For three days and three nights he slept like a log; when he came to he was not sore cause of the mana absorption had kept nourished but slowly the weight of the braces started to increase 2 tons, 3 tons, 4 tons… his lungs were getting crushed from the pressure of the weights, suddenly he remembered to emit mana from his body. He increased the mana emission rate to a maximum and weights reduced by the seconds of this happening

“Cough… Cough… Cough…”  he almost lost control of emission again while coughing “ehhh…” once he had stabilized. He stood up and slowly started to let go of mana emission, the weight on him started to increase and he almost fell down from the weight of 50 Ton. He forced himself to walk grunting along the way. He was really hungry today, so he went around looking for something to eat, it was then he noticed that… the island was eerily quiet and land was really cold. He hit surface with the handle of his axe and… ‘Ting’ came the sound as if he had hit a metal. He saw there was no vegetation on this island nor tree, only algae and moss covered the land in thick layers, at some places it was 6 to 7 cm thick and most important of all, it smelled of the sea. The island looked ancient like an un-inhabited rock. Weird thing was, there were no birds perched here as well, you would expect it to be flocked by bird at least cause it would exist in between there migratory path and an island this big without predators would prove to be safe haven for them on their long journey during migration. If Kush had bird’s eye view of the island, he would have seen the metallic island was moving… moving against the waves heading towards a certain direction, as if it had a life of its own, as if it had a purpose as if it had a life…

Kush saw some red algae and on closer inspection found it to Dulse. It was something he had seen and consumed regularly so he had some trying to satiate his hunger. Before moving on, he thought eating and resting for another night would be wise was what he thought, plus he did not want to continue that annoying exercise of remind himself to emit mana, had it not been for mula chakra point continuously healing him and his brain, he felt his mind would have exploded from excessive exertion. Once he had his full, he went on to explore the island. Plodding around like a bulky person, in small steps he tried to assess the island and the surroundings. But it was the same thing, like a large metallic green dome and surrounded by ocean till the horizon. Out of curiosity he used Tanka to break open the shell. He swung it down with the strength “Tang…” came loud noise, it shook his brain. It was like hitting a large bell with a rock while standing next to it. His ears were ringing after the hitting it, the noise from the ringing rose above the sound of waves surrounding, even across the horizon the sound could be heard. It given by an arm which could lift 10 tons easily and an axe which was indestructible on a surface which seemed invulnerable, the volume was huge though no one other than the Kush could hear the sound, cause there was no one around for a few hundred km in the surrounding. Following the noise of collision came an old tired but a booming voice.

“Youngling, you hurt a being who has done nothing but help in your arduous journey?”

It was a voice coming from nowhere but it seemed to be coming from everywhere, it was like the sky had spoken, it was like the oceans had spoken. Kush was able to hear despite no one else hearing it as well. The weight of the words was such that his ears started bleeding and his head started hurting. The Mula chakra had become inactive, and the blood was blood profusely flowing out of all his pores. He had been stabbed, burnt, drowned, cut, starved and punched to near death situations but this was the first time he felt fear, fear of having crossed the point of no return. The fear of dying, his will power, mana regen, all were useless to that one simple voice. He wasn’t able to make a fist, Tanka had fallen out of his hands and the weights were being drowned in blood. Blood was flowing from his ears, then it started from his nose then from his throat “Cough… cough… cough” the nose and throat getting blocked caused him to cough. Breathing became difficult, suddenly blood loss from his body stopped and the voice now said:

“Youngling, what do you say when you have erred? Give me the right answer and right answer only!!”

Kush lied there in fetal position, he had faced the wielder of Gaandiva, he had faced magic beasts the height of 100 m where he was but here he did not even understand who his ‘opponent’ was yet?

