THEOS

This isn’t easy. Luke thought, tempted to smack his previous self over the head. Feeling of downing horror and a hint of panic permeated his thoughts as he narrowly avoided another jet of flame. This one, condensed into a thin, laser-like, stream that followed him around. Missing him by the narrowest of margins, but missing him nonetheless.

Ruthlessly stomping on his emotions, he shifted his Technique from the First Stance to the First Truth. Using the opportunity to dodge and commit to memory where the great golden beast, and its hundred fire breathing and venom-fanged heads would be, and then fractions of a second later, shifted back to the First Stance to conserve mana. He didn’t have the time, nor the mental capacity to let anything cloud his judgment, so he wouldn’t. The fight, even with the four of them attacking together, was brutal. None of them had taken a single scratch yet, but that was part of the reason why it was so hard. There was no room for error. They had to dominate, and do it completely, because if they didn’t they would lose. Killing the creature alone wasn’t enough.

Oddly, it reminded Luke of playing Mario Kart, and being in first place, except dialed up to eleven, and with staked much greater than the celebration of his friends. He remembered when he would be winning, and everything going well, but the feeling of anxiousness stemming from the player behind him inching closer and closer, knowing that he if messed up or crashed a single time, he would be overtaken– or well, in this case his non regenerating ‘health bar’ would deplete, and he’d be removed from the tournament entirely.

Not the worst outcome– he’d already won big in his own mind with the Spell, and the secrets it held, but failing the Quests was something he very much dreaded. Even with the reservations he had about this particular one. It was, afterall, one thing to be opportunistic, and entirely another to potentially kick off and be responsible for one of the most famous wars in history. If that is what the Seed was trying to do.

“Ready!” Luke yelled, and then trusting that Rex would have his back, he acted on his brief insight to the future– flying left he lowered himself in the air, ducking under the fiery beam even as it whizzed past where he had just been, and then with a single smooth movement, sliced horizontally. Not even bothering to watch, as a snake-like head that had been sneaking up from underneath him flopped to the ground.

Instead he was already ducking under a cloud of flame spewing from a few heads the monster kept close to its body. The hydra, he found, liked to do that. It was constantly shifting its breath attack from a wide area to a focused laser, but with their techniques, he, Spiros, and Arya could predict its intentions well enough.

Briefly he activated his swords abilities and doubled his Constitution Stat to better withstand the heat, before letting that ability fade as well, the second the monster switched back to attacking him with a more focused attack.

Mana needed to be conserved at all costs, even if going all out was looking better and better at the moment. Except, this fight needed to be a marathon, not a sprint, and carefully coordinated on top of that, so the creature didn’t grow even more heads if Rex missed a shot.

“To your right!” Rex called back at him, and instantly, Luke flew to the left.

Moments later, a fiery bolt of energy streaked through the air and lodged itself into its bubbling neck– were it left alone, another two heads would have sprouted in exactly three seconds. Instead, the flesh of the creature sizzled and charred.

The neck, losing its animus, fell limp around the monster's body. Joining the odd dozen others they had destroyed. The way the early stages of the battle had gone though, the creature had more heads now, than it had when the battle had first started.

Not for a lack of trying though. Luke had suggested cauterizing the stumps the moment the first head had grown back, but reality wasn’t so simple. Knowing what to do didn't make the how of it any easier, and being locked in a forcefield with an angry hydra, wasn’t conducive towards clear thinking or good communication. Still, Luke was glad they had managed to work out a rhythm, and reactivated the First Truth.

The moment the vision of the hydra's ghost played out in front of him, he cursed under his breath. Three of its heads were about to attack Arya simultaneously, and while he couldn’t see Arya’s actions as they would happen in the future, since she wasn’t attacking him, he had gained enough experience over the months and had become familiar enough with both her and Spiros’s limits, that he was confident she didn’t see it coming. To top it all off, her nervous expression, and started yelp was all the confirmation he needed.

“Ready one at Arya!” Luke yelled at Rex again. Heaving Maximus over his head, he channeled mana into the blade, and flung it with every ounce of strength he could muster, even as he willed his mana to spill out of it, and push off of space itself. Propelling it forward so fast, his sword appeared more like a beam of light, than a single object.

At the same time, he rapidly back peddled as another one of the hydra’s heads snapped at his heels, only to slam into the red barrier maintained by the drone with a loud crash and an angry hiss, when Luke once again ducked out of its way. For maybe the hundredth time, he cursed at the fact that they weren’t allowed to use more than one artifact. He loved Maximus, he really did, but being able to use the sword Cyzicus had given him when he first arrived at the castle would have made this battle so much easier.

Shaking the thoughts of another sword out of his head, he reactivated the First Truth, and using his mana, adjusted the trajectory of the blade slightly, so that it cleanly sliced through one of its heads, while Arya severed the other two coming her way with a single swing of her dagger.

Rex, fast on the uptake, already had his bow focused, and a bolt of fire causterated the stump moments after it became one.

“Thanks!” Arya yelled. Already weaving away, as the two heads she had severed, rotted away into nothing, and the stumps blackned from something, and the necks fell limp.

God that’s fucking creepy. Luke winced, and telekinetically maneuvered his blade back towards him, and continued to fend off the hydra's attacks as best as he could without a weapon in hand or a shield to hold the flames at bay.

Then seeing an opportunity, he diverted his sword just a tad, and cut two more heads off. It was a risk, as he could only use a fraction of his strength when controlling his sword with mana alone, and he ran the chance of the hydra batting it away and stepping on it or something. In this case though, it only made sense to punish the creature for having its neck over extended.

