Mara Papiyas
That was not to say the Nagas stood any chance against Sunya.
Before his fists, even their tough, resilient flesh tore apart like wet paper.
What still threatened him was the endless, bottomless number of slaves — and something else besides.
The astras that rained down on him from time to time were the greatest threat of all.
Oddly enough, the astras themselves were not hard to dodge. Compared to the miracles of Sasang-muye, they offered better raw power for the cost and covered a wider area — but their activation was slow. With his Mind's Eye, Sunya could always find a way to slip clear.
"Hoooo…"
Sunya steadied his breathing. He did not bother counting the enemies that remained. The slaves he had already cut down numbered well over tens of thousands, and still there was no sign of the horde thinning. Instinct told him that weathering the whole of it was impossible. Even so, he kept killing, and killing, and killing again.
Whenever countless bodies latched onto his legs and pinned him in place, the Brahmins would snipe him with lightning, fire, wind, and sunlight. Snipe was a generous word — thousands, tens of thousands of slaves were swept away in the process, and no one cared. The supply of slaves was bottomless.
Now I understand why the Brahmins held such terrifying sway in the old days.
They were living weapons, pure and simple. Before an astra, the number of soldiers was nothing more than a number. Wars from centuries past must have been decided not by the quality or quantity of troops, but by who could unleash the stronger astra.
But that was idle speculation he had no time for. What mattered now was how to answer the attacks coming at him. The blasts were too wide to block completely, yet Sunya dodged and deflected and endured as best he could.
"Pointless thrashing."
Mara clicked his tongue. Sunya was lasting far longer than expected. Still, the more stubborn the prey, the more satisfying the submission — so it was not entirely unpleasant.
"For a mere human, you carry far too much power."
But even that would crumble in the end. That was the limit of humanity.
In truth, Sunya was already deeply exhausted. The longer the battle dragged on, the heavier his arms and legs became. Breathing itself was a labor. His Mind's Eye wavered. It was a crisis. The raw fear that he might actually die clawed at him.
And yet, for the first time in a long while, a rising exhilaration set his soul burning hotter than it ever had.
I need to be finer. Sharper.
No wasted motion. Minimal movement. Conserve every scrap of stamina.
Hold the stillness of your heart to the very end.
His body grew impossibly heavy — and yet, paradoxically, he felt lighter than air. It was as if the shackles that had bound him were falling away one by one.
A soft thud. The back of Sunya's hand brushed a slave's face, and an explosion followed. He had not struck hard, yet the slaves were flung aside by the surge and never rose again. The efficiency of his technique had multiplied several times over.
Discard every useless thought.
Sunya emptied his mind. Only he and the enemy existed. All that remained was to keep cutting forward, closing the distance to Mara. Nothing else deserved his attention.
Advance. Feel the flow. Find the opening.
Crackling lightning — Indra's bolt — swallowed him whole. Feeling his entire body shred under the current, Sunya stamped the ground. The electricity that had tormented him drained into the earth and passed him by.
Next came a storm of flame woven from Agniastra and Vayavastra, roaring down to engulf him. Sunya swept his hand through the air, and the firestorm veered aside, devouring only the surrounding slaves.
The ground split open and tried to drop him into the chasm. Thousands upon thousands of slaves tumbled into the rift and died. Sunya stepped lightly through empty air and kept fighting.
The astra of Mohini, Vishnu's female avatar
Illusions identical to reality wrapped around him — yet this time they could not halt his stride even for a moment. His Mind's Eye had grown clearer still. Hallucinations no longer had any power to beguile him.
Just a little further.
Hundreds of spears fell from the sky. These were no ordinary weapons. Forged of some special iron, their weight and killing edge could not be ignored. A rain of steel carved him open without mercy.
He had lost too much blood. Even closing his fist had become difficult. Sunya picked up a spear and blade from the ground around him and turned to face the enemies still hunting him. Like a hero out of legend, he carved through tens of thousands. Once more, countless slaves dissolved into mud and vanished. Had they been capable of fear, their morale would have broken long ago and they would have fled.
I must not stop.
This was the time to keep flowing — like a waterfall plunging, like a waterspout rising, like a wildfire devouring a forest. Stop halfway, and you become nothing at all.
"For all the good it does you."
Mara sneered.
"Willpower alone solves nothing. The longer this goes on, the slower you will become…"
A giant the size of a house swung its palm down as if swatting an insect. The shockwave alone burst the slaves nearby — but the one it had aimed for barely flinched.
A wet slicing sound. The giant's body split cleanly in two.
"Gah—!"
The impact had not been nothing, though. Small wounds had stacked into something lethal. Sunya coughed up blood mixed with pieces of his own organs. Seizing the opening, the slaves surged in like a tidal wave, trying to pin him down. From where he stood, Sunya swept spear and blade and slaughtered thousands more.
But the giant was not alone. Beasts of every shape and legendary races pressed in from every side.
"Hot and cold agony will eat you alive."
Mara recalled the moment he himself — back when he was still called Kama — had been burned by Shiva's flame.
"By then, even you will understand. The terror that you might die will rise in you."
Most of his memories from the days as Kama were gone, but the terror of being swept up and annihilated by that light of destruction was still branded into Mara's soul and divinity.
"Fatigue. Pain. Fear… The world is full of afflictions without number. Fools thrash about inside them, trying to escape — and that thrashing, too, is affliction."
Sunya could no longer rampage as he had before. His reactions slowed. His steps grew heavy. Most of the slaves still could not even get near him — but that alone was enough.
A slave who had once been a Brahmin activated the astra. A single shaft of light gathered from the heavens into his hand, took the shape of an arrow, and was set to the string, aimed at Sunya.
Sunya saw it. He could do nothing. He no longer had the strength left to shake off the swarming slaves and get clear.
"Only pleasure frees one from affliction."
The Brahmin slave released the arrow. Sunya fired a shockwave to intercept it from afar — it made no difference.
"I shall teach you the truth."
A colossal explosion followed. Its force was enough to obliterate a significant portion of the island. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were reduced to ash along with it, but that hardly mattered.
Amazingly, even caught in that blast, Sunya was still alive. Barely. His whole body was burned. One arm was simply gone. His skin had melted until nothing of his original form remained. It would not have been strange if he died at any second.
"Don't worry. You, too, will become my slave and awaken to the truth."
Regrettably, the living slaves still far outnumbered the dead. They poured over him as before, becoming a vast swamp that swallowed him whole.
"When you wake again, you will be someone else entirely. O fool who was once called Sage."
Certain of victory, Mara sneered as he spoke.
"…?"
But it seemed he had declared victory a little too soon. As the moments passed, Mara felt a dissonance he could not put into words — not a clear reason or visible phenomenon, but an instinctive, primal unease.
What is this?
Why did it feel so wrong? The man no longer had the strength to move. Superhumanly strong, yes — but still only human. Arms and legs severed, organs burned to nothing: how could he still be alive? All that remained was to harvest the soul. Before any finishing blow, he was already a corpse in all but name.
Then why…
Why this gnawing anxiety?
And before long, Mara's unease became reality.
At the center of the vast lake of slaves, the surface began to swell slowly upward.