Slowly he realized that blood flow was reducing after the voice asked the question “I…” wheeze “don’t” wheeze “know” wheeze “who” wheeze “you…” wheeze

“FOOL!!! I was going to let you off; now bear the consequence”

Kush’ vision blurred and slowly his health started improving. He was able to stand up and slowly scenery changed, he was transported back to the outskirts of an extremely rural village where there was a shanty with a thatched roof and wall made of tin sheets discarded by shopkeepers from the village. He still had only one arm, his left which had a black axe not unlike Tanka. On his back was a big torn cloth bag which contained chopped wood, which he was bringing from the forest. He was still as tall and as muscular, his physique was the same, his clothes were tattered so much that they couldn’t protect against the cold wind, but his body was warm cause of all the physical labor he did. When he reached his house he put the pile of wood down next to big clay pot kept the outside his door on the right. As soon as he sat down in front of his gate “Grr…” came the sound of a beast from the shanty. Kush looked up from his sitting position into the dark of the door of the shanty and saw the figure of a four legged beast slowly crouched on its four legs. “woof woof woof” came the bark of a dog from within the shanty it ran into Kush and crashed into him like a missile. It used its front paw to climb on his chest and licked his chin and cheek with a bright smile on his face “Oh cmon snoopy, stopping lapping my face, I am tired from all the wood cutting atleast let take a bath”. Saying so he grabbed the lower jaw of the dog and dragged it to the side before releasing it. The dog was a pug, it was old 12 years in age and had visibly aged, but the love it had for its owner was still bright its eyes. About 7 kg in weight it still seemed healthy, it was breathing with tongue out and open mouth in anticipation of the treat its master had brought with him.

“Alright already”, said Kush as he brought out the deer he had prepared for himself and started butchering it. He started by removing a dagger from within his leather belt. Carefully he put the dagger a bit below the layer of it skin and started skinning the carcass. He did not remember how he knew where to start just a had a vague memory of another amputated man, a lot more muscular than himself doing this stuff to animals before. Though who he was, where he was when skinning it and why he had this memory he did not know and for some reason he did not seem to care. He simply followed the steps with dexterity. He then removed the hooves from the four legs by finding the joint and making an incision, then moving the dagger around the joint with the flat of the blade cutting the ligament maintaining his blade as deep as possible, then snapping off the joint then. Next; he cut around the base of its neck, then down towards the breastbone and finally to the stomach, pelvis and forelegs. He began to pull the skin off the shoulders and neck while working his way downward towards the chest. He then peeled the entire skin off the carcass like peeling a sticker from its paper. He then cut under the jaw and cut the ligaments to loosen the tissue around the neck. He gave a sharp twist to the head to break it off. He used the axe to cut off the antlers cleanly, they could be sold later. He then used the dagger to split the deer at the point where the rib cage met the spine using firm pressure in his forearm. After that he grabbed the two ends between his legs and his hands and broke the deer in half. He moved the dagger along the inside of spine to remove the tenderloins and ribeye. He proceeded to remove the shoulder and neck meat and separated the ham from hock joint. Removed the organs and kept them in a pile.

“Woof…” barked the dog drool pouring from its mouth from the hunger.

“Cmon boy, stand down. I know its been a week since we had venison but you know my rule we only eat cooked food. I can’t afford you getting sick on me.” Said Kush in reply.

As per his memories he was called a cursed boy since birth, because he was born with only one hand. His parents were poor and thought that he would help them out after growing up, but seeing him born without a hand pissed his father off. He was an incompetent drunkard and a wifebeater. His wife i.e. Kush’s mother passed away under mysterious circumstances when he was 1 years old and nobody in the village investigated the case since they were poor and people had other things to take care of. When he was 3, his father passed away from alcohol poisoning. It was around this time when he found snoopy who was a puppy at the time. The villagers treated him like a pariah saying it was since his birth that the monsters from the forest invaded the village and eventually drove him out of the village. The boy has since been living in the outskirts with snoopy, his only family and the only living being he knew literally. He did remember the name of anybody literally, it was weird but for some reason he did not question it.

