For a moment, Rudra’s mind froze.
Despite everything being just a blur, he still unconsciously thought the Krasurs were nothing but mindless beasts that had somehow entered Chandapura. But the mysterious circle in the sky completely overturned that assumption.
’Is it really an attack by mindless beasts and not an invasion by a higher species?’
The possibility hit him like a swallow of acid, burning straight to his core. Laila, Prabhu, Pranay, and Ranga stared towards the town, their eyes wide and faces etched with diverse representations of disbelief.
From the centre of the mysterious circle, where the convergence had occurred, a stream of light shot through the atmosphere and blasted towards the ground with a deafening roar. A powerful sound wave, strong enough to crack nearby buildings and make the entire field of grass rustle, rippled through the surroundings.
Rudra held tight to the truck while the others knelt and clung to the newly grown grass.
Looking up with difficulty, he saw a bloody canopy rising above the buildings. He rubbed his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating, but when he looked at the others and saw them staring at the town with disbelief on their faces, he knew he wasn’t the only one seeing the tree.
The tree burned with an eternal red hue, looking every bit like a nightmare spawned in hell.
A sense of malice and disgust towards the tree hit him like a hammer, and his senses screamed that such an ominous thing should not exist. An impulse of destruction flashed in his eyes, giving his pupils a momentary red hue, but he suppressed the foreign feeling and felt a chill seep into his spine.
’My mind is being affected?’
His expression turned gloomy at the realisation.
"Everyone, chant your personal deity’s mantras," he ordered. He didn’t know if it could fight against the irrational thoughts of destruction, but it was the only solution he could come up with.
Prabhu drove his fingernails deep into his palms until blood oozed through his knuckles. His sanity was slipping. Every instinct screamed at him to rush towards the town and destroy the abomination. Only a sliver of reason held him back.
Thankfully, hearing Rudra’s roar, he remembered his family’s deity and started chanting the mantra.
"Om Vishnave Namaha."
Laila, Pranay, and Ranga started chanting various shlokas as well.
Even if their belief in God was not strong, growing up in a Dharmic society, everyone knew some shlokas, and everyone knew at least one story about a deity.
Rudra looked at everyone’s faces, and he was pleasantly surprised to see more clarity returning to their eyes and their expressions becoming less livid.
However, the taller the tree stretched, the brighter it blazed, slowly eroding his own grip on sanity.
He followed his own advice and started chanting. Rudra suddenly felt an anomaly. The anger and the desire to destroy the tree by any means necessary immediately disappeared. However, apart from that, the image of his personal deity, Shiva, took shape in his mind, and the more he chanted, the more solid the image became.
Rudra had no explanation for what he was experiencing, but he instinctively knew the image was good for him, so he kept going.
With his mind almost corrupted, Rudra had not been able to notice, but now that he looked at it, he saw that the tree was bearing fruit. A single fruit sat at the very top of its highest branch.
Rudra and his group were very far away from the anomaly, so he couldn’t exactly determine the size of the fruit. But from his perspective, it was initially the size of a pebble, then became the size of a volleyball, and then the size of a fully grown pig, continuing to grow without pause.
At the same time, the tree began to lose its lustre as well. Its branches thinned before his eyes, and it grew drier and drier until several branches completely withered and fell.
It was as if the tree was pouring all its life essence into a single fruit, causing the speed at which the fruit enlarged to increase. In just a few moments, only a single branch was left supporting the giant fruit, and even it began to tilt.
(Snap)
The branch snapped, and the giant tree, which was now the size of a four-story building, fell to the ground like a meteor, the resulting vibration seeping into everyone’s spine.
Rudra woke up from his stupor and abruptly realised that there was actually a rustling sound coming from the front.
With the spectacle of the tree in sight, he had subconsciously tuned out his surroundings.
Realising how dangerous the situation was, he lifted his spear and turned around.
His eyebrows jumped in surprise.
It was an ant the size of a dog. It had been pierced by the bone spike he had laid down and was struggling to move.
"Damn, what’s this?" Prabhu, who noticed Rudra’s gaze, turned around and was surprised himself.
Following Prabhu, everyone else looked towards the ant, and they gasped.
Rudra jumped from the truck and slashed at the ant, ending its life with relative ease.
It looked like a red ant species. Without much thought, he pulled the ant’s corpse and stashed it under the truck, then replaced the bone spike, which was nothing but three-pointed Krasur teeth tied together at the bottom.
However, Rudra’s heart skipped a beat when rustling sounds came from all around.
"More incoming. Look out," he warned and stood ready.
More giant red ants stormed out of the savanna and marched towards Rudra and the truck.
Everyone assumed a direction and watched with bated breath as the ants paid no attention to the bone spikes and continued moving forward.
Looking at their numbers, everyone’s blood ran cold, but cowering in fear was not an option.
"Rahhh!"
Pranay was the first to run forward and slash at a red ant’s neck, taking off its head in one swing. He then continued to kill the ant right next to it.
With the bone axe, Ranga followed right behind, and his methods were more brutal as he chopped down on the ants’ heads, either slicing them cleanly in half or bashing them until they broke.
Prabhu moved like the wind, swiftly reaping lives, while Laila used her brute strength to break the outer shells of several ants at once, killing them in the process.
Rudra had no intention of falling behind. He plunged into the ants and started killing.
Blood mist filled the air, and bits and pieces of ant flesh scattered all around. Red blood soaked his body, but he did not stop. He moved around like an experienced dancer, leaving behind corpses in his wake.
The five rain survivors turned the clearing they had made into a slaughterhouse, with blood mixing with the rain and flowing out like a stream, even suppressing the growing weeds beneath the weight of the ant corpses.
In just a moment, a visible wall had formed around the clearing, making it harder for the ants to cross.
However, the rustling sounds did not stop, and they could be heard coming from even farther away.
Rudra’s face turned grim. He still felt extremely energetic thanks to the rain, but he didn’t know how long they could keep going.
Witnessing the spectacle in the sky, he knew he had made the right decision by leaving the town as quickly as possible, but he had made a huge mistake by trying to defend whatever came his way in the savanna.
He had subconsciously forgotten that ants could also mutate, and if all the ants had mutated, there might be millions of them.
Rudra slashed at another dozen red ants and made a decision.
"Laila, Ranga, Pranay, the three of you push the truck."
"We can’t hold on for too long. We have to get out of the field immediately."
Rudra thought about the hidden cylinders beneath the truck, and an idea sparked in his mind.
Taking a few steps back, Rudra pulled out one of the cylinders and threw it into the horde of incoming ants.
He watched as the iron of the cylinder melted, visible to the naked eye, and before long, a hole appeared, leaking out all the liquid petroleum.
He pulled out a lighter from his backpack, lit it under his jacket, and threw it towards the cylinder.
(Boom)
The cylinder exploded with a deafening sound, and the smell of burnt flesh immediately filled the air.
Everyone was startled by the sound, but when they saw the explosion at the front, their eyes brightened. Pulling out the cylinders from under the truck, they mirrored Rudra’s actions.
Before long, several explosions sounded around the truck, and with the ants and the immediate surroundings cleared, the truck began to move.
However, before they had gone a few meters, Rudra heard an exclamation.
"Oh, Lord! What is that?"
It was from Ranga, who was pushing the truck from the rear. He turned around to see if new changes had taken place in the town, and his entire body shook.
It was the curtain of clouds, yet unlike before, it was not just billowing clouds.