THEOS

The instant Luke’s blade pierced her chest, a hush fell over the world. From those still aboard the Argo, to every warrior flying in the sky within the barrier. All of them stood still, and quietly witnessed the dying breath of a Hero.

They listened with rapt hears the wet shluk of his sword as it sank into her chest and out slid out of her back.

Watched with unblinking eyes the way her limbless form fell limp on a golden, bloodstained blade, and then fell lifeless to the ground. Like every other thing that had lived and died over the Eons of Theos’s existence, and no different than they themselves expected to die.

What they had seen was incomprehensible.

To most of them, a Hero was an unattainable desire, and an unbeatable foe.

A Hero was a great power that ruled Empires. A Hero was someone who held their lives in the palms of their hands.

It was something they needed to mind their words around. It was something that you tiptoed around lest you provoked its sleeping fury. It was something that they needed to fear. To obey, and perhaps, even worship.

A Hero was not something that could be killed by the likes of them. Let alone by a man that had days ago been a mortal.

To Luke however, killing a Hero was nothing, but pure, undiluted, suffering.

The Rebels mana was countless tiny blades worming and wriggling in a space between the physical and spiritual. In the natural order of things, it was above him. It punished him for his disobedience. For reaching above his station, and defying the laws that ruled the world of cultivators. Afterall, it wasn’t an ant’s place to trample an elephant, no matter how weakened it was.

He wasn’t a stranger to pain. Far from it in fact.

His ribs had been broken. His limbs shot with arrows. He had boiled himself alive, more times that he cared to remember. He had endured The Mask of a Thousand Faces remaking his body into his current form.

Even so, nothing, not even the Warrior-tier mana of the Sky Serpent had hurt this much.

Still he held on. Tears of blood dripped down his eyes, and he waited.

Waited patiently for the God Seed to rouse from its slumber and collect the mana that was wreaking havoc on his body, and tell him how many Stat Points he had earned for doing the impossible. Every moment that passed felt like hours, but he waited. Quietly, and expressionless. His mind absent of any thoughts, one excruciating breath escaped his lips after another.

His grip on the space around him slipped and unconsciously he funneled mana into the Air Walking boots. Preventing himself from falling to the ground. The drop by itself wouldn’t harm him, but losing control of his mana was tantamount to admitting that he had been weakened.

Even with the agony that he was in and his mind empty of all thoughts, he was unwilling to show the toll killing the Hero had on him.

Not when he was still surrounded by potential enemies, and not when he had spent so much time, and energy making sure his secrets were kept. Even if the secret of his sword would be exposed today, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t try his best.

His bubble flickered around him, signaling that it was about to burst. Something was off, but he was in too much pain to spare the mental capital that it would take to figure out what.

So, it was with twitching fingers that he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a protective talisman. Blood oozed from his nail beds, staining the paper red, ignoring it, he moved it to his mouth and bit off the perforated tab.

A fresh barrier sprung into existence around him.

He waited. Unaware of every Skyscar Clan member watching him wait bated breath, and oblivious to the thoughts running through their heads.

It was in silence, that one second ticked by after another, but the relief he was anticipating never came, and neither did the notification telling him how many Stat Points he had earned from his kill.

Eventually, after what felt like literal years, the Seed broke its silence.

Quest Alert: Name Your Blade

He stared unthinkingly and with gratitude at the prompt in front of him.

It looked both familiar and strange. Crisp and raw, compared to his blurred vision, and in the depths of his misery, he focused on it with every fiber of his being. Through the cloud of pain that was his world, it was all that let him keep his sanity.

It took him an embarrassing amount of time to decipher the letters, and longer still to learn the meaning of the words the characters formed.

He had known, of course, that he needed to name his sword at this moment. He had read and reread the quest countless times just on their journey here, the same he did with every quest.

He even had a few names in mind. He knew killing her would hurt, but nothing had prepared him for the pain that he was feeling now.

He also knew, in his heart, that each name he had thought about before, and the one he had tentatively decided on prior was wrong. Each of them lacked a weight that was necessary for what was demanded from him, and even with all the pain, he knew that giving his sword the wrong name would not end well.

Blood dripped from his nose and eyes as he forcibly came up with one name after another. None of them were good enough. None of them meant enough.

Color washed aways from the world. All consuming fear reared its ugly head, and a cold epiphany rang like thunder in his mind, as the will of the world itself focused his attention on him. He would die, right here, right now, if he didn’t pick a name, and soon.

Not even the Seed would help him. Not against the will of Eternity, and the Primordial Energies of Order.

What he was facing wasn’t a foe he could kill. Or a challenge that needed to be overcome.

It was reflection and clarity. About who he was, and who he wanted to be.

Like the Paragon’s Path all those months ago it was a price baked into the fabric of reality itself, but unlike it, it wasn’t something he could deny, or shy away from. It wasn’t a call for action, it was an ultimatum. A price for his transgression.