He skewered the meat from the venison and used a wooden stand to barbecue it ‘Sizzle…’ came the sound as the oil from the venison dropped into the fire below. The fire painted the background dark for the duo, who did not have a system of dinner and lunch. They ate when they were hungry and drank when they were thirsty, bathed when they were smelly and shat whenever they felt like it but away from their house in the forest somewhere. After having his full, Kush hiked along his way to nearby brook and immersed himself in clean and calming waves of water ‘Sigh…’ he did not have any particular aim or ambition, living from day to day. He had long noticed snoopy becoming slower over the years and knew that dog probably had a couple of more years to live, but he thought it was fine. His back was to the village while his deer skin, bear cloak, black axe and long dagger were in a pile next to him. He was in it for an hour when suddenly there was scream behind him. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGhhhhhh…”

It was a woman running towards the brook from behind him. Her clothes were in tatters, her breasts swinging right and left with each step she took, ducking the braches of the trees and hopping over bushes. Her face was pretty too except for the fear for her life which she carried on it. She was being pursued by someone, he was on two feet and was considerably large, though view to him was obscured by the vegetation of the forest, but from whatever was visible of him, one thing was certain this was not human and it was moving at too inhuman a speed, it was crushing trees which were in his way, slowly he was getting a glimpse of its features. A long snout, tipped with flat nose with big dirty nostrils, small petite ears coming from the two ends of his head and razor sharp teeth which atleast 6 inches long jutted out from the right and left of its snout. It was six and half feet tall and with two long and strong arms reaching all the way upto its knees a barrel like chest, muscular legs and tummy like a pot. Gunning through the forest, the trees with 1 m diameter were like grass to it, between its legs was dangling a long thing which seemed to be as long as a 5-year old’s forearm excited at the site of the woman running with her butt facing him. In his right hand was an axe with a 3 ft tall wooden handle and 1 ft long blunt stone blade. Its blade made it so that it would do the work of hammer better than it would an axe’s. Seeing the woman run towards a man, pissed the beast off and it threw the axe in its hand struck the woman on her back. The woman fell to the ground screaming

“HHHEEELPP!!!.... HHHEEELPP!!!....” looking at Kush with no expectations only doom visible in her eyes. For she knew no one man could defeat the orc standing in front of her. But out of options she screamed again “HHHEEELPP!!!....”. Tears and snot pouring down her eyes as she pissed and soiled herself out of fear.

Kush was naked in the brook and was stunned at the sudden change in atmosphere from a peaceful quite one to one where an orc was attempting to rape the woman in front of him. Un-affected by the woman having soiled herself the orc lumbered to the woman in slow steps as if, he was reveling the pleasure he was about to taste like children rubbing their hands when they are about to enjoy their favorite meal. He held the two legs of the woman and brought her hairy nether to his face.

“Kyaaaa……” she screamed till her lungs gave out and shouted at the boy standing in front of her

“HELP ME YOU FUCKING COWARD”

The orc un-affected by this brought out his tongue and licked her butt to her pussy in a single slow stroke his tongue.

“KYAAAAAA……” the woman screamed like hysterically as she pulled her hair and bit her tongue to end her life, blood gushing from her mouth like froth, but she still knew it was too late to end her life cause she was going to feel the disgusting beast violate her till he had his fill. The orc then continued to slowly lower the nether region of the woman to his own when he saw a naked man in the sky about two feet above him. Never had he thought that there would be anything higher than him, atleast not this high. He appeared to be black with the bright rims around him, because the sun was behind him and in his hand was a dark ominous axe which seemed to call forth the end of times itself as it started falling on the orc like the judgement of the gods, striking the orc at his forehead and splitting it apart in half all the way down to the orc’s butt. The thing dangling between his legs fell with the left half of his body. The beast could even process how fast he had met his doom so much that his brain blacked out after noticing that his eyes were not seeing the same scenery in front of them as his body fell. His organs falling to the ground making a dark puddle around the area he was standing. He dropped with his blood forming a pool around the woman’s legs. Kush’s axe was stuck to the ground, right where the orc was standing. A crack originated where the axe had hit the ground.

