For a week, Kalpit's life became a grueling, monotonous cycle. Awaken before dawn. Meditate to anchor his Root and calm his Flow. Spend the day with Parashurama, practicing the art of the focused strike, turning boulders of increasing size into glittering sand. He learned to project the Manipura's energy, not just from his fists, but from his feet, his elbows, his entire body. He was not learning to fight; he was learning the fundamental mechanics of applying force.
His body, healed and reforged by Parashurama's Prana after every punishing session, grew harder, denser. The scavenger's wiry frame was replaced by the corded, efficient muscle of a true martial artist. The ghost-memories of ancient battles Parashurama had implanted in him began to make sense, no longer a chaotic flood of violence, but a library of tactical knowledge he could now begin to understand.
Anasuya acted as his sparring partner for basic combat forms in the evenings. She was fast, precise, and ruthless, her movements a blur of modern special-forces technique. He was clumsy and slow by comparison, but his resilience was inhuman. Every time she knocked him down, he got up, the green energy of his Anahata already mending the bruises.
"You're a terrible fighter," she grunted one evening, after sweeping his legs out from under him for the tenth time. "But you're a magnificent punching bag."
"Thanks," Kalpit wheezed from the floor. "That's very encouraging."
"It's the truth," she replied, helping him up. "You have the power, but you don't have the instincts. You think too much. You anticipate. A real fight doesn't give you time to think."
One morning, Parashurama did not lead him to the field of boulders. Instead, he led Kalpit to the same wide ledge where he had first taught him his stance. This time, the warrior-sage did not hold an axe or a tool. He held two long, simple wooden staffs, cut from the branches of the ironwood tree. He tossed one to Kalpit. It was incredibly heavy, dense as stone, and thrummed with a dormant energy.
"The lessons in theory are over," Parashurama said, his voice flat. He held his own staff loosely, his stance relaxed but radiating immense danger. "Now begins the practical application."
Kalpit held his staff defensively, his knuckles white. Sparring with Anasuya was one thing. Facing this being was another entirely.
"Your goal is simple," Parashurama stated. "Land one clean strike upon my body."
"And your goal?" Kalpit asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
"To teach you the folly of your own confidence," the immortal rumbled. "Begin."
There was no more warning. Parashurama moved.
It was not the graceful, flowing movement from his lessons. It was an explosion of motion. The air cracked as his staff sliced through it, moving faster than Kalpit's eyes could track.
Kalpit reacted on pure instinct, throwing his own staff up to block.
CRACK!
The impact was a seismic event. It was not the light tap of wood on wood. It was like being struck by a speeding cargo hauler. The shockwave traveled up Kalpit's staff and into his arms, shattering his stance and sending him stumbling backwards. His arms went numb to the elbows. The ironwood staff in his hands felt like it had fractured into a thousand pieces, though it remained whole.
He hadn't been struck by a man. He had been struck by a mountain in motion.
"Your anchor is shallow," Parashurama critiqued, his staff already a blur as it came from another angle. "Your Root is a sapling's, not an ancient tree's."
Kalpit ducked, the staff whistling over his head with enough force to liquefy his skull. He tried to counter-attack, a clumsy, desperate thrust. Parashurama simply shifted his weight, and the thrust went wide, striking nothing but air.
WHAP.
The butt of Parashurama's staff jabbed into Kalpit's solar plexus. Not with destructive Manipura energy, but with a precise, contained physical force. The air left Kalpit's lungs in a single, painful whoosh. He collapsed to his knees, gasping.
"Your flow is a panicked stream, not a mighty river," the warrior-sage commented, standing over him. "You let my attack dictate your movement. You do not control the battle. The battle controls you."
Kalpit forced himself up, his core screaming in protest. "I can't... you're too fast."
"I am not fast," Parashurama countered. "You are slow. Your mind hesitates. It sees my attack, analyzes it, and then commands your body to react. Three steps. I have struck you three times in the space of that single thought. Stop thinking."
The lesson continued. It was not a spar; it was a methodical deconstruction. Parashurama was a force of nature. Every attack Kalpit attempted was effortlessly redirected. Every defense he mounted was instantly shattered. The giant warrior seemed to be everywhere at once, his staff a living thing, an extension of his will. He was a perfect, unbeatable wall of martial prowess.
The pain was a constant, ringing bell. Bruises formed and were instantly healed by his own Anahata, a cycle of agony and regeneration that was both exhausting and enlightening. He learned more from the split-second impacts than he had in a week of practice.
