**(7 Days later - Mountain Base)
~I'm really worried~
I overheard one of the Maiyatt team members whispering. It wasn't my intention to eavesdrop on people my parents trusted dearly, but I always found myself hearing things that I wasn't supposed to.
I walked back into my room and tried to push aside any negative thoughts that arose from listening about my father's condition.
There was an urgent need for medical help in the base, and the only doctor in the Maiyatt team was a deserter who had betrayed the team.
The situation was so bad that even my introverted 12-year-old self felt suffocated within the crumbling walls of the mountain base.
I reached up to the old cranky bed and lay straight onto the hard sheet that was used as the makeshift mattress to cover the coldness of the room.
"I only have you", I looked at the tablet my mother had handed me two weeks back.
Recently I had finished retranslating the [logs] from the "Thunderous Veil" and had resumed my study of the [way].
Initially, I didn't want to go against my parents, but there wasn't much to do in the dark and gloomy mountain base where clouds of depression blocked my vision all the time.
The [logs] and the [way] had become the need of the hour to distract me from what was going on in the base.
[way] was simple, it was a pathway of achieving "enlightenment" in the cultivation of "Prana".
According to the logs, with regular practise, [way] could help humans reach a state of 'godhood', giving them the ultimate [User] ability that existed in the Universe - The Third Eye.
My parents were opposed to me practising the techniques of the [way] because I had already received a backlash from the [way].
After our arrival at the Akshaya two years ago, I had translated the incomplete log from the Ruin of the Thunderous Veil and harmed my body while practising the incomplete [way], but this time I had made a resolve to do things right.
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**(14 Days Later - Mountain Base)
It took me another one week to completely go through the [way]. This time in its entirety.
Feeling confident that I had understood the [way] and won't have to go through the torturous experience again, I resumed my cultivation of 'Prana'.
According to the logs, the [way] was described as a journey as well as the destination. Even the Third Eye that came at the end of the arduous cultivation journey was simply a side-effect of being able to enter the [way].
To see the [way], however, a human had to first activate the seven Chakras in their body.
It was similar to the other cultivation techniques extracted from various Ruins by other excavation teams and was also mentioned in various texts of ancient Bharat where humans practise the 'Yog' - an archaic meditation technique.
For the last two years, even my parents had been trying to activate their Chakras by practising the 'Yog' but to no avail.
When I started the practice of [way], I faced different challenges than my parents. While they couldn't gather enough Prana into their Root Chakras, I couldn't even feel the existence of either the Prana in the atmosphere or the Chakras in my body.
"Ugh! Just why is this happening.", after an intense session of practising the [way] I was exhausted to even lift a finger. Every time I would focus on where my Root Chakra was supposed to be located, I would find nothing.
"It is like falling in the abyss, it just never ends". No matter how deep I looked or how long I waited, I just couldn't feel the flow of the Chakras in my body. My meditation felt like a rope hanging away from the cliff with no end to where it was going and came from?
"Is the [way] all bullsh*t?", I thought; but it wasn't. My parents who were well on their path to activate the "Root Chakra" proved my hypothesis wrong.
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**(sometime later)
"Baba, will it help if I can practise the [way] in the Ruins?" I had finally gathered enough courage to ask my dad after another week of pointless struggling.
"Although it can help, the problem is that even with modern technology humans can't survive on Ruins for a long time. We would run out of air sooner or later.", he replied.
His voice was coarse and felt like the sound of grating cheese. He had lost more than ten kilos in the last two weeks and carried a pained expression as he talked about the Ruins.
"Karn, there is no point worrying about the [way]. Humanity won't see the [way] ever again.", mother had the habit of calling out my name only when she was hiding something.
'Why will humanity not get to see the [way]? Is it fake, that's why?', i thought while pondering on the mother's response.
(*cough*)
My father interrupted the thoughts running in my head.
"Anyways son, can you feel any Prana or your Chakras getting agitated?"
[*shakes head*]
I felt disappointed as I refuted my father's question.
"I thought that there won't be any lasting impacts, but I guess we were wrong!"
"What do you mean?"
"When you fainted after practising the incomplete [way] two years ago, I had contacted a Guru for help...."
It was the first time I was hearing of it. My first thought was, 'How does my father know the traitors from the Union?'.
"...He told me that practising an advanced technique like the [way] without a proper foundation will damage your body", he paused, "...I guess he was right."
I couldn't believe my ears at the moment. Not only did my father know a Guru, he even entered our home while I was unconscious, and my father was also taking advice on cultivation from him.
Union was an ancient religious organization that had always lived in the shadows. Even during the Purge of 2100, Bharat wasn't able to find a single trace of their existence and had to give up on eradicating the Union.
Ever since the Purge, it was considered a taboo topic to talk about Gurus and the Priests. The only living Priests on Earth were the ones like my father who were working for the Government, everyone else had either been killed or were in Prison.
Although Union was a strong force made up of Gurus and their students, they were nothing compared to the military might of the nation that ruled Earth. The only reason that Union was such a big nuisance to Bharat was due to their guerilla tactics.
"You know a Guru? Aren't they criminals?", I didn't have any reason to believe what a Guru had said. Guru or the Union didn't have any credibility in my eyes whatsoever.
"Who told you such ludicrous things. If they are criminals, regular humans like us would be worse than criminals!", father seemed angry at my prejudice against the Union. His eyes looked at me like he was asking me to earnestly change my opinions.
"...But the government?"
"Karn do not trust the word of mouth so easily, especially when it is coming from the government."
As I was hearing about the Gurus and the Unions for the first time from my parents, I should have pushed further and asked more. Up till that moment, I had believed the reason for us being a fugitive was because Bharat was cranking down on information related to the Ruins and the Prana.
'Why did all of the Maiyatt team get attacked?'
'What did Union do to the Government for them to be so afraid of them?'
'Why does government want to hide the fact about [Users] and [Prana]?'
However, I didn't ask any of those questions. In my defence, It didn't matter.
The Mountain Base was my new reality and knowing the reason wasn't going to help me in any possible way.