THEOS

A little to Luke’s annoyance, the four of them blasted through the forest without too much trouble. Blinky made what should have been an arduous slog through an unending amount of enemies and stat points, a breeze. He tried not to let his disappointment show too much, even as the demon soaked his robes with her slobber.

It was true, when Luke had said that she was slow. What he hadn’t accounted for however, was that they could carry her. Even though carry wasn't the best word.

It was more accurate to say that all four of them wore her like some sort of tent, and used her mesh like body as a mobile spiderweb-thing. Trapping any and every monster that they came across in her writhing mass as they went. With each of them acting as a ‘pole’ in a vaguely diamond shaped formation and holding onto one of surprisingly slimy tendrils above their heads. From a distance, it just looked like the four of them were trapped under a net. A net that would dissolve into blood and mist, any mortal creature unfortunate enough to get caught in moments.

Blinky, they all realized, was insatiable.

Alas, she was still in the Mortal tier, and the three Warrior tier monsters had been indigestible, and too tough for Blinky to chew through in a reasonable timeframe. Even then, if they hadn’t run away from them at Rex’s insistence, Luke was sure Blinky would have eaten them too. It would have taken longer, and it wouldn’t have been a quick death either, but they would have died all the same. Slowly over the course of hours, she would nibble away at the poor creatures while they thrashed in her grasp.

No one really has a good answer for what a demon is, but they’re fucking broken. Luke thought, impressed in spite of the mana, and in turn attributes, slipping through his proverbial fingers. Even so, he pressed on without complaint. While regrettable, it wasn't the end of the world and he consoled himself with the knowledge that by the time the tournament was over, the Giant Tide would be done as well. After which, he might be able to secure an expedition to the Northern Marshes of Sylcra, and really grind.

In the meantime, I wonder what we need to do to get Blinky to become a warrior. Maybe she follows the same rule as my sword, and needs to eat a hundred warriors? Or will eating enough mortals do the trick too… Or it could be something completely different, but animals that cultivate do so automatically anyway, so I guess there’s not much we can do about it. If she does advance though, that would be a big help.

… Or get us all eliminated if she turns on us.

From the corner of his eye, Rex shot him a haughty smirk, no doubt taking satisfaction in the fact that Luke wouldn’t be harvesting points. After the events at the Rebel’s castle, many of his secrets had been spilled. The most important of which were the fact that Maximus wasn’t all it seemed to be, and the fact that he was a paragon.

The latter had more than one person wishing him good luck and offering their sympathies. Embarking on the Paragon’s Path was a rare, but not unheard of, way for people to permanently handicap their progress. No one really knew what triggered the interference of the heavens, only that it was typically a choice offered to those at the Hero tier and higher. It wasn’t unheard of for mortals to be offered the choice, but very, very rare, and rarer still for them to actually advance to the Warrior tier if they accepted it.

Not that any such handicaps would apply to Luke… so long as he had the God Seed, the path forward would never be shrouded for him. And, he would have the God Seed until the day some greedy god or goddess ripped it from his soul. Assuming of course, he could keep up with its quests, and keep his nose clean while he was at it.

He took the sympathy in stride though, not even bothering to argue his qualifications. It, ultimately, didn’t matter if others thought he had a cap to his progress or not, and arguing his case would only serve to expose his secrets and make him vulnerable. No matter how pitiful the looks he had received were, he grinned and took them in stride.

The reveal of some of his sword’s abilities though, had been met with greater fanfare.

Suffice to say, weapons that could siphon mana and feed it to their users were both exceedingly rare, and astronomically valuable. Not even Heracles had one, but for some reason, Luke didn’t think it was because he couldn’t afford it, and when asked, the Son of Zeus just shrugged his shoulders. All he had to say on the matter was: “Cultivating naturally is better anyway.” Luke got the sense he was hiding something, but decided not to press it. Heracles was entitled to his secrets.

Even so, more than one Argonauts eyes had alighted with greed, but another boon of a named weapon, was that the bond formed between the person who named it and the artifact itself. Something, that fortunately, rendered the swords multitude of abilities unusable by anyone but him. Which would hold true when, or if, he died.

In that circumstance, the sword would just become an inert chunk of gold, useful only as a paperweight. Too weak and malleable of a metal to even swing around.

Five hours, and countless dead monsters later, they finally found a scroll. White and unassuming, it floated above a podium. Bobbing slightly in the wind.

Hephaestus however, hadn’t left it unguarded.

The entire time they had been in the forest, the rabbicorns had been spilling out in massive droves. Seeing the thing staring back at them from behind the scroll, Luke finally thought he knew why that was.

They were escaping a hydra. Or, if the other scrolls were guarded similarly, hydras.

It was a big beast, comparable to the Warrior tier giants they had fought on Sylcra, but where they were humanoids, albeit with six arms, six eyes, and lacking a mouth or a nose, the hydra was pure beast.

Covered in gleaming golden scales, it had four catlike legs, each one with wicked claws that excreted noxious green venom from beneath its clawd. Its torso was similarly covered in golden scales, but its faces were what made Luke tense in nervousness.

If I remember right, Heracles was supposed to fight one as a part of his Twelve Labors. Every time he would cut one of its heads off, two would grow in its place. He solved it by cauterizing after he cut one head, so others wouldn’t grow.

But… didn’t his hydra only have nine heads or something?