The woman laid there unable to move or utter a word in a pile of orc blood and her own waste, on closer inspection he noticed an axe mark on her back which must has shattered her spine, she was going to die anyway. Blood pouring from her mouth meant that she wasn’t able to talk when she tried. All Kush could here make out from her gurgling was “GGGrrrr…. GRRRiiisssttthhhaaa…. GGGrrr….” as her barely moving hands pointed towards the direction of the village. He put together from her words that she wanted him to save her sister from the orcs and that she was in the village at some place. Kush didn’t know the woman and there was no love lost between him and the village, though it was not hate he didn’t really have any positive feeling for them. So when she passed way, he calmly made his way to his clothes, put on his deer skin skirt and also his leather belt. He knew things weren’t alright and made his way calmly towards the village he lived at before, inspecting the area around it along the way. After some time, he saw a huge cloud of smoke coming from the direction of the village, aware of the source he made a slow measured trod towards the village. It took him 4 hours to reach the village, where he found corpses strewn on the streets, flies infesting cuts on their bodies. House were all on fire, living people were nowhere in sight, farms were irrigated with blood, limbs and organs were thrown on the streets, cattle looked as if they had been emptied out from the middle of their belly and thrown on the streets, skeletons of pigs, bloodied wings of hens. A once pretty village now looked like the scene of horror.

“Woof” barked Snoopy as the smell invaded his nose. He too was scared and was shivering while sitting on Kush’s right shoulder. Stepping over the dead and decaying, dodging the flames, averting gaze from disgusting thing laid on the sea bed, Kush moved forward inspecting the village.

It was there that he saw that an orc was shoving his thing in a body which seemed dead, every time he went in and out the head just bobbed up and down, like a rubber doll. Kush just stood there like a dead beat, disgusted by the by the actions of the pig man “AAAAA…” he screamed as he dashed towards the beast reveling in pressure, with no features differentiating it from the one before, he went slashing at it horizontally to decapitate it, but with surprising swiftness the beast grunted and threw the dead body of the woman away and picked up its axe from the ground and rolled over to evade the now descending axe of the mad man. Jumping to its feet, the beast instead of balancing itself straight away jumped towards Kush holding the axe like a blunt spear. The momentum of the beast hit Kush square in the stomach.

“Kyu….” Squealed Snoopy due to the urgent movements of its owner. Kush grabbed snoopy from his shoulder and hid it in his chest crashing into the house behind him. He coughed out blood slightly and dropped on his elbow, snoopy was still in his palm stuck to his chest. He slowly lowered the dog on the ground and stood up to see the beast run towards him axe in hand. To prevent it from chasing snoopy, Kush rushed the beast and by narrow margin dodged the axe of the beast and was going to decapitate the beast when he felt a kick on his back and was sent flying in air crashing into the rubble. On the ground next to the first beast was another pig man, axe in hand. The second beast stood up slowly and sneered at Kush. Kush jumped up from the rubble and rushed to the beasts swinging his axe wildly

‘Crash’ came the sound from the collision of black axe with the stone axe of the second beast, but the stone axe did not survive the collision, unable to react in time the belly of the first beast with a diagonal slash leaking out all of its contents. The second beast was scared yellow from the sudden death of it companion, the spray of blood and guts entered his eyes and took a step back covering its face from the all the blood of its companion the using its left hand. ‘syuk’ came the sound when Kush using the opportunity slashed at the beast with his axe and cut off its left hand and made a deep gash on this stomach.

