Besides, setting aside personal preferences that he seem to gain from his gaming perspective, Surya also had reasons for choosing the Panchmukhi Art.
The Ganga Jal is a special item that enhances purification abilities. It's very strong against supernatural entities, but useless if you do not encounter unclean spirits.
A one-trick pony, essentially.
Sure, if he ran into ghosts or demons, it would be invaluable. But what if he didn't? What if this world threw other challenges at him?
The sacred water would just sit in his inventory, gathering digital dust while he faced threats it couldn't handle.
Hanuman's shoe is more versatile indeed though. It adds movement speed, making it useful in various situations to run a must for escaping difficult predicaments, but its benefits also seem limited.
Speed was speed. It wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't evolve.
Ten years from now, those shoes would move him at exactly the same pace they did today. There was a ceiling built into the very concept.
But the Panchmukhi Art is different.
Although it's a low-powered fragment version, the text clearly implies that this method has the possibility of completion.
The description practically screamed "quest line" at him. Find the missing pieces, unlock the true power, become unstoppable.
It was the classic RPG progression system, and Surya knew how those worked.
In other words, this thing has growth potential and an extremely high upper limit!
If he could learn the complete version of the Panchmukhi Vidya in the future, wouldn't it be thousands of times better than some sacred water or divine shoe?
While other players were still relying on their starter items, he'd be wielding lightning like some ancient sage, calling down storms and smiting his enemies.
The mental image alone was enough to make his choice feel right.
Then what is there to think about it he just gambled on it thinking of his reading webnovels and playing games and it's over! Every protagonist started weak.
That was the rule. The fun was in the journey from zero to hero.
[Obtain the incomplete Art of Panchmukhi Art and learn the incomplete Panchmukhi Lightning Art]
After selecting the Panchmukhi Art, a text message popped up on the phone screen once again in dark red but this time with a sacred light from background.
The crimson letters seemed to glow with an inner radiance, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. It was both beautiful and slightly unnerving, as if the phone itself had become something more than just a device.
Then, a tattered ancient palm leaf manuscript appeared out of thin air in Surya's hand.
The weight of it surprised him. It felt real, solid, not like some holographic projection or AR overlay.
The palm leaves were yellowed with age, their edges crumbling slightly.
Strange symbols covered the surface, characters he didn't recognize but somehow understood.
They seemed to shift and writhe when he looked at them directly, settling only when observed from the corner of his eye.
At the same time, there was a strange wonderful feeling surging in his mind, restless and turbulent, and it took a few minutes him to calm down then.
Knowledge poured into his consciousness like water filling an empty vessel. Hand seals, breathing techniques, meditation postures, the proper way to channel energy through his meridians.
All of it flooded his brain at once, threatening to overwhelm his sense of self.
His head throbbed with the sudden influx of information, and he had to close his eyes and take several deep breaths before the sensation subsided to a manageable level.
Surya wanted to try to mobilize that strange power hidden within his body.
As this thought came to his mind, his hands naturally formed a hand seal on its own.
His fingers moved with practiced precision, each digit finding its place without conscious direction.
It was like muscle memory for something he'd never done before, an eerie sensation of familiarity mixed with novelty.
A name suddenly appeared in his mind, the hand seal was named Vajra Seal, a type of lightning seal that Surya naturally didn't know how to form before, nor was he familiar with such methods before but now he can wield it like his own arm.
These mystical knowledge seem to inexplicably appeared in his mind after the game prompted him to master the incomplete version of the Panchmukhi Art just like magic.
Crackling——
With the Vajra Seal fully formed in his hand small electric arcs began to be flickered continuously around Surya's fingers.
The effect was comparable to the static electricity generated on a dry winter night when taking off a sweater.
Tiny blue-white sparks danced between his fingertips, barely visible in the dim twilight.
They gave off a faint ozone smell, sharp and chemical. The sensation was odd, like pins and needles but not quite painful, more like his fingers had fallen asleep and were just waking up.
After performing a set of lightning technique for around ten minutes or so, he put his hand on his forehead because he was already feeling a little dizzy from the toll on his body.
His breathing had become labored, and a thin sheen of sweat had formed on his brow despite the cool evening air.
It felt like he'd just run a sprint, his muscles trembling slightly with exhaustion.
Whatever energy source this technique drew from, it clearly wasn't unlimited.
"So, the incomplete version of the Panchmukhi Art is just glorified static electricity, right?"
However, his original choice of the fragments of Panchmukhi Art was to bet on its growth potential.
The early stage weakness was not unacceptable to him. Every video game he'd ever played started you off with weak abilities.
Level one characters didn't get to wield legendary weapons. You started with a wooden stick and worked your way up. This was no different.
"Speaking of which... after choosing a companion starter item, the game has started now, right?
There should be a tutorial next, right? At least to give me an understanding of the game's mechanics."
A slightly cold evening wind blew over for no reason, and the gulmohar petals fell down in a flurry like crimson rain.
