I found myself relaxing with my feet dipped into the pool again. This time opposed to the cloudy skies that the Ashrama usually has, the night sky was filled with stars, the patterns of which dotted the surface of the water like twinkling precious gems. The waterfall was now slowly falling, reaching all the way down instead of floating away like it usually did. The waterfall shone with a silvery glow, adorning the heavenly glow of the full moon. I felt something touch my shoulder, and saw the girl from dawn sitting by my side, softly leaning against me, paddling her legs in the water and looking up at the waterfall with a sense of wonder. I didn't take a closer look before because of 'reasons' but now under the moonlight, her face lit up with a sense of mysteriousness and divinity. Suddenly, the moon started getting dim, as if something celestial was swallowing it up. I glanced up to see a lunar eclipse occuring at an unbelievable speed. By now I had realised it was a dream and prepared mentally to open my eyes, the same feeling you get when your dreams get too outlandish to even be real, and you consciously separate yourself from the scenario, trying to change things as you wish.

"Yo, let's go for breakfast." Anik was patting my shoulder right where I had felt that stupid feeling. 

"Well, it's embarrassing." I muttered and went to the washroom preparing to freshen myself. 

"That was quite a dream, wasn't it?" I heard Panna teasing me through her connection. "As soon as you awakened one chakra the dormant ones nearer to it have started acting up."

While the muladhara chakra (root chakra) creation process needs you to be comfortable and be accepting of yourself, the sacral chakra (swadhisthana chakra) lying below the navel is responsible for emotional control and stability. Unless I awaken this chakra, my thoughts and focus will start to waver, making me unable to concentrate. We need a different yoga pose for awakening different chakras too. The only one I knew properly, the tree pose, where you sit with your legs crossed and your palms on the knees was a method for awakening the root one. For the sacral one, we have to bend our legs like a crab, making sure that the thighs are parallel to the ground, while the shin part is perpendicular. I have to continue doing that until I gain enlightenment on emotional stability and create the chakra as a result. Now the question is how long I needed to do that. Usually, each chakra center requires a year to open after the first one. So one chakra between two classes till twelfth. 

This time the four of us shared the same table. 

"How far are you guys?" Anik asked peeling a banana, the question being directed specifically to Saiyan. 

"We already awakened it yesterday evening right after dinner." Saiyan said truthfully. "What about you guys?"

"I'm still working on it." Dweep replied nonchalantly. "These things usually take time for me."

Dweep was surprisingly quite perceptive of where he stood. He can also open the root chakra if he wanted, I felt.

"I'm almost there." Anik replied this time, "Probably by tonight I'll be done with it."

Then they all looked at me. "Uhh, I've been trying the Shavasana, but fell asleep midway." I couldn't stop myself from lying. It felt bad deceiving my teammates. But I didn't want others to know about it, yet. What if my secret spot gets discovered? I need to use it to the fullest and build myself up before others get an inkling of what happened.

"Shavasana..." Anik snickered, "You were twisting and turning while sleeping instead of lying still like a dead body."

Shavasana is actually derived from the word 'Shava' which meant a dead body. We have to stay still with our backs to the ground, facing upwards in a relaxed manner for that yoga pose to work.

After having some bread and butter, bananas, a glass of milk and a boiled egg, we came out of the hall to wash our hands and rinse our mouths. 

It took time to wash the butter off my fingers so Saiyan waited for me to finish.

"I have two things to ask of you." I suddenly asked of him, "I want to know what you're doing, now that your chakra is awakened. And I need you to ask the girl with shoulder length hair, with green kundalini, to give me some time today. I've been rude to her this morning, and want to apologize. If there are two girls with green kundalini you don't have to do anything. Things will get complicated otherwise."

S: "You're talking about Somi probably. She was the only one who awakened the heart chakra among us yesterday. I'll let you know the time and place if she agrees. Ah, just a warning in case you're interested in her. Awakening the heart chakra requires coming to terms with the feelings of love and compassion. It is possible her heart is already set on someone else. Just saying, to keep you away from unnecessary heart burn." 

I wondered if reading my emotions gave him some kind of cue for adding those unnecessary details at the end.

"Yeah, the hormones sometime make you think about unnecessary things. That doesn't mean I'll act up on it. Thanks for the heads up." I didn't deny it incessantly like an idiot. If he felt something, knowing his trait, there might be something dormant within me that I haven't realised properly. Whatever it is, the heart chakra comes later in the list. I have got other things to do right now. 

"What about the next phase of training? Is it allowed to tell someone else?" I asked coming back to the topic. "Is there also some kind of skill where I can use my drawing skills? It is one of the things I'm confident about. I was really fascinated with Charm Creation too. What kind of basics should I train with, to create a good fundamental for that?"

Saiyan stared at the peak of a mountain for a while like he often does while thinking.

S: "Right now, we are sending our stored Kundalini through the sap vessels like an express train without any stops. They said that it will increase our kundalini conductivity, reducing the time to activate skills. Next we will try consuming the kundalini that have been filtered by the chakra centers and repeat it to increase the efficiency of Shakti to kundalini conversion. Not all the Shakti we absorb gets converted to the same amount of kundalini. We lose some in the process. The less we lose, the better. Finally the last task will be to activate our skills again and again to increase their proficiency. We have three days left before the Rakshak Vrata, so we have to try completing one task everyday." He explained carefully. No wonder he took some time to organize the words.

"That was surprisingly informative. I really appreciate you telling me everything. Ughh, now I feel guilty of lying to you guys." I said with a face painted red with guilt.

