THEOS

When Luke woke up, he felt amazing. Until he remembered the reason he wasn’t in agony was because of the potion Cybele had force fed him. Which inturn reminded him of the fact that she could kill him just as easily as she had fixed him. Then he felt sick. He could feel it in his bones that a bill would come due. Regardless of what the goddess claimed about owing him for what she had taken, he couldn’t escape the sense that he was a mere pig she was fattening up for slaughter.

Power may not lead to absolute control and subversion of free will, but there could be no equal exchange between him and the goddess. Not when the difference between their current stations was night and day. It was just like his deal with Nefkha so long ago. Irrespective of what the older warrior had claimed, their bargain was shallow, and the Seed’s quest to escape Carim was all the proof Luke needed of the fact that it was a deal struck in poor faith. The old man had lorded Luke’s weakness over him, and while he was lucky enough to escape, Luke had no doubt that staying would have led to an unpleasant outcome.

Honestly, his own blade was all the reminder Luke needed on the role of power on Theos.

He didn’t quite know who Bellaphron was in this world, what he did, what he stood for, or why he was executed. All of it was a mystery. What he knew was that Zeus had struck him down and scattered his belongings to the corners of the world while he was at the precipice of his apotheosis. What he knew was that the Seed in his soul hadn’t protected Aeolus from death at the hands of Arke the Paragon. What he knew was that Prometheus, whose blood ran through his veins, had been driven mad and condemned to eternal suffering.

Luke knew that while the path before him seemed clear for the moment it was in truth far more treacherous than he could even begin to imagine. A single misstep and he’d be ripped apart.

So, he had to rely on the tools of past losers to succeed where they failed. To live where they died. To find peace where they found insanity. It wasn’t enough to keep killing things with his sword, harvesting stat points, and being led around the nose by the Seed. He couldn’t sit on his laurels and fail. He wouldn’t allow himself to be cast adrift in the Aether and be at the mercy of strange and cruel gods ever again.

That’s why instead of walking out of his room and eating breakfast, or whatever meal it was time for, with the warriors of the Argo or catching up with Lukeus and Rex, he munched on some jerky he kept in his storage ring and activated his bloodline.

He inspected himself for any sign of continued injury, and smiled when he found none. Much to his relief his metaphysical form was back to its old un-ballooned self and its boundaries fit firmly within the confines of his skin. It showed no signs of ever having been stretched beyond recognition, and if Luke hadn’t seen first hand how bad it was when he had taken on the Hero tier mana, he would never have believed he was injured in the first place.

I’ve definitely been out for a few days then. Eh, I’ll figure it out later. For now…

His focus drifted to the spell icon bobbing in a slow orbit around where his heart was.

Thankfully, the giant's Hero tier mana had left the spell undisturbed. He had no reason to suspect that it would be damaged beyond the fact that his entire mana system had nearly burst. Which would have sucked. He was glad though, to see that the worst hadn’t come to pass and that the spell hadn’t been lost amidst the Seed’s and Cybele’s schemes.

He needed that spell. Without it, he wasn’t sure he could even win the tournament.

Foresight of the End was a scarily powerful and nigh unstoppable ability, but it also shared many of the weaknesses of its less evolved versions. Foes that were invisible or not alive to begin with would still be out of Luke’s grasp just as they had always been. Unless of course, he could hose them down with jets of unending fire and set their clothes and flesh aflame. Which would be an option as soon as he had endless iterations of the spell orbiting in his mana pool rather than the eleven uses of it he had now.

Alright!

He clapped his hands and falling back into the still warm covers of his bed, he severed a blob of mana from his pool, and went to work.

Slowly and intricately, he crafted branch after branch of the complex icon. Once again gaining an appreciation of just how intricate the thing actually was. He held out as long as he could before the exertion of maintaining the mana outside his body became too much and his grip over his own mana became tenuous and then broke altogether.

Rubbing his temples Luke fought off a wave of vertigo, and watched as his mana fizzled away into nothing. Whatever quality it had that made the energy his

wasgone, and with it his ability to perceive it as well. Minus the headache, Luke was pleased with how well his first try had worked.

The spell icon had a hundred and three branches and he had succeeded in forming seventy-two of them. The best he could do before was sixty odd branches.

Honestly, it had gone better than Luke had anticipated, and he suspected his improved arcana was to blame. Or perhaps, it was something else entirely. His mana was much stronger than it had been in the Holy Land of Vulcan, but the concentration of mana in Sylcra was also just a mere fraction of what it was in the god’s domain.

Or, I'm just overthinking it, and I did better because I’m better rested and where I am and my arcana have nothing to do with this.

Speaking of–

He opened his status and grinned at all those stat points just waiting to be spent. He was tempted to use them all right away, but after a brief moment of hesitation he decided against it. He looked and felt fine, but flooding himself with that much mana so soon after his recovery seemed like a bad idea. It was better to trickle it in over the course of a couple days.

Seeing that Cybele hadn’t cut him open when he had made the monumentally stupid decision to use the God Seed in front of her, being found out by anyone in Sylcra wasn’t a big concern. Still, now that his judgment wasn’t clouded by ungodly levels of pain, he decided that discretion was the better part of valor. It wouldn’t hurt him in the long run and that drip feeding the points came with its own benefits.