He learned the consequence of a sloppy guard, a telegraphed attack, a moment's hesitation. Parashurama was not trying to injure him; he was using pain as a precise teaching instrument, rewiring his reflexes, carving the lessons directly into his nervous system.
After an hour of this relentless punishment, Kalpit was on the floor again, his body a map of bruises, his will worn down to a raw nub. He was exhausted. Beaten.
"It's hopeless," he gasped, spitting a wad of blood onto the rock. "I can't win. You're a god of war."
"I am a master of fundamentals," Parashurama corrected, his voice stern. "And you are correct. You cannot win. Not like this. You are fighting my battle. My rhythm. My style." He tapped his staff on the ground. "This is a contest of strength, speed, and experience. I have millennia of all three. You have weeks. This is a foolish fight."
He offered his hand to Kalpit, a gesture that was shockingly devoid of aggression. "You are trying to be a lesser version of me. It will not work."
Kalpit took the offered hand and was hauled to his feet. His head spun. If he couldn't win with strength, speed or skill, how could he possibly land a strike?
"The boulder," Parashurama said, as if reading his thoughts again. "You did not shatter it with force. You transformed it with resonance. You have abilities I do not possess. A vision that sees what is hidden. A heart that can touch the souls of others. Why are you not using your own weapons?"
The understanding dawned on Kalpit, a light in the fog of his pain. He had been so focused on learning Parashurama's techniques that he had forgotten his own.
He looked at the warrior-sage. Not as a student looking at a master, but as an opponent. He let his sight, all of it, wash over the immortal.
The Muladhara saw the perfect structure of his stance, the flawless distribution of his weight. Unbreakable.
The Anahata saw the faint, shimmering aura of his soul. A calm, impossibly powerful golden sun. Impenetrable.
His new, developing Ajna-sight, the vision from his broken cybernetic eye, saw something else. It perceived... patterns.
Parashurama was not just reacting. His movements were too perfect, too efficient. He was perceiving future probabilities, the branching data-streams of combat that Vashistha had spoken of. He wasn't just countering Kalpit's moves; he was countering the moves Kalpit was about to make.
How could he fight a man who could see the future?
The answer was a whisper of an idea, born of desperation and a flash of Sump-rat cunning.
You don't. You give him a future he can't possibly predict.
Kalpit took a deep breath, his battered body screaming in protest. "Again," he said, his voice raw but firm.
Parashurama nodded, a flicker of something new in his eyes. He resumed his stance.
Kalpit charged. He did not use a refined technique. He did not try to control his Prana. He abandoned everything he had just been taught. He moved with the chaotic, unpredictable energy of a cornered animal.
His attack was a wild, desperate swing. Parashurama countered it effortlessly, his staff moving to intercept.
But in the middle of his swing, Kalpit did something illogical. He let go of his staff.
He threw it.
The heavy ironwood staff sailed through the air, end over end, not at Parashurama's body, but at his head. A crude, telegraphed, and utterly stupid move.
Parashurama's combat-sense, honed over eons, saw the clumsy attack. He adjusted his stance slightly, preparing to simply swat the staff out of the air. It was a simple, easy counter.
But it was a feint. The staff wasn't the attack. It was a distraction.
As he threw the staff, Kalpit used his Svadhisthana chakra. But he didn't use it to flow gracefully. He used it to stumble. He deliberately broke his own flow, sending himself lurching forward, off-balance, tripping over his own feet.
It was the single most incompetent, anti-martial arts move possible.
It was also a future that Parashurama's combat-prescience, which looked for efficient, logical attacks, could not have possibly predicted.
The warrior-sage's perfect system registered an error. He had predicted the flight of the staff, but his senses were screaming that the boy was no longer holding it. The immediate threat was gone. But the boy was now falling, his body a chaotic, uncontrolled variable. His probability-sight was flooded with a dozen clumsy, meaningless futures.
In that single, infinitesimal moment of cognitive dissonance, Kalpit, who was stumbling forward, reached out.
His fingers, powered by a last, desperate spark of Manipura energy, were not aimed in a punch or a chop.
They tapped Parashurama, gently, on the knee.
Tap.
The spar was over.
There was a moment of absolute silence on the ledge. Anasuya's jaw was on the floor.
Kalpit, having landed his one "clean" strike, finished his fall and ended up in a heap at Parashurama's feet.
The immortal warrior stood perfectly still. He slowly lowered his staff. He looked down at his knee where Kalpit's fingers had touched him. Then he looked at the exhausted boy on the ground.
A slow, deep, rumbling sound started in his chest. It grew and grew, a sound of geological plates shifting, a sound the canyon had likely not heard in a thousand years.
It was the sound of Parashurama laughing.