"Yeah, I thought you would be telling it to only me, after letting them go on their way. I was this close to getting disappointed when you started asking for favours." Saiyan said with a smug face. "Which one did you awaken? I awakened the one on the solar plexus, Manipura chakra."

It was a chakra you awaken when you find your purpose in life. It gives you tremendous power whenever you are focused on your goal. It totally made sense considering his character. The first chakra you create is often a reflection of who are are at that instance.

"I awakened the Muladhara one. Meeting you made me realise how inexperienced I was, and it gave me a new motivation to work harder. Thanks." I wasn't lying this time.

"I didn't know I had such an effect on you. I'm glad that you let me know. I'm honoured." he said back seriously.

"Now, now, no need to butter me up like that. I'm still far from being capable of helping you. But considering how you've helped me without asking for anything in return, I'll never hesitate to do the same. Remember that." I tapped his shoulder as went on two different paths. Him towards God knows where for the special training, probably inside some barrier, and me towards the waterfall.

I entered my personal cave and sat down in the tree pose on the Shakti Rekha. This time, it was quite bearable. I felt Panna watching me. I was grateful she didn't intrude into everything I did and let me try things out by myself before offering her advice. Three things to do. Activating skills. Circulating the kundalini within my sap vessels. Emptying out Kundalini and filling it up again after filtering the Shakti we absorb.

My field of protection active skill will be quite handy in a fight I guess. Let's activate it for now. As soon as I muttered the words, green light enveloped the cave walls and my Kundalini started depleting at an alarming rate. Holding my breath and using Wood Flesh on my left hand, I vigorously rubbed it on my right one scratching and tearing away my skin and muscles in the process. The blood loss might be a problem if the Recovery skill only mended my wounds by closing them up, without regenerating the blood I lost. I tried activating both field of protection and Recovery simultaneously as my brain started heating up. Wow, I felt like a worthless desktop setup with 1 GB RAM, struggling to open multiple tabs in the browser.

This is how I formulated my training method.

First, I'll activate all important skills while hurting my body in different places. The chest, abdomen, shoulders, hands, thighs, shin, feet, back, and waist, nothing will be missed. It will allow my Kundalini to travel to different parts of the body in order to heal it. While field of protection will be responsible for making the mouth of the sap vessels more active, as during the skill, I keep emanating kundalini from my body. I realised my skills, being gifted by Panna had a green coloured base. When I'll have skills of my own, they might be red in color when they get activated. If you imagine the seven Colors of the rainbow, each of the chakras represent one color of it, starting with red in the bottom to violet at the top. Seeing the colors we can guess which chakra has been awakened for newcomers like us. Right now people will think that I have activated the heart chakra instead because of the green coloured skills.

Next, after my kundalini gets depleted totally, I'll use up all my Prana points to convert it to kundalini except one. I wanted to do this manually without the help of Panna. I'll repeat step one after the conversion is done.

Finally, after both Prana and Kundalini is almost depleted I'll absorb Shakti from the Rekha and start filtering it to Kundalini and again go back to step one.

Since I can recover my Prana points only by consuming food, I can do it once after every meal.

"Let's start." I said preparing myself as I started hurting myself in different places. I also made sure to go naked, otherwise all my white clothes would be stained in red. I only hoped that no one found out about this cave. Finding me all naked, hurting myself and bleeding all over, will only traumatize people if they ever peek inside.

A continued it for three and a half hours until I heard the sound of bells coming from a distance. The walk back was much easier than last time but tiring none the less. I had to squeeze out whatever energy I had just to reach the Dining Hall for lunch. Wolfing down on all the fruits that were served, sitting in a table with randoms, I didn't fail to get awkward glances from them.

"Bro, you okay? You look like a horse on its last legs. What have you been doing?" one of them asked.

"Bro this Kundalini circulation isn't just working. I thought activating skills might help, automatically moving the Kundalini towards various parts of the body but it's kind of different than willing the energy to actually flow through your vessels the way you want." I revealed a lot in my lightheaded condition.

"Ah, I get it." He agreed.

I was feeling a bit guilty, thinking I was blatantly bragging in front of these random people, but there was actually someone in the table who had created a chakra already.

"The sages should atleast check up on us to see if we are already done with our assignment or not. The people who have already created a chakra are just sitting around having no clue what to do next. We are just going around giving tips to other people, helping them to awaken theirs. The faster everybody creates one, the quicker we can get the teachings for what to do next." The guy said. He was very tanned, with a big nose and thick lips. But his voice was really deep. It was hard to imagine him as a 12 year old who hasn't even hit puberty. What happened with this guy? 

"I'm Dhruva by the way. Nice to meet you. If you guys need more people for helping others awaken, let me know."

"Will do! I'm Soovam. Hope we can help each other in the future." he nodded with a sign of acceptance.

I checked my status to see how far my Prana points had accumulated and got pleasantly surprised. The upper cap of my Prana stat has increased to 14 from 10. That means more Kundalini. Nice!!!

I need to give a thorough check to my status properly, it's been a while since I've done it. I have to crack the problem of distributing Kundalini and Shakti simultaneously through my vessels. I needed some advice from Saiyan. Finding him in one of the tables, sitting far away from me, I matched my time with his, to leave the hall, breaking the order of emptying seats. Some people gave me "what is he doing" looks but I was hungry for clues. Maybe finding the actual answer itself was part of the training. But a little clue might help in quickening the process.