The least of which were the better control over his power and the increased intimacy with how exactly the Seed strengthened him. Luke didn’t think he would ever need to cultivate manually, and he doubted that he would ever be as good as the Seed at allocating the mana, but it seemed prudent to better understand the process anyway. A windfall this big would only get rarer as he advanced his cultivation, and the chance to observe so many points being spent repeatedly over a short amount of time might reveal something interesting. Especially since the backlash from killing Hero tiers as a warrior felt so much worse than killing a Warrior tier as a mortal.

Seed or no Seed, I think harvesting the mana from a Saint as a hero might even kill me. The stuff has to go through my body before my hacks can work their magic, and the difference in Warrior tier and Hero tier mana is too profound. If the trend continues and the powergap between tiers gets wider and wider… He sighed.

Not good, but it's also not going to be a concern for a while. Unless Cybele makes good on her promise, I doubt there are enough Saint tier’s around for this to be a problem anyway. Most likely, I’ll end up having to clear out nests of warrior tier creatures for chump change, punch metal, and start benching mountains to cultivate.

He grinned and shook his head in amusement, imagining himself doing just that.

Shaking his head clear of his silly thoughts, he focused back on his status and began to spend his windfall. He started by adding two stat points to agility, and then cycled through the rest of his attributes one by one. Mana escaped the seed, and like a balm spread waves of rejuvenating energy throughout his body, washing away pains and stress that he didn’t even know he had. With each point he felt better, and after the last point went into his Arcana the dull headache that he was sporting faded just as quickly as it had come. His eyes widened in surprise.

This might have some potential.

Using stat points always felt good, but he hadn’t really considered that they might be good for this kind of training. In fact, spending them in the middle of training was usually the worst time to use them, with the best time being at the start of the day after his body had digested the previous day's gains over a good night of sleep. The purpose of training was to exert himself so that his body would seek nourishment from the environment and strengthen itself. Eliminating exhaustion in the middle of it was contrary to that purpose.

This though, was different. Sure he would miss out on a handful of points to his arcana if he endured the pain, but adding a point or two after each attempt would speed up the process drastically.

And it's not like I’m hurting for points right now. The faster I can get this spell copied, and the more iterations I can make of it, the better. I want to be able to throw fire around like it's nobody's business. Hephaestus is going to regret not putting a limitation on spell use. Then again, he probably never thought someone could copy his work. He’s also not above putting his hands on the scale if the last round is anything to go by… Eh, I’ll see how it goes. Even if I can’t use it at the tournament, endless fire is way too potent of a power not to cultivate.

With stat points to ease the exhaustion and the experience gained from repeatedly making the same pattern with his mana over and over again, he began to make real progress copying the spell. The beginning stages, the ones he was most familiar with, he could almost manifest instantly and the later stages were soon committed to memory as well.

Pretty soon it wasn’t even a blob of mana he was starting with, but a half formed spell. He had lost track of time and the number of attempts. It was only hours later when he tried and failed to add another stat point to arcana, that he roused from his trance. Inadvertently, he had raised his Arcana to nine-hundred and ninety-nine, the limit of the warrior tier.

“Shit.” He scratched the back of his head. He didn’t really mind that he had maxed out a stat, but he was annoyed that he had lost access to his instant headache cure. A feeling he didn’t dwell on for long.

Luke had recreated a hundred of the hundred and three branches in his last ten attempts. The finish line was so close, he could practically taste it. Uncaring of his headache, he pressed on, and on, and on.

He pumped his fist in victory when he finally managed to recreate the hundred and first branch.

By the time he managed to create the hundred and second branch, he was so familiar with the structure of the spell that the blob he started with snapped the first dozen or so branches into shape on instinct alone.

Then after twenty more failed attempts, he finally began to put the finishing touches on the last glyph on the last bra–

Someone knocked on his door and the nearly completed spell broke into tiny fragments and faded from his vision.

“FUCKKKKKKKKK.”

“Luke! Is everything okay?” Rex yelled and barged into his room with Blinky draped over his shoulder and his features twisted in a concern.

“I’m busy. Get out!”

Rex stood frozen. Slowly his gaze wandered from Luke’s eyes to Luke’s lap where the blanket he was under was just slightly crumpled. Rex’s face went beet red, he slowly stepped back, nodded, and closed the door behind him and left.

“I didn’t see anything!” Rex called out from the other side of the door.

It took every ounce of good sense and sympathy Luke had for Cyzicus not to stab the emperor’s grandson then and there. Instead, he spent the next five minutes with his eyes closed in silent meditation to get his emotions under control before he once again separated a portion of mana from his pool.

One after another the branches of the flame spell took shape in front of him. The hundredth. The hundred and first. The hundred and second. Then finally, the hundred and third.

The moment the last glyph on the last branch took shape, the mana the icon was formed of glowed red and orange. Before Luke could make heads or tails of it, it slammed into his chest.

Focusing his sight inwards, Luke’s face split into a grin when he saw not one but two nearly indistinguishable spell icons bobbing in a lazy circuit around where his heart was.

Fuck yeah.

Leaving the original spell alone, Luke focused his mana through the one he had made and laughed as it took on a fiery aspect.

Moments later, Luke was flying as fast as he could through the halls of the castle. The early morning sun was filtering through its many windows, illuminating the many paintings and statues littered about the place beautifully.

It was under that light that Luke sought out Rex and began hurtling balls of scorching fire at his feet. He deserved it.