It was do, or it was die. There would be no inbetween if he failed. Merely being trapped at a tier until his body withered away from age was nothing compared to what awaited him if he failed the tribulation.

A name, he realized, was heavy. It needed to encompass everything, and it needed to be able to grow as he grew.

His struggle to climb towards divinity. His majesty when he became a god. The acts, just and unjust, that he would commit with it. They were all elements that needed to be addressed, and could not be ignored.

Naming it Ascalon, or Excelsior, Dawnbreaker, Reaper, Soul Eater, or a dozen other ‘cool’ sounding names wasn’t what the Quest had been about. Neither had it been about Killing a Hero. It was meant to lead him to this moment.

And as the blackness encroached his vision, he realized that he didn’t know what to do.

Rex’s demon peeled itself free of the golden bubble, and a moment later the barrier fell. Nel’s griffin, Lukeus’s Pegasus, Heracles, Jason, and a dozen other Argonauts flew through the air and encircled him. Someone deployed a talisman that created a massive bubble around them, pushing away all of the Skyscar clan members.

“Stay back!” Jason hissed, his voice barely above a whisper. Not to the bald warriors of the Rebel’s clan who had begun to flee the second the barrier fell, but to the other Argonauts.

“What’s happening to h–” Rex started to say, only for Maleager to shut him up with an angry stare.

Unaware of his surroundings, and with shaking hands, Luke lifted the sword into the air, and stared at its razor edge.

The name, he realized, had to reflect not just him but the blade. It wasn’t alive, but it also wasn’t unfeeling. It would reject a name that it deemed unsuitable, and if it did, he would die.

As the object of his first quest, Bellerophon’s Blade had become his companion moments after he had arrived on Theos. Even before he had picked it from the walls in the Armory of the Luminous Sky Society it had become his, and its existence had guided his decisions since.

He suspected that the Seed had even chosen his body just for its proximity to the weapon.

Risking both Nefkha’s greed, and discovery by Arke to give him a blade belonging to a failed god. A sword the demigod had neglected in favor of other, perhaps better weapons. A blade that had wilted after his death, and gathered dust for centuries before it ended up on a wall on a tiny insignificant island, belonging to a tiny insignificant Society. Where it was constantly passed over by its insignificant disciples and elders. None of who, were wise to its true potential.

They thought it a vain accessory. From the man who he had bought it from, to Arya, and even Cyzicus. No one until Cybele had seen it for what it truly was.

No one could see the desire it held. To not only reclaim the heights it had fallen from, but to transcend beyond them with its wielder.

It was its ability to effortlessly cut all his foes that had kept him alive. It was its ability to siphon the mana of those he killed that had allowed him to so rapidly climb through the ranks of the Mortal-tier.

Even with the Seed, a Primordial-tier artifact, the sword was the greatest accelerant of his success thus far. It was the greatest weapon he could ask for.

The greatest, huh.

His lips stretched across his face revealing a row of red stained teeth. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and dripped onto the ruined castle below. He smacked his lips, and ignoring the taste of copper in his mouth, and the waves of pain shooting through his body, he tightened his grip on the sword.

He was close.

I’m a Paragon. A being that will stand greater than any other at the end of my path. My weapon can’t be anything less.

Suddenly the answer seemed, oh so obvious. There was only one name that felt right, and as destiny would have it, it was a name that was in a way, already his.

In the past, it had belonged to a boy that a fisherman had found floating at sea. A boy who had died pathetically after being chased away by some debt collectors. One that hadn’t even known of the existence of gods, or of his own divine heritage. Nevertheless, he had died with a desire.

To hold his own destiny in his next life. Just as Luke would do with his new life on Theos. Just as his sword had desired after Zeus killed its last wielder.

“I… Lukas King, Paragon, Warrior, Slayer of Monsters and Heroes– name you… Maximus.” Luke said, the words, strong, loud, and clear, formed unbidden on his tongue, and reverberated in the air with a mysterious importance.

Pain instantly gave away to numbness.

The blade flickered between azure and gold before shining a blinding white. A link snapped into existence between him and it, and mana both his and the Rebel’s flooded from his body, and into it.

“He’s–” Heracles put his hand on Atalanta's mouth. Preventing her from speaking as he looked at Luke with wide eyes.

“Oh for fuck’s sake! He did it already, just give the poor young lad a healing potion already!” A woman wrinkled her nose, and slapped Heracles up the side of his head.

“Grandma?” The Son of Zeus said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? What are you doing tearing holes into the Aether?”

“Um… we had to get through the…”

“NO EXCUSES!”

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled under his breath. Seemingly cowed by her glare.

Luke, like the rest of them, completely unaware of Cybele’s continued presence and her short exchange with Heracles, fell from the air, only to be caught by Nel’s griffin.

No Stat Points then huh? He thought miserably as his vision faded to black. Only vaguely aware of someone stuffing the end of a vial into his mouth.

• 762 Stat Points

Never mind. He thought, a grin stretching across his face.