Karna's Heir - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Honing the Edge

The uneasy truce in Ananya’s luxurious hotel prison continued. Days bled into one another, marked by opulent boredom and the simmering tension of an undeclared war with Ananya’s family, a war she was fighting with cryptic phone calls and clandestine meetings with Maya. Aryan, the temporary husband, the unkillable enigma, was largely left to his own devices, a well-compensated ghost haunting an entire hotel floor.

His first month’s salary – a cool one lakh rupees – had been discreetly deposited into a new bank account Maya had arranged under Ajay’s name. Aryan stared at the balance on the banking app Maya had set up on a burner phone she’d provided him. It was more money than Ajay had probably ever seen in one place legally.

“A hundred thousand rupees,” he murmured, a wry smile playing on his lips. “My first paycheck as a professional fake husband, invulnerable enigma, and occasional purveyor of extreme violence. I should frame it. Or, more practically, use it to ensure I don’t have to rely solely on my charming personality and unkillable nature if things go sideways again. Which, given my track record, they inevitably will.”

His invulnerability was a shield, a fantastic one, but as the brawl with Babu’s crew had proven, it didn’t stop him from being overwhelmed or captured. He needed an edge, a way to fight back, to create distance, to be more than just a walking, talking punching bag that couldn’t be broken. He needed weapons. And, more importantly, the skill to use them.

Procuring illegal firearms and knives in Mumbai as “Ajay” was a descent into a world Aryan Sharma would have recoiled from in his previous life. Now, however, tapping into the dregs of Ajay’s street smarts and a few carefully chosen, vaguely remembered underworld contacts, he found himself navigating the city’s shadowy underlanes once more. This part of his shopping trip didn’t involve plush carpets or deferential staff. It involved furtive meetings in reeking godowns, hushed negotiations with hard-eyed men who smelled of cheap bidis and distrust, and the constant, prickling fear of a police raid or a double-cross.

“Ah, the black market,” he thought, as he exchanged a thick wad of Ananya’s money for a battered but functional semi-automatic handgun, two extra clips of ammunition, and a wickedly sharp combat knife in a seedy Mahim workshop that officially repaired scooter engines. “It’s like a regular market, but with more ambient tetanus, a higher chance of being shanked over the price of a counterfeit Rolex, and absolutely no customer satisfaction guarantee.” He checked the heft of the cool steel handgun, the balanced weight of the knife. They felt alien, dangerous, yet… necessary.

Finding a place to practice was another challenge. Ananya’s hotel floor, for all its opulence, was hardly suitable for target practice. He eventually located an abandoned textile mill on the outskirts of the city, its vast, decaying halls echoing with the ghosts of forgotten industry. It was risky – squatters, patrolling police, or even Shetty’s men could stumble upon him – but it was the best he could do.

He set up a few rusted cans on a crumbling brick wall. Aryan Sharma, the engineer, had fired a gun exactly twice in his life – once at a mandatory corporate team-building event (he’d missed the target entirely, much to his colleagues’ amusement), and once during his engineering college NCC training (equally unimpressive). He expected his first few shots as Ajay to be wildly inaccurate.

He raised the handgun, adopting a stance that felt awkward and unfamiliar. He aimed, squeezed the trigger.

CRACK! The sound was deafening in the cavernous space.

The can in the center of his makeshift lineup didn’t just jump; it exploded, a perfect hole punched dead center.

Aryan stared, his ears ringing. Dumbfounded. “Huh,” he muttered. “Beginner’s luck. Definitely.”

He aimed at another can. Squeezed the trigger. CRACK! Another perfect bullseye. The can flew off the wall.

He emptied the clip. Ten shots. Ten perfect, dead-center hits. The last can was practically shredded.

A slow, disbelieving grin spread across Ajay’s face. “Well, now,” he said to the echoing silence. “Either I’m a natural-born sharpshooter who catastrophically missed his true calling as a hitman, or this divine bling I’m fused with is doing a hell of a lot more than just making me bulletproof and tireless.” He reloaded, his hands moving with an efficiency that surprised him. “Is ‘supernatural aiming assistance’ part of the standard divine powers package? Or is this an optional upgrade I accidentally unlocked?” This was beyond luck. This was… unnatural. Uncanny.

He holstered the handgun, a new, unsettling feeling coiling in his gut. He picked up the combat knife he’d bought. It felt cold, balanced, an extension of his arm in a way that was both exhilarating and deeply disturbing. He’d never held such a weapon with any intent in his life.

Then, something shifted within him. It wasn’t a memory, not like Ajay’s fragmented recollections. It was… an awakening. A sudden, instinctive flood of knowledge. Stances, grips, parries, thrusts, slashes – a complex, deadly martial ballet unfolded in his mind, his body moving with it, fluid and precise, as if he’d been training for decades. He executed a series of cuts and lunges in the empty air, the knife a silver blur, his movements imbued with a lethal grace that was utterly alien to Aryan Sharma, the desk-bound engineer.

He stopped, panting slightly, not from exertion, but from sheer shock. “Right,” he breathed, staring at the knife in his hand as if it were a venomous snake. “So now I’m also a Cuisinart of pointy death. Where in the blazes are these skills coming from? Did Ajay secretly moonlight as a goddamned ninja assassin between his drinking binges and petty thuggery?”