At the same time, there were some sounds mixed in the wind.
"Wuwuwuwu—"
It sounds like that someone crying, after listening for a while he found that it is like a child sobbing in the dark.
The sound was distant but distinct, carrying an quality of sadness that made something in his chest tighten with instinctive sympathy.
It was the kind of crying that spoke of genuine distress, the sort that made people want to rush over and offer comfort.
"Oh, the game is quite good I think It might be the NPC who's guiding beginners, right?"
Surya thought so and followed the crying sound toward the dim gulmohar grove.
After walking about ten meters from his earlier position, he saw a figure sitting there.
The shape was huddled, shoulders shaking with what appeared to be sobs. Fallen petals covered the ground around the figure in a thick carpet of red.
To him it seem to looked like a student.
The area around was covered with gulmohar branches, so he couldn't see clearly.
But he could see a white shirt, navy blue skirt, black shoes, and fair, clean arms.
Standard school uniform of a female student. Everything about the scene looked normal, mundane even.
Just a student who'd stayed late and was upset about something. Perhaps a failed exam, or a fight with friends. Nothing supernatural about it.
"Hello?" Surya called out.
His voice sounded too loud in the strange silence that had fallen over the grove.
Even the wind seemed to have stopped, the petals hanging suspended in the air for just a moment.
"Giggle, giggle—"
At this moment, the student in the woods suddenly stopped crying and instead let out a sweet laugh like tinkling bells, while quickly rushing toward Surya.
The sudden change caught him completely off guard.
One moment she was sobbing, the next she was laughing and charging at him with inhuman speed.
His brain couldn't process the transformation fast enough, couldn't reconcile the two contradictory behaviors.
What he saw next made Surya's heart nearly stop.
Because when the student emerged from behind the gulmohar tree, her form fully revealed to him, she wore a neatly tied navy blue tie around her collar, perfectly arranged.
But above the collar... the story is entirely different where the head should be, there was nothing.
Yes, Nothing at all!
No head. No face. No features whatsoever.
Just a smooth, flat surface where her neck ended abruptly, as if someone had cleanly sliced through bone and flesh and removed everything above the shoulders.
The collar and tie framed this absence perfectly, drawing attention to the horror of what wasn't there.
At once Surya understood that this thing wasn't an NPC at all, but a monster!
Faced with this supernatural entity, Surya's reaction was commendable to say the least.
He was neither paralyzed by fear nor frozen in shock unlike some people that may not know what to do, but instead he immediately turned around and tried to escape as fast as he can.
His legs pumped frantically, his shoes slapping against the petal-covered ground as he ran.
Adrenaline flooded his system, sharpening his senses even as panic threatened to overwhelm his thoughts.
But the headless student girl was obviously faster...much faster.
He didn't run far before Surya was knocked to the ground. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he felt the rough concrete scrape against his palms as he tried to catch himself.
Petals scattered around him, disturbed by his fall.
The headless student sat on his back, her touch unnaturally cold. It was like having ice pressed against his spine, the chill seeping through his shirt and into his skin.
Her weight was considerable, pinning him down with surprising strength.
In desperation, Surya hurriedly formed the Vajra hand seal. His fingers fumbled slightly in his panic, but the muscle memory implanted by the game took over, guiding them into the correct position.
The dark blue electric arc exploded instantly!
The headless student on his back was slightly shocked by the sudden electric arc, but did not relax her grip on Surya even a bit, even she knew that if she left him what she will eat today.
She twitched slightly as the electricity coursed through her, her fingers spasming for just a moment.
But that was all. The lightning that should have incapacitated a normal person barely inconvenienced her.
After the lightning technique was released, the situation remained exactly the same, without any change.
It's over, I'm going to die!
The realization hit him like a physical blow.
This was it. His second chance at life, ended by some ghost on his first day of actually having supernatural powers.
He hadn't even made it past the tutorial.
"Giggle, giggle—"
The headless student laughed cheerfully and used her fair slender hands to tightly strangle Surya's neck.
Her fingers wrapped around his throat with iron strength, squeezing with methodical precision.
There was something almost playful about the way she giggled, as if this were all a wonderful game to her.
Due to lack of oxygen and suffocation, his lungs felt like they were about to explode, pain surged through his throat in an instant. His vision began to darken at the edges, narrowing to a tunnel.
He clawed at her hands, trying desperately to pry them loose, but it was like trying to bend steel bars. His chest burned with the need to breathe, every cell in his body screaming for air.
Surya had no way to get this monster off his back or break free from her grasp now. He could only let his consciousness slowly blur...
The phone in his hand fell to the ground at the last moment, bouncing once against the concrete before settling among the scattered petals.
Its screen, which had been dark, suddenly flared to life.
On the originally dark screen, huge red words appeared slowly in that red bloodied word.
[DEAD]
The letters dripped down the screen like fresh blood, pooling at the bottom in a crimson puddle.
And then everything went black.....