wedge in my plan. He wanted the four of you to be the final sacrifice instead of the children from his village. It makes sense since you hold multiple lives, having tasted Amrita, unlike the innocent villagers. Narayan, Narayan."

What the hell.

The whole situation drove home that we were merely expendable pieces in a larger scheme.

The Being who instructed the Manava sacrifice ritual or the Being who saved his own while trying to murder us. Whom could I blame here?

The surface of the lake finally broke, revealing the Monster underneath.

A nightmarish chimera of faces, limbs, fur, clotted blood, and bulging muscles merged onto a caterpillar-like structure. The whole lake now appeared to be wrapped around the Being like a protective cloak.

A yeti was stuck in the caterpillar's head, segregated from the middle. The right was snow white, and the left, crimson.

Every appendage it had, stuck out in multiple directions and from different points on its body. They all seemed to have a mind of their own.

The monstrous body glitched, disappearing and reappearing in a split second.

So did Aditi and Jevin, as if they were an extended part of the Monster.

"This is a product of your actions. Take care of it yourself. Narayan, Narayan." His voice faded out as if edited by an amateur sound mixer.

I locked eyes with Bhairava. There were no answers in them. He was exhausted. I wouldn't have used up his Divine energy if we knew this would happen. Twice.

All the eyes on the Monster's body stared at Bhairava, targeting him as their primary threat.

Using his trident like a cane, he lifted his body. A red energy flared on his stumps, which once were his legs. As the energy faded away, metallic prosthetics took its place.

Earth Kundalini can be compressed to metals. Why didn't I try it properly before? Why was I happy with granites?

Pratyusha sighed out loud, straightening her trembling shoulders. "Dhruva. I've been thinking about trying something out from your suggestions. I'll need your earthworms."

"Got it."

"I thought you'd joke about how I put those words together."

"It came to my mind, but now is not the right time to say it."

Facing an impossible enemy, all we could do was chuckle.

"Gather your friends and retreat." Bhairava ordered us while walking towards the Monster.

The pool had dried up, revealing the ground underneath as the dense crimson liquid changed shapes relentlessly around the Monster. The pool itself had gained sentience. Maybe the bodies inside were just a manifestation it had conjured up.

Vivikta's eyes met mine, beckoning us to approach her.

"We have already achieved what we had wanted. We knew Narada was not to be trusted. Bhairava, retreat and leave us alone. We'll spare your subordinates if you promise not to antagonize us from now on. Consider this body to be the new Shakti Peeth. Guard us till eternity." The faces started speaking in unison, producing an unsettling effect.

"Not in this form, Monster. Even after a thousand incarnations, you will neither gain the eligibility to hold a Sacred Remain in your body nor the Right to my Protection. I'll save these children and defeat you. Rip out Her Remain out of wherever you've hidden it inside your body." Bhairava rotated the trident between his fingers, handing it from one arm to another.

"Then so be it!" The voices clamored. Some shouted, and some released a battle cry.

The massive body started crawling towards Bhairava, who assumed a battle stance prepared for the incoming onslaught.

"Let's go. Vivikta is calling for us." I nudged Pratyusha with my elbow, and we both sprinted in her direction.