The pieces began to click into place, forming a picture that was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. The invulnerability of the Kavacha. The boundless vitality and regenerative properties of the Kundalas. And now, this… this innate, perfect combat prowess. It couldn’t just be the artefacts themselves. It had to be something more.

Karna.

The name resonated in his mind again. Karna, the legendary warrior of the Mahabharata, renowned not only for his divine protection but also for his unparalleled skills in archery and warfare, a master of all weapons.

“So, it’s not just the armor; it’s the warrior inside the armor too?” Aryan mused, a thrill of something akin to fear, or perhaps manic excitement, running through him. “Am I getting Karna’s skills, his martial genius, downloaded into my brain like a… a combat software update? Is this part of the ‘symbiotic fusion’.” The thought was staggering. He wasn’t just wearing the hero’s protection; he was, in some terrifying way, inheriting the hero himself. “What’s next?” he wondered, a touch of hysteria in his voice. “The ability to summon divine astras? Or maybe just the talent to cook a perfect biryani simply by looking at the ingredients? Because that would be a truly useful divine gift in my current predicament.”

This new understanding brought with it another, even more audacious thought. He remembered the sensation of the Kavacha evolving, growing stronger, when it had been forced to protect him. The engineer in him, always looking for efficiency, for ways to optimize a system, began to churn.

“If stress-testing the system improves performance and accelerates its evolution,” he thought, a reckless, dangerous glint in his eye, “then perhaps a more… direct and controlled application of stress is required. Passive evolution is too slow. If I’m going to be hunted by gangsters, I need to be more than just ‘hard to kill’. I need every advantage I can get, as quickly as possible.”

His gaze fell upon a junction box on one of the mill’s decaying walls, wires spilling from it like metallic entrails. An idea, both brilliant and suicidally reckless, took root. He had felt the taser’s current, a mere tingle as the Kavacha had presumably absorbed or dispersed the charge. What if he exposed himself to a more sustained, direct electrical current?

“My previous self, Aryan Sharma the safety-conscious site engineer, is probably having a conniption fit in the afterlife watching me even contemplate this,” he muttered, walking towards the junction box. “Sorry, Other Me, but this divine armor isn’t going to upgrade itself to ‘nuke-proof’ status on its own. Needs a bit of a push. Or, in this case, a jolt.”

He found a pair of exposed copper wires, thick and crusted with age. He knew enough about electricity to understand this was monumentally stupid, potentially lethal for any normal human. But he wasn’t normal anymore, was he?

His hand trembled as he reached for the wires. This wasn’t a reaction to an external threat; this was a deliberate act of self-inflicted danger, a calculated risk to force his powers to grow.

The suspense was thick, a knot in his stomach. What if he was wrong? What if the Kavacha had a limit he hadn’t yet found?

“Safety third, as they always say in the advanced divine artefact R&D department,” he quipped to the empty space, his heart hammering. “Or was it first? Details, details. When you’re unkillable by conventional means, safety regulations become more like… gentle, often ignored, suggestions.”

He took a deep breath, then, with a grimace, he deliberately completed the circuit, grabbing both wires, one in each hand, and jammed his finger directly into an exposed socket he’d spotted.
The world exploded in a silent flash of blue-white light behind his eyelids.

His body convulsed, every muscle locking tight. He felt the raw, immense power of the electricity coursing, not through him, but around him, a violent, crackling aura. The Kavacha flared, an almost visible shimmer against his skin, a shield of incandescent gold battling the electrical onslaught. It wasn’t the mere tingle of the taser; this was a sustained, brutal assault. He could feel the divine armor straining, absorbing, redirecting the torrent of energy, a titanic struggle happening at a cellular, almost spiritual, level. There was no pain in the conventional sense, but an overwhelming sensation of immense pressure, of his body being a conduit for raw, untamed power.

It lasted for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds. Then, with a final, violent spasm, he was thrown back, his connection to the current broken. He landed hard on the dusty floor, Ajay’s body trembling uncontrollably, the air thick with the smell of ozone.

He lay there for a minute, gasping, his senses slowly returning. The after-thrum of the Kavacha was intense, a vibrant, powerful hum that resonated deep in his bones. It felt… stronger. Denser. More potent. As if the forced exertion, the direct confrontation with a powerful energy source, had indeed accelerated its evolution, tempered its divine metal.

“Well,” he finally managed, pushing himself up on shaky arms, a wild, triumphant grin spreading across Ajay’s face. “That was… spectacularly unpleasant. But undeniably effective. Who needs a gym membership and a personal trainer when you can just stick your finger in a live electrical socket for a quick power-up? Not FDA approved, I’m sure. But the results speak for themselves.”

He felt the renewed, amplified strength of the Kavacha, a more potent shield against the world. He had found a way to hone his edge, to actively participate in the growth of his incredible, terrifying powers. It was a dangerous path, one that involved deliberately seeking out harm to become stronger. But in the lethal game he was now forced to play, Aryan Sharma was beginning to understand that sometimes, the most reckless moves were the only ones that offered any chance of survival. The price of immortality was steep, and it seemed the cost of enhancing it was even steeper.