“Squeal… grunt, Squeal… grunt, Squeal… grunt” screamed the beast like a pig that he was. Before he could call for reinforcements Kush came down with his axe and finished off the beast or so he thought. He turned around and walked towards Snoopy lying there beneath a protective shed, picked it and put it on his shoulders and started making his way out. Though the two beasts were strong, they were not enough to take down an entire village, he had to leave before the other’s find him. Just as he turned around, he saw a stone axehead falling straight for his forehead, his years of training and supreme power kicked in, he had fought many beasts in the past, some bipedal, some quadrupeds though he did not remember where and for some reason he did not care why too. He swung his axe horizontally at the location where he expected the beast to be, without looking the axe struck the opponent square in the middle of its belly slicing off the body. The width of the axe head was not as much as much as the width of the belly of the beast as blade went straight through but uncut part of the belly hit the handle of the axe. The momentum of the axe was such that it did not stop and went on lifting the beast in the air, spraying a trail of blood and guts and along the way, like a comet in space losing it weight and moving forward increasing in speed and conserving the momentum. Kush then threw it at the group of the three pig monsters coming at him axe held in hand with ferocious speed of a tiger. All of four them were thrown away by the collision almost 20 m. The first one dead with his blood and guts all over the other three. The other three did not particularly mind gore but were super pissed by the death of their comrade. One moment they thought the intruder would die and the next moment a giant axe cut their comrade itself. Standing up from rubble they were pissed, they lifted their axes and peered in the direction they thought the prey was at, but to their bewilderment no one was there. They looked all directions trying to find him when suddenly “Squeal…” came the scream from the orc on the right as he located the axe wielding tiny man in front of him. He prepared his axe for a clash, but like its predecessor, the orc was surprised to see its weapon crumble to pieces in front of the intruder in question and then continue on its path striking his chest diagonally managing to cover more than half his gigantic torso within its length. ‘Splater…’ came the sound when the pig was gutted due to the blade with a cut starting from the left shoulder to the right end of its torso, blood spraying every which way like fountain. By now Kush was bathed in the blood and guts of these many times and had lost all semblance to his former appearance, like a fearsome blood god he continued on his path to destroy the orcs. He dashed towards the beast in the center who instead of clashing his axe with the man bathed in gore of his now dead comrades ducked to the side, rolled on the ground to his right and as soon as he was on his back, he went on to swing the 3 ft axe upwards towards Kush’s belly from his position on the ground as if to destroy Kush’s body. Kush moved out the trajectory towards his but couldn’t make it in time to entirely evade it and bang it hit the right side of his tough and strong abs “AAAgghh...” slipped out from Kush’s mouth as he continued rolling to his left to save himself from any attacks before getting his bearings. The hit did not really hurt him too much due to his toughness and still managed to punch the air out of lungs. His shout from pain was more of an involuntary reaction to what he thought would be a deadly painful blow, this surprised Kush a little but for some reason he did not think over it anymore and just accepted it as if it were the most natural thing to happen. After rolling 4 times he jumped to his feet and ran towards a nearby house. Just as he got up from his position on the ground ‘SLAM’ came the sound of the axe of the left orc crashing on the ground in an attempt to pulverize his head, which Kush thought would be his end. With increased heart rate he smashed the door of the house open using his axe and entered it, he was looking for something that could help him fight these beasts, he rummaged through drawers and cupboards but found nothing. He picked up the knives and logs meant for fire and put it in a bundle which he in turn put on back. He might need them if this continued any longer. He smashed through the rear gate and entered house. Due to the close clusters of house orcs were only able to figure out the approximate location of their current prey. The death and destruction of house they meant they weren’t able to figure which house he entered. On his third attempt, it seemed he had entered the house of a guard. On entering the house; he saw four corpses, three had their throats slit open expertly while sitting around the dining table and the fourth one which seemed to be the corpse of the guard lying on the ground with a dagger straight through his neck. It seems the guard had decided to spare his family the fate of facing the orcs and himself too had taken the easy way out. It seemed the orcs too had not yet found the place because Kush was sure that had they found the place they would have desecrated the corpse of what seemed like the guard’s daughter and wife. The reason he thought it was a guard’s house was because of the presence of the weapons in the house. He picked up a sword with the sheath and three spears lying there, all three seemed to be well maintained and sturdy. The tips were made out of metal and shaft was wooden. Each spear shaft was probably as strong as the axe shaft of the orcs. He also found a small bag of coal which he picked. He dropped the wood he collected from the earlier house to lessen his burden and climbed the roof of the house surveying the location for orcs and found them. They were running with headless chicken looking of him while he was preparing for them all the while. He dropped the bundle at the bottom of the house of which he was on the roof of after he had pulled out one of the good spears. He tucked the axe which was his primary weapon in his right armpit above the stump and held the spear in his dominant and only arm. He jumped from the roof which was about 25 ft high from his hiding spot after he had confirmed one of the orcs was right below him. With the tip of the spear pointing towards the beast Kush, his own 90 kgs plus 95 kgs of the axe and 30 kgs of the spear descending on the beast like a meteor ‘Splock’ came the sound of the spear entering the beast. The metal part of the easy pierced the thick hide, which Kush only now realized was tough to break without a proper weapon, but the wooden part of the spear after a few cms bent a little and snapped like a twig between the tremendous weight and tough hide. “SQUEAL……” the screamed the pig beast from pain. But this was not enough to kill. As if answering to its partner’s call the second orc came running to its rescue and saw the orc standing in front of him with blood spewing out of his chest like a fountain and something lodged in its chest. The second orc knew that this was not enough to kill an orc which was known to be a warring race designed by nature as the toughest race of all. It ignored the pain of the first orc and decided to help him in its fight against the being which he thought was their prey. But before he could reach he saw the damned gigantic axe ascend on his comrade from the bottom where the prey laid after falling from the roof of the house. ‘SPLASH’ came the sound as the beast was cut diagonally and all the former glory which the second pig had in its race had dwindled in air. It tucked its tail and ran in the opposite direction. The meaning of designation of prey and predator had now changed. Every instinct in the Pig man’s body was telling him, that his was not his battle, he turned and ran away as quickly as possible. Kush on seeing his prey fleeing, picked up the shaft of the broken spear and threw it from his position on the ground at the pig man’s legs. He dropped to the ground and started screaming “SQUEAL… SQUEAL… grunt… SQUEAL… SQUEAL… grunt… SQUEAL… SQUEAL… grunt…” trying to call it comrades, hoping they would reach in time. But he was not lucky enough, Kush was only a few meters from the him, seeing death approaching, the orc steeled his nerves and threw the spear shaft back at its opponent.