Rex, like a well oiled machine, fired two more arrows with perfect precision, and burned shut two more stumps.

After shooting Zeus, the emperor’s grandson had developed an obsession with the bow that bordered on fanatical, and it had paid off. Taking the feat as a sign of his immense talent in Archery. Luke personally thought that the King of Gods had purposefully allowed himself to be hit, likely for comedic purposes, as there was no way in hell he didn’t see the arrow coming, but he wasn’t going to ruin that for Rex.

Whether he was joking or not, Zeus had been hit by an arrow fired from the unskilled hands of a mortal.

While Rex’s skill with the bow was admirable, it was Arya and the way she fought that really interested Luke.

The way she ducked and weaved between the golden heads, and the sprays of flame, was known to him. Afterall, he possessed the same Stance’s of the Sword, Shield, and Spear she did, even though the way hers were expressed were different, the foundation they were built on were the same.

Where Luke would find opportunity in the movements and see a path forward, weaving between his opponents offense, and into their guard, and deliver the final blow. Arya had a different, more passive approach.

She would let the hydra attack, only, instead of finding flesh, it would always without error find the edge of her blade instead. Where he pressed forward, she repositioned herself. A slight difference which Luke suspected was born from the fact that while he had leaned heavily on the First Stance of the Sword to learn the Truth embedded in the Empress’s teachings, Arya had made her initial breakthrough with the First Stance of the Shield. All that however, he could understand.

It was the way the hydra’s flesh rotted from where she cut, that he didn’t.

It seemed eerily familiar, and if he had to put a name to the feeling, it would be deja vu.

Luke was certain, it was something she was doing too, and not an ability of her dagger. Even so, now wasn’t the time for questions, especially if his suspicion was right. If what he was witnessing was Arya’s own evolution of the First Stances, comparable to his own First Truth of Death, then focusing on it in the midst of battle definitely wasn’t the way to go. No matter how much he wanted to.

Any breakthroughs in his own Technique, would rapidly drain him of his mana, and while that had been fine when he was fighting the Mortal tier giants, it was unthinkable now. The six armed giants could only dream of hurting him, even when he was drained of mana. They were too dumb, and when he fought them in earnest, he was already at the peak of the Mortal tier. Even the boulders they threw, just broke on his skin.

The hydra wouldn't be as forgiving, and its attacks were relentless. He didn’t need to test its poison to know that it would kill him, and he could feel the blistering heat of the fire. It would cook him alive, were he to be caught.

So when Maximus slammed back into his grip, Luke instantly reactivated the First Truth, for the umpteenth time since the battle had begun. Then finding the next vulnerable head, he went to slice them off, only to stop abruptly when three heads thunked to the ground at Spiros’s feet.

“Here!” Spiros yelled, and on cue, Rex once again fired off three arrows, impaling each of the heads the Heir to the House of Paris had severed.

“Call it before you decapitate it.” Luke yelled at Spiros, a hint of irritation seeping into his voice, even as he tried to keep it out. Making sure to meet the other teens eyes through the long ropy, snake-like necks of the hydra. Spiros like Luke, needed Rex to burn the hydra everytime they severed one of its heads, or it would just set them back. Unlike Arya, and a little to Luke’s surprise, Spiros’s attacks didn’t rot the creature. Luke wasn’t sure if he just hadn’t progressed his Stance’s into the Warrior tier at all, or was limiting himself to the Mortal tier Technique to conserve mana. He suspected it was the latter.

“Sorry.” Spiros shouted back, apologetically.

“Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. If Rex isn’t ready or expecting it, then us cutting off a head, just makes this harder.”

“I will. I will.” Spiros nodded, leaping out of the way of a jet of flame.

“Good. Three here, Rex!” Luke yelled again, and cut two enterprising heads off with one swing of his blade, and another off a moment later.

The rest of the battle continued in a similar vein. With the three of them cutting off one or two heads at a time, and Rex darting around the red dome with his bow providing them cover. Contrary to Luke’s own expectations, it wasn’t them that tired first, but the hydra. He had been so used to fighting the Gegenees and their virtually limitless endurance, and ability to keep going that he had assumed that all monsters had been like that. The winged serpents hadn’t done much to dissuade him of that notion either, those things were durable as all hell.

He should have expected it though. The hydra would obviously lose mana with every jet of flame it sent their way, and combine that with the trauma of losing as many heads as it had, and then having those wounds sealed with fire… Luke was surprised it was still on its feet.

Before they knew it, it was just the four of them facing off against its last head.

WIth a heaving chest, Luke dodged as it half heartedly spewed fire at them, and eyed the podium. He had almost forgotten why they were fighting it in the first place, but clearly the hydra hadn’t. Even now, it stood protectively over the podium.

The monsters, once golden scales, dyed red in its own blood. Its long limp necks draped over its muscle bound legs, it trampled over its own dead flesh without care.

“Let me finish it off.” Luke said, grinning slightly even as Rex shot him a strange look. Before any of them could protest, his sword shot out of his hand, and cut off its last head. Rex pulled back the string of his bow, and like he had the last hundred times, burned the stump shut.

Before the giant, many necked, and headless beast hit the ground though, Luke with a flex of his will, buried his sword where he thought its heart would be.

Stat Point Accumulation Currently Paused.

He read over the message, before dismissing it entirely.

Or right, Hepheastus is watching. He thought, and grinned in delight, as the creature's mana soaked into his muscles directly. It was inefficient, and a lot of it escaped back into the environment, but it felt good, and his stats still ticked up a little. He was happy.

Rex whisked past him, and picked up the scroll. “Now what?” He said.