Chapter 271 - 269: Vath Of Pushpasura... Death Is An Alley...

(A/N):

Drop a meme here that you find funny. Or reflects your mood.

Guys I hope you put more comments and power stones... Which will encourage me...

-------------------------------------------------

Pushpasura staggered back, clutching the wound across his chest.

Warm blood continued flowing between his fingers.

No matter how desperately he waited...

Nothing happened.

The torn flesh refused to close.

The wound remained exactly as Devaratha had carved it.

His breathing became ragged.

His eyes trembled ever so slightly before widening in disbelief.

Then...

A deafening roar burst from his throat.

"AAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!"

His furious scream shook the battlefield, rising above the thunder itself.

The dark clouds overhead churned violently as his voice echoed through Malikavana.

The Rakshasa King’s eyes became bloodshot.

His breathing grew increasingly frantic as memories he had buried long ago forced their way back into his mind.

Flashback...

He remembered standing before Lord Brahma.

He remembered the day he had received the boon that had made him believe himself untouchable.

More importantly...

He remembered the warning.

A warning he had dismissed because he believed it impossible.

Lord Brahma’s calm voice echoed once again inside his mind.

"Pushpasura... for one hundred days you shall remain beyond the reach of death."

"Your strength shall multiply with every passing dawn."

"No enemy shall slay you before the completion of those hundred days."

"But remember this..."

"On the one hundred and first day..."

"The very death that could not approach you before... Shall walk beside your enemy."

"From that moment onward... Death itself shall become his ally."

Flashback Ends...

Pushpasura clenched his teeth so hard that blood seeped from his gums.

"No..."

He snarled back.

"No!"

"I’ve grown stronger every single day!"

"My strength today is greater than it was yesterday!"

"It has multiplied for one hundred days!"

He glared at Devaratha with burning hatred.

"I should be unstoppable!"

"I should crush you with my bare hands!"

His voice gradually became more unsteady.

"Then why... why are you cutting me so easily?"

The certainty that had sustained him throughout the war had begun to crumble.

Until yesterday...

He had welcomed every wound.

He had laughed whenever Devaratha severed his limbs.

He had mocked every injury because he knew it would disappear before another breath passed.

Now...

Every drop of blood that struck the ground reminded him of one horrifying truth.

His immortality had ended.

Yet...

Pushpasura refused to surrender.

With another furious roar, he abandoned all restraint.

"If weapons won’t kill you..."

"I WILL!"

His massive body surged forward once again.

Dark Yogic Energy exploded around him.

The flesh of his right arm suddenly began twisting unnaturally.

Muscles writhed beneath the skin.

Bones cracked loudly.

His entire forearm elongated before transforming into a single gigantic black thorn.

Its surface resembled polished obsidian, while countless smaller barbs spiraled around its length.

The sharpened point gleamed with a venomous shine.

Without slowing...

Pushpasura drove the living thorn straight toward Devaratha’s face.

The attack was so sudden that many soldiers couldn’t even follow its movement.

The thorn shot forward like a black bolt of lightning.

Pushpasura’s lips curled into a savage grin.

"Let’s see you dodge THIS!"

The tip reached Devaratha.

Then...

Everything became still.

Pushpasura’s grin slowly disappeared.

His crimson eyes widened.

The thorn... Had stopped.

Not because it had been blocked.

Not because it had struck armour.

Devaratha had caught it...

Between his teeth.

Silence spread across the battlefield.

The sharpened thorn remained firmly trapped between Devaratha’s jaws.

It hadn’t pierced his lips.

It hadn’t drawn a single drop of blood.

Pushpasura instinctively pushed harder.

The muscles throughout his arm bulged.

"Grow!"

he roared.

The living thorn immediately obeyed.

Countless smaller spikes burst from its surface, attempting to branch outward and force their way into Devaratha’s mouth from every direction.

Usually...

Once this happened...

The victim’s head would be ripped apart from within.

Yet something was wrong.

The spikes refused to advance.

It felt as though an invisible force was suppressing them.

No matter how much Yogic Energy Pushpasura poured into the technique...

The thorn simply refused to grow any farther.

His eyes widened.

"W-Why...?"

Devaratha remained perfectly calm.

He looked directly into Pushpasura’s eyes.

Then...

Without removing the thorn from between his teeth...

He slowly lifted the Aruval.

The movement was so casual that it almost looked effortless.

A single flash.

SHNK!

The curved blade sliced cleanly through the black thorn.

Not at its base. Not near Pushpasura’s arm.

It cut it at just the right length.

The severed piece remained held between Devaratha’s teeth.

The remaining section instantly recoiled.

Pushpasura stumbled backward.

His transformed arm rapidly reverted to its original shape.

He looked down. His expression froze by what he was witnessing.

His eyes widden in shock.

His hand had returned...

But not completely.

The thumb remained.

Only the little finger remained intact.

The other four fingers... Were gone. Cleanly severed by the earlier attack of Devara.

Blood poured freely from the mutilated hand.

Pain unlike anything he had experienced during the past hundred days surged through his nerves.

He felt like someone was stabbing him through his wound in a sharp iron needle.

"AAAAAAAGHHHHH!!"

His scream echoed across the battlefield.

Meanwhile...

Devaratha calmly removed the severed thorn from between his teeth.

He glanced at it for a brief moment.

The hard, resin-like fragment had already begun drying from the divine energy that had severed it.