Kush saw the shaft come and side stepped it with ease, he then saw the beast get up with purpose and slash the axe one handedly, Kush jumped back showing tremendous agility and threw the black dagger at the orc. The only thing the orc was afraid of was the black axe due to its massive destructive nature, paying no attention to it, the orc instead of ducking it tried to smack it away using the thick hides of his arm, only to later regret as he realized the weight of the dagger was heavier than expected. The dagger had lodged itself in the forearm of the beast though just barely. Kush too was surprised, cause dagger unlike the spear was very sharp and heavy weighing about 10 kgs by itself, this was a testament to the toughness of orcs hides, which he did not realize due to his immense power and due to his black axe. The two beast and man ran towards each other, but luck had something else in play, as Kush slipped on a pool of blood on the ground and fell on his back. The orc on seeing the axe fall out of the man’s hand made a triumphant expression and swung the axe down without giving Kush any chance to pick up another weapon. Kush on seeing the approaching the axe put his hand on the blunt end of the axe head. His powerful hands managed to stop the blade before it reached his head. Then started a tussle of power, which Kush found really easy, which he did not understand why but for some reason did not really care why. He pushed the orc and his axe back and then threw the beast on its back with Kush on top. The beast tried to slam him with his fist which grabbed with his and pushed the dagger lodged it towards its throat. The beast used its other arms to hit Kush, but it did not register a reaction from Kush. Kush kept on pushing the knife with the fore arm to his throat and them plunged it in. The beast gargled while breathing, his other hand stopped moving and blood started flowing out uncontrollably from its throat. Kush got up and picked up his axe and dagger. He then went to the still living beast and cut its head off using his axe. He picked up his parcel of knives and spears and moved on to the where he had left Snoopy. When he reached there picked up the now scared dog and said “let’s go bud, its better we leave as soon as we can”

“Woof…” said the dog in agreement and the duo then went on their way out of the village. Only this time they used a back lane instead of the main road and tried jumping off the wall of the village.

‘Swoosh…’ came the sound of something cutting air, approaching Kush at really fast speed. Kush threw himself to the ground with Snoopy in tow to dodged the arrow. The arrow stuck the ground and went ‘Thunk’. It was a blunt stone arrow with a wooden shaft. Kush on seeing this hastened his steps out of the village.