Entering the ancient tower he selected to cultivate. As he did that, the tower was encompassed with complete silence. Even the wind stopped blowing. Rahen sat crossed leg on the ground and closed his eyes. To enter the first stage he needed to learn meditation first, only then he could proceed to the next step.
But the utter silence had a fear of its own, which made Rahen open his eyes just after a few minutes. Only after doing it a few more times did he get somewhat acquainted with it. After a few hours his mind was now calm so he proceeded to the next step.
For that he first needed to inscribe 108 mysterious symbols in a circle around him while maintaining the calm state, also reciting a verse while doing so.
By the end of the day he had tried more than a hundred times, but still couldn't succeed so he decided to rest. He left the space stone to check but his parents had still not returned. Seeing that he returned and fell asleep on the grass inside.
Next day Rahen woke up with a fresh mind, but instead of inscribing the symbols he first went for a refreshing flight. He also wanted to check on the army's situation. When he reached the camp he saw that the number of soldiers had increased, now there were around a hundred soldiers stationed there.
He returned back and directly entered the space stone. He first meditated for an hour before starting on the main work. With a fresh mind it was definitely easier to work on the symbols but it still took him a few hours and more than fifty tries before he succeeded.
Many times when he reached the final few symbols his calm mind was disturbed due to excitement and nervousness resulting in failure. Now he was standing in the centre of those 108 symbols which were slightly glowing in grey colour.
He sat in the centre and started meditating, the difficult part was starting now and he needed to be calm before that.
According to the information he had gotten, the cultivation art was divided into south and body cultivation with soul cultivation obviously being more difficult than the body. Since he was short on time he decided to focus on body cultivation first. For that he was given a set of exercises including five poses, he had to perform those five as depicted to cultivate the next part.
Since a slight deviation would result in failure it was extremely difficult to do it, it took home more than a day to complete the set just once. Just as he completed one set he felt heavy pressure on his body, with that pressure even moving a muscle was extremely difficult, Rahen gritted his teeth but continued with the exercise.
When he reached the fourth pose his whole body was extremely sore and it had already become painful for him to continue. He could complete one more pose before he could no longer continue and fell on the ground.
He was extremely tired and directly fell asleep. Waking up he felt the soreness had already disappeared and he was in top condition once again, Without wasting time he continued.
After three days Rahen was getting better with the exercise, he could already do four sets. Rather than exercise it now looked like he was dancing in the middle of the circle and if one looked carefully the glowing symbols around him were getting brighter with each set.
Two more days later he was on the ninth set, it had become extremely difficult for him to continue, with each movement his body was screaming with pain but he continued with gritted teeth. Some time later he finally completed the ninth set, the 108 symbols around were glowing with grey light.
A moment later the symbols disintegrated into small species of grey light invisible to ordinary eyes. Most of those specks completely disappeared in the air as if remerging with the world, while a very small portion of them went towards Rahen and disappeared into his body. But he couldn't see any of that since he had already fallen into deep sleep.
On the other side, 5 days ago. After the attack from the wild beasts the army had sent a message for reinforcements, which arrived that day. The number of soldiers had reached more than a hundred and injured ones have already been sent for treatment.
In the central tent, the higher officials were discussing their next course of action. This was a completely unexpected situation none of them had experienced before.
"Sir, we have tried all the methods to investigate ahead. Due to the beasts in the sky the drones were useless, so we had to get satellite images and what we found out is not looking good." One of the officials said as he took out the images for others to see.
"As we can see the beasts are gathering ahead and their number have already surpassed the previous attack. The mutations in their bodies is also higher, especially these two."
With that the images of a tiger and elephant appeared on the screen. The tiger was thrice the normal size, both of its canines have increased in size and emerged out of its mouth. The black stripes on its body has curved in different angle to form a completely different look. On its forehead three bony horns had appeared. It's claws were also enlarged and had turned black.
The second image was of an elephant. It was huge in size and was completely covered with thick red skin. It's trunk was even bigger and was covered with layer of white bony covering. It's outer teeth had also increased from two to four.
Both of those looked extremely ferocious and dangerous.
"Even the satellite couldn't take images of the area ahead, whenever we tried it turned out completely black." The officers said solemnly. As he said that one person covered from head to toe in protective suit days with annoyed tone.
"What are we discussing then, those two are perfect specimen for me to research on. The energy invading these beasts is too low in the others, I must get my hand on those two if you people want some results. This can lead to a complete breakthrough in research."
"Breakthrough? Are you trying to destroy everything. Whatever it is, can't you see what's it is doing to these animals. Did you even think what will happen if this gets out of control?" One of the officers said.
"Don't tell me what to do, I'm the head scientist here not you. And I've already gotten the permission to conduct my research."
"You.." the officer was about to continue when the head of the meeting interrupted.
"Silence! our job is to stop this thing from spreading while keeping it confidential. Whatever happens after that is for the higher ups to decide." He said with serious and authoritative voice that silenced everyone. He then turned to the officer who had spoken first.
"When is the next batch of reinforcements arriving?"
"In a few hours, Sir."
"Okay, as soon as they arrive we will set off to deal with it. I want everyone to be prepared by then." He said.
After that they discussed some measures before the meeting was finally dismissed and everyone went to prepare their parts.