Meanwhile, in the Tarkan State mountain range, inside Dark Haven Fortress—
Kamal, Neelam, and Sanya were still training with the Mortal Foundation Scripture. After nearly a month of practice, they had started to feel their limits. Even though their bodies were healed after every session and they ate Essence‑influenced food every day, the strain kept building. For instance, the weight they had to lift for the Law of Iron Bones had begun to feel like a mountain.
Sometimes, on the first attempt, they could not move it at all. They had to gather every shred of strength just to make it budge.
That was when Sacral Clone's pills changed everything.
After he began refining medicine for them, they could boost their power and lift the training weights with far less difficulty. Recovery also became smoother; damaged muscles knit faster, and their minds felt clearer and steadier whenever they meditated.
Over these twenty days, Sacral Clone had advanced quickly from herbal soups to various pills. Once he had perfected the soup, compressing it into pill form was comparatively simple; the real difficulty lay in crafting the soup itself—deciding which herbs strengthened the effect, which weakened it, and which combinations might even turn poisonous.
After testing each new pill on himself and confirming there were no harmful side effects, he distributed them to his family to support their practice.
During the same period, Sacral Clone had also created more than twenty new puppets.
These, however, were different from his earlier designs. Inspired by Solar Clone's rune‑inscribed weapons, he decided to engrave elemental Vyuhas directly into the puppets' bodies. Along with their usual physical functions, they now possessed the ability to use elements—limited, but real—much like cultivators.
He focused especially on darkness and light.
By inscribing specialised Vyuhas and response commands, he gave the puppets the ability to partially convert their bodies into shadow or light. The principle was the same as Ankit's elemental body—when they shifted into darkness, they could merge into shadows; when they shifted into light, they could blur into bright areas and reflections.
Their control was not perfect. They could not freely manipulate elements the way humans with full minds and souls could. They lacked true thoughts, instincts, and will. But the Vyuhas Sacral Clone carved into them allowed for preset manoeuvres—slipping into darkness to hide, scattering into light to avoid detection, or releasing simple elemental attacks on command.
He had a clear purpose in mind: stealthcollection.
The earlier scouting puppets he had sent out to gather materials might still be spotted if someone paid attention. These new models, however, could hide in both shadow and light, moving through the world almost unseen. The other elemental designs could wait; for now, concealment mattered most.
After finishing them, he sent the new puppets to their assigned tasks and recalled the older, purely physical ones.
He named these upgraded models AsuraPuppets.
***
During the same twenty days, Solar Clone had forged numerous weapons and was simultaneously working on a new defensive Vyuha for the fortress.
After more than fifteen days of calculations, trials, and small‑scale tests, he finally completed the design. He called it the Nav‑Kavach Astra Vyuha—a nine‑layered armour‑array that would wrap Dark Haven in overlapping shields.
Today was the day to install it.
Instead of carving the Vyuha directly into the stone walls and floors, Solar Clone planned to anchor it using his own refined items—weapons and cores he had forged with weapon‑refinement techniques. These items would act as the formation's cores and nodes, replacing the usual stone pillars and slabs.
"With these," he thought, weighing one of the dense metal cores in his hand, "the foundation will be far stronger than any rock."
But he couldn't activate the Vyuha alone.
The initial startup would demand an enormous surge of energy, and there were other complications—synchronising the cores, stabilising the nine layers, and linking the array to both fortress and sky‑island. For that, he needed Sacral Clone's help.
He found Sacral Clone in his room, just after he had happily bought the eighth Elite Pass and was in the middle of a match.
Solar Clone waited until the round ended, then explained his plan in detail. Sacral Clone listened, eyes brightening with interest, and agreed at once. Together they went out to begin the installation of the Nav‑Kavach Astra Vyuha.
Ten days passed in a blur of work.
They placed cores, buried anchors, aligned runes, and tuned Essence flows until the fortress sat at the heart of a vast, invisible shell. By the time they finished, Dark Haven Fortress was no longer just a hidden refuge; it was a fortified citadel wrapped in nine layers of protective might.
On that same day, Ankit finally returned from his own training.
Both clones sensed the main body's presence the moment he stepped onto the underground fields. They shared a brief look, then moved in the same direction.
A few minutes later, Ankit, Solar Clone, Sacral Clone, Kamal, Neelam, Sanya—and little Rudra, waiting in the kitchen—were all under the same roof again.