Why the fuck does this one have a hundred? Luke cursed under his breath, even as he urged the other three to retreat for a few seconds.

Even though they had managed to get to the scroll quickly with the help of Blinky, the other contestants wouldn’t be far behind. Battling the hydra would be hard enough without the interference of outside parties, but if they were going to fight it, they needed to be on the same page.

“Anyone know what that is?” Luke asked, hoping they would. Not a single Bestiary he had read on Sylcra, or even the one he had read on Carim had the creature listed on it. Not that it was a surprise, Theos was gigantic. A world so big, the islands were the size of Earth’s continents. Not every animal was present in every ecosystem, and as such, the locals only kept indexes of monsters that were present where they lived.

Luke resisted the urge to curse as both Arya and Rex shook their heads in the negative. Turning to Spiros, he saw the teen with his hands cupped under his chin, staring thoughtfully at the hydra as its many heads hissed and snapped in their direction. Unwilling to leave the scroll, it was all the creature could do.

“I think that's Ladon?” Spiros said eventually.

“Ladon?” Luke asked, his thoughts churning in his head.

Ladon sounds familiar, really familiar… but what the fuck was it again. More importantly, how do we kill it?

Rex scoffed. “It’s not Ladon. He’s a divine beast that guards Lady Hera’s garden– a god. Why would it be here? This creature bears a resemblance, but it's not the same. It can’t be.” He asserted.

“You know Lady Hera?” Spiros asked, and both Luke and Arya shared surprised glances before looking back at Rex.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Rex did know more about beasts than he did. Him and his siblings made sure they did, considering how relevant the information was to their bloodline ability, but it still caught him off guard. The amount of times the youngest son of Cyzicus said anything useful, was pitifully low.

Rex shook his head. “Of course I don’t know her, I’m from Sylcra, not Olympus. But I have a friend, Heracles… He mentioned it.”

“You know Heracles too?” Spiros blinked rapidly, and this time both Luke and Rex looked back at him with surprise.

“We both do.” Luke said slowly. “You said you're from Troy right, did he visit you there?”

“Well, I saw him once, but he’s going to be my brother-in-law. So…” He shrugged. “I guess I do know him.”

Rex burst into laughter. “You do know that he’s the son of Zeus, yeah? Are you saying that you’re going to marry Zeus’s daughter?...” He cocked his head to the side, and the amusement drained from his face, then he stared at him like he was just seeing Spiros for the first time. “Who are you again?”

“Spiros.”

Rex made a face, and gesturing with his hands, prompted the other teen to continue.

Sprios sighed and twirled the golden shaft of his spear, an unwilling expression came across his face, before he sighed again. “I’m Spiros, Heir to House Paris of Troy.”

Rex scratched the back of his head. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“Maybe if you were important enough… Troy is Lady Aphrodite’s Holy Land. She’s a god, if you didn’t know already.” Said Spiros.

“Oh.” Rex nodded nonchalantly. “Well, when you have your wedding, please be sure to invite me. Actually, I’m sure Heracles will, me and him go way ba–”

“Alright, can we focus please?” Luke cut the two off. “We should try and get the scroll before someone else shows up, and the situation gets complicated.”

“Do you really think anyone followed us to this specific scroll? Not only are there four of us, but Blinky ate an army on the way here. There are easier targets…” Arya said. “I think we have time.”

That’s… probably not wrong.

“You have a point, but I still don’t think we should waste time. We’ll have seven days to talk to our hearts content when we each get a pair of scrolls. So… How do we do this? I don’t think anyone has any great ideas about how to go about it, so let's think. It’s venomous for sure, if the green stuff dripping from its gajillion heads is anything to go buy, so I’d rather not get too close. Rex, you got a bow as your prize right?” Luke asked.

“I did.” The other teen nodded, and his ring flashed on his finger. Rex wasted no time in drawing back the string, an arrow made of fiery energy, manifested into existence– he let it loose.

The bolt of fire shot through the air, leaving a smoke-filled trail behind it as it went, and collided with one of the hydra’s heads, where it exploded with a bang. The creature flinched back, and its golden snake-like head, hissed at them in anger.

Which turned out to be the least of their concerns. A drone appeared in front of them.

“Would participants Arya, Luke, Rex, and Spiros like to challenge creature [HYDRA] for the scroll?” It asked.

“Yes.” Rex responded right away.

Instantly, Luke activated the First Truth of Death.

“Acknowledged.” The drone said in its typical androgynous voice, and before any of them could have any second thoughts, a red light bubbled out from within the body of the drone, and rapidly bloomed into a barrier. One that passed over them harmlessly, trapping them in a cage with a vicious beast.

Blinky chattered and exploded into activity as her eyes and tendrils flattened against the walls of red light… outside.

Rex made to protest, but before he could get a single word out of his mouth, Luke activated his sword's ability, momentarily doubled his agility and with it his speed, and tackled him.

The two narrowly managed to dodge, as the hydra roared, and poison-green flames erupted from its heads.

“Careful.” Luke chided, even as they dodged another gout of flame. The hydra, it seemed, had taken offense to Rex.

Luke was just glad that it wasn’t him that it was gunning for, and that it actually was a hydra like he thought it was. At least he knew how to kill it, kind of, now he just needed to tell the others, without telling them, actually kill it, and take the scroll.

Pretty easy. He grinned.