The clock was ticking. 11:07 PM. Six hours to find a perfect tulsi plant, roots and all, in the sleeping city.
Rajendra's mind raced. He couldn't just uproot a plant from a random temple or courtyard. The Mad Scientist needed a "supremely healthy" specimen, its "full metabolic and immune response intact." This wasn't about faith; it was about peak biological vitality. It needed to be a plant thriving in perfect conditions.
He called Ganesh. "Wake Vikram. I need the car. Now. And bring a small shovel, a burlap sack, and a bottle of Ganga water."
"Bhai? At this hour? Are we… planting something?"
"Harvesting. A tulsi plant. The best one in the city. Think."
There was a pause. "The best? Not from a temple?"
"Temple plants are cared for, but they are in polluted city air, touched by thousands. We need pristine. A private garden. An aristocrat's garden."
Ganesh understood. "The Malabar Hill bungalows. The old money areas. Their gardens are like forests."
"Exactly. Drive. We'll scout."
As the Ambassador snaked up the dark, silent roads of Malabar Hill, Rajendra peered over high walls into moonlit gardens. Many had small tulsi shrines, but they looked ordinary.
Then Vikram, who was driving, spoke up. "Bhai… I deliver… parcels sometimes to the Bhaduri mansion. The old lady, she is a famous gardener. She wins prizes for her roses. In the back, near the servants' quarter, she has a special herbal patch. I saw a tulsi plant there once… it was huge. Like a small tree. Silver-green leaves."
Silver-green. A rarer variety. Possibly more potent. "Go there."
The Bhaduri mansion was a colonial-era white elephant behind tall, wrought-iron gates. A night watchman dozed in a shack. This was not a job for the MAKA ring's red smoke; it was a job for stealth.
"Ganesh, you and Vikram create a diversion. A small noise at the front gate. When the watchman goes to check, I'll go over the side wall near the garden."
They parked around the corner. Ganesh and Vikram moved off into the shadows. Rajendra waited, the small shovel and sack in hand. A minute later, a soft clang of metal on stone echoed from the front gate. Muffled curses. The watchman's torch beam cut through the darkness as he shuffled towards the sound.
Rajendra moved. He scaled the side wall, dropping softly into a bed of fragrant night-blooming jasmine. The garden was vast, a labyrinth of manicured paths. He headed towards the back, where Vikram had described the servants' area.
And there it was.
In a small, sunken courtyard, bathed in moonlight, stood a tulsi plant unlike any he had seen. It was nearly four feet tall, a perfect, bushy dome of luminescent silver-green leaves. It looked vibrant, untouched by pest or blight. This was it.
He approached, but stopped. An old, wizened gardener was sleeping on a cot a few feet away, a loyal guardian.
He had minutes before the watchman returned. He couldn't risk a struggle.
He thought of the MAKA ring's power—not for theft, but for distraction. He had a tool. The Sensory Dissonance Generator he'd given Ganesh. He'd bought another for himself. A small black stone.
He took it out, aimed it at a cluster of ceramic pots ten feet from the sleeping man, and activated it.
The stone emitted its low, ominous hum. The pots didn't move, but the sound warped and bent, creating the visceral, unsettling sensation of something large moving in the bushes, a predatory rustle that bypassed the ears and went straight to the lizard brain.
The old gardener snorted awake, his eyes wide with primal fear. He stared into the darkness where the sound seemed to originate, made a frantic sign, and scurried towards the main house, muttering prayers.
The coast was clear.
Rajendra didn't just dig. He knelt before the magnificent plant, a strange reverence for its biological perfection filling him. This was no longer just a quest item; it was a life he was taking for a life across dimensions.
He whispered, not a prayer of devotion, but a shloka of cold, transactional acknowledgement from the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, verse 22: "Vāsāṃsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya, navāni gṛhṇāti naro 'parāṇi. Tathā śarīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇāny, anyāni saṃyāti navāni dehī."
"As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless."
He was the soul of commerce, taking this plant's body for a new purpose. It felt apt, and vaguely villainous in the moonlit theft.
