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 had worked 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 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 at her direction.