Sacral Clone's progress was less flashy but just as critical.
Day to day, he coordinated the household with the help of service puppets: meals on time, training schedules balanced, medical checks regular, emotional tensions eased before they grew.
While hands cooked, cleaned, and adjusted formations, his mind spun around two main crafts:
- Puppet‑crafting: designing and refining puppets with different elemental cores and functions—scouts, workers, guards, healers, and hidden assassins.
- Rasa/Alchemy: experimenting with Essence‑infused herbs, minerals, and patterns to create pills, salves, and tonics suited for Stage 1 and early Stage 2 cultivators.
Resource limits constantly blocked his ambition. Without rare materials, he could not yet safely develop a pill specifically tailored to strengthen Stage 2 cultivators; pushing cheap ingredients too far risked impurities and hidden injuries.
Root clone had also perfected his control over the gravity element in these three months, and had finally started to touch true space itself.
Gravity, he could now twist like a chain in his hands; space, in comparison, felt like glass—hard, slippery, and full of hidden fractures.
It would still take another month before he could call his space control complete, but even this half‑finished grasp was enough to forge new weapons in technique form.
He did not rush to control other elements. Instead, he focused entirely on Strength/martial techniques, chiselling a small, terrifying toolkit around his new powers.
The first were pure gravity arts:
- Stone Comet Fist – Root wrapped his arm in dense earth Essence, then snapped a gravity spike into his fist at the moment of impact. A simple punch turned into a falling meteor; even a casual blow could shatter stone or cave in armour.
- Falling Star Lance – by condensing gravity into a razor‑thin line along a spear or condensed Essence lance, he made each thrust hit with the weight of a collapsing star, piercing defences that should have blocked someone at his realm.
Once he could shape gravity smoothly, he dared to lean on his half‑formed feel for space:
- Short Step Fold – a compressed spatial path that let him "skip" one to three metres in an instant without losing momentum. It was not true teleportation, but in close combat it felt like he was simply appearing where enemies least expected.
- Shattering Echo Blade – every time he swung a sword, a faint spatial copy of the slash lagged a heartbeat behind. When that copied path collapsed, it repeated the cut from the same angle, forcing opponents to block the same attack twice or suffer a delayed wound.
With more confidence, he began mixing higher elements and basic elements:
- Void Anchor Spear – Root locked the tip of a thrown spear or Essence spike into a fixed point in space and then flooded that point with crushing gravity. For a few breaths, the weapon became a silent singularity: everything nearby was dragged toward it, movements warped, and escape required more power than most enemies could muster.
- Star Step Suppression Array – by marking several points in the air as "stars," he linked them with folded space and threaded gravity along those invisible lines. Inside that small domain, his own steps were guided and accelerated from star to star, while enemies felt their bodies pulled and pinned from multiple directions, as if walking through an invisible net.
These two techniques are most powerful in his arsenal.
Individually, each technique was still rough and hungry for polishing. Together, they formed the skeleton of Root's future combat style—a style built not on flashy explosions, but on weight, distance, and inevitability, turning the battlefield itself into his weapon while Ankit's other selves pushed the family and fortress ever higher.
______
On this day, Kamal, Neelam, Sanya, Rudra, Solar, Sacral, and Root Clone were all gathered in the kitchen, waiting while the puppets carried steaming dishes to the table.
The air smelled of spices and fresh rice, the quiet clatter of plates the only sound. Everyone had already picked up their spoons and chopsticks, ready to start.
Just as the first hand moved toward a bowl, the empty chair beside Sanya sank slightly, as if someone had silently sat down. A human outline thickened out of the surrounding shadows, as natural as if it had always been there.
Kamal's fingers tightened around his spoon. Neelam's shoulders went stiff, and Sanya froze mid‑breath. But none of them stood up or shouted.
The clones hadn't moved at all—Solar was calmly pouring water, Sacral was tasting a side dish, Root simply glanced over once and went back to arranging his plate. If they weren't reacting, then there was no danger.
Only then did the family truly look at the newcomer.
The shadow had already picked up a plate and started eating, movements unhurried, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. As the kitchen lights caught his face, the blur sharpened into a familiar profile.
Neelam recognised him first, eyes widening. A heartbeat later, Kamal and Sanya saw it too.
They spoke at almost the same time.
"Ankit!"
"Brother!"
Ankit didn't answer right away. He simply swallowed, took another bite, and continued eating with the same calm rhythm, like someone who had just returned from a long trip and slipped back into his seat without ceremony.
Kamal exhaled and relaxed his grip. Neelam's tension melted into a small, helpless smile. Sanya's eyes stayed bright, but she forced herself not to pounce on him with questions.
Seeing that none of the clones were treating this as anything special, the family took the hint.
They lowered their heads, picked up their food again, and resumed the meal. Conversation flowed back to small things while Ankit ate quietly at Sanya's side, as if he had never left the table in the first place.