With the same unhurried composure that had unsettled Pushpasura from the beginning of this encounter, he placed the trimmed piece at the corner of his mouth.

A faint ember of orange-red divine flame flickered to life at its tip, fed not by tobacco or smoke, but by the lingering fire of his guardian aura.

The tiny glow reflected in his emerald eyes.

He shifted the slender, charred thorn to the right side of his mouth with an almost absent-minded motion.

The chains around his body answered with another slow metallic echo.

KLANG...

Then he looked at Pushpasura.

A faint smile appeared beneath his thick moustache.

His deep voice carried across the rain-soaked battlefield.

"You’ve spent one hundred days trying to make me swallow your poison."

He lightly tapped the shortened thorn between his lips.

"It seems... the only thing your trick was good for... was giving me something to hold while I finish this fight."

The words struck Pushpasura harder than the Aruval ever had.

For the first time in the entire war...

The Rakshasa King realized something terrifying.

The man standing before him was no longer merely enduring his attacks.

He had begun dismantling them...

One by one... With unnerving ease.

Pushpasura’s scream had not yet faded.

Blood continued dripping from the mutilated hand hanging uselessly at his side.

His breathing had become ragged.

His vision blurred for a moment.

Yet...

He was still Pushpasura.

The Rakshasa King who had conquered countless battlefields through overwhelming brutality.

Pain only fed his fury.

With a deafening roar, he abandoned every thought except one.

Kill Devaratha.

"RAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Without giving himself even a heartbeat to recover, Pushpasura raised his remaining hand high above his head.

The colossal axe hummed as dark Yogic Energy gathered around its blade.

Veins bulged across his arm.

Every muscle strained.

The sheer force behind the descending strike was enough to split apart the earth itself.

"I’LL TAKE YOUR HEAD!"

The axe came crashing down.

Before it could descend...

Devaratha moved.

There was no flourish.

No wasted motion.

His left hand simply pushed the spear forward.

THUD!

The divine spear pierced cleanly through Pushpasura’s shoulder.

The impact was so precise and so overwhelming that the charging Rakshasa King’s entire body stopped in place.

His arm froze halfway through its swing.

The axe never reached its target.

For a brief instant...

Neither warrior moved.

Then the force behind the spear finally revealed itself.

A blazing surge of orange-red divine energy erupted from its tip.

The sacred fire did not spread outward.

It travelled inward.

Straight into Pushpasura’s body.

The Rakshasa King’s eyes widened until they seemed ready to burst.

"AAAAAAAGHHHHH!!"

His scream tore across the battlefield.

It wasn’t merely the pain of a wound.

It felt as though molten fire had entered his flesh.

The divine heat raced through his shoulder, burning its way along muscles, bones and veins.

Every nerve in his body cried out.

Pushpasura desperately tried pulling himself free.

He couldn’t no matter how much he tries.

The spear remained firmly planted.

Its divine authority pinned him in place as though the very earth had judged him unworthy to stand.

All his power seems like being drained away.

His legs finally gave way.

With a heavy thud...

He dropped to one knee not being able to maintain his balance.

The axe slipped from his grasp and crashed against the soaked battlefield.

His body trembled violently.

Rain poured over him.

Yet it offered no relief.

Nothing could extinguish the sacred fire coursing through his body.

Across the battlefield...

Complete silence fell.

"...."

"...."

"...."

Neither army dared move.

Every eye remained fixed upon the two figures.

Devaratha looked down at the kneeling Rakshasa King.

His expression never changed.

There was no satisfaction.

No anger. Only calm resolve.

The chains wrapped around his body gave another soft metallic echo.

KLANG...

He slowly raised the Aruval.

The curved blade caught a flash of lightning from the storm above.

For a heartbeat...

Time itself seemed to stand still.

Pushpasura slowly lifted his head with great difficulty.

His crimson eyes met Devaratha’s emerald gaze.

In those eyes...

He finally saw it. Not hatred. Only the Judgment for all his deeds.

The kind of judgment from which there was no appeal.

Devaratha spoke only a single sentence.

"The one hundred and first day has arrived. So embrace your death."

The Aruval descended. One clean stroke.

So swift... So perfectly executed...

That many watching never even saw the movement even through they were paying close attention.

Only the flash of the blade.

Then silence.

"...."

"...."

"...."

Pushpasura’s body remained motionless for the briefest of moments before the force of the strike carried through him.

The Rakshasa King’s form split cleanly apart and collapsed to either side upon the rain-soaked earth.

The divine spear was withdrawn in one smooth motion.

The sacred fire upon its tip slowly faded.

For several long moments...

Nothing happened.

The battlefield remained completely still.

Rain continued falling from the dark heavens.

It washed across the blood-soaked ground, carrying crimson streams through the countless cracks left by a hundred days of war.

Devaratha stood at the center of it all.

His dark skin, sacred sandalwood markings, iron chains, Aruval, and spear were stained by the final clash of battle.

He neither celebrated nor spoke.

He simply stood there in silence, like an ancient guardian who had fulfilled the duty entrusted to him.

Around him...

Neither the allied soldiers nor the Rakshasas could find the words to break the silence.

Even the storm seemed to hesitate.

As though the world itself understood that the battle which had consumed one hundred and one days...

Had finally reached its turning point no its end.

*******************************

(Author note:)

I hope you guys give me your opinion and idea’s.

-->

Don’t forget to review guys...