He dug with care, widening the circle, preserving the entire root ball. The earth was rich and loamy. In five minutes, he had the plant free. He gently placed it in the burlap sack, sprinkled it with the Ganga water from his bottle—a pointless but symbolic gesture of purification—and shouldered it.
He scaled the wall as the watchman's returning grumbles echoed from the front. He dropped into the alley and jogged to the waiting car.
"Go. Back to the godown."
At the secure godown, he laid the plant on a clean tarp. Its silver leaves seemed to glow under the single bulb. It was breathtaking.
The System chimed. [One-use Biological Stasis Pod received in inventory.]
He willed the pod into existence. It was a sleek, metallic cylinder the size of a thermos, humming with a soft blue light. He opened it. A gel-filled cavity awaited. Following instinct, he placed the entire root ball into the gel, gently nestling the plant inside. The pod sealed with a hiss. The blue light pulsed, then steadied.
[Objective: 'The Silver Sprig' – ACQUIRED.]
[Ready for Transfer to 'Mad Scientist'.]
He initiated the transfer. The pod vanished in the usual crimson MAKA smoke, but this time, the smoke carried a faint, silvery sheen, as if particles of the plant's essence were tagging along.
The quest notification updated instantly.
[EMERGENCY PROCUREMENT QUEST: 'The Silver Sprig' – COMPLETE.]
[Reward: 200 Void-Coins awarded.]
[Total VC: 427.]
And a personal message followed.
Mad Scientist: *Pod received. Specimen is… exceptional. Purity levels are off-scale. This may be a keystone. Your efficiency, again, is noted. Contract MS-02 is not only secure, it will be expanded. Stand by.*
Relief washed over him. He had done it. He sat on the concrete floor of the godown, the adrenaline fading. The shovel lay nearby, dirt on its blade. He felt a peculiar mix of guilt and triumph. He had stolen a living thing of beauty to sell to a plague-world. The merchant's path was paved with such quiet crimes.
Ganesh and Vikram were watching him, their faces etched with the night's strange work.
"It is done," Rajendra said, standing up. He brushed the dirt from his hands. "This plant may save lives in another world. Our world is full of such hidden medicines." He was justifying it to them, and to himself.
He looked at the spot where the pod had vanished. He recited another shloka, this time from the Isha Upanishad, his tone softer, devotional, meant for his men's ears: "Īśāvāsyam idaṃ sarvaṃ, yat kiñca jagatyāṃ jagat. Tena tyaktena bhuñjīthā, mā gṛdhaḥ kasyasvid dhanam."
"All this—whatever exists in this changing universe—is pervaded by the Lord. Therefore, find your enjoyment in renunciation; do not covet what belongs to others."
The irony was thick. He had just coveted and taken. But by framing it with the shloka, he turned the theft into a sacred offering, a renunciation by the plant for a higher cause. Ganesh and Vikram bowed their heads slightly, the spiritual logic satisfying their unease.
"The Mother provides, even through us," Ganesh murmured.
Back in his room as dawn tinged the sky, Rajendra was exhausted but couldn't sleep. The events of the night—the dinner with Elena, the moonlit theft—replayed in his mind. He was building webs of connection and obligation across worlds and across society.
A final System message arrived, not from the Mad Scientist, but a general notification.
[Host 'Rajendra (Earth-Prime)' has completed an Emergency Procurement Quest with 'Excellent' rating.]
[Reputation with 'Scientific Faction' hosts has increased slightly.]
[New Market Option Unlocked: 'Urgent Request Board' – Access to time-sensitive, high-reward procurement tasks from various hosts.]
He now had a bounty board. More risk, more reward.
He lay down, closing his eyes. The face of Elena Volkova, cool and assessing, surfaced. Then Shanti's warm, intelligent gaze. Two women, two worlds. Both, in their way, territories to be understood, alliances to be secured.
He had conquered a local bully, outmaneuvered a grey-market kingpin, and secured an oil empire tonight.
But as sleep finally took him, the last thought was not of conquest. It was of the silvery tulsi plant, its roots cradled in alien gel, alone on a journey to a dying world. He had sold a piece of Earth's soul.
And he wondered, as the merchant-emperor he was becoming, what the final price for that would be.