THEOS

When Luke came to, the first thing he did was open his Status.

Perhaps checking his condition and seeing where he was would have been a wiser course of action. Except, he was alive, not in pain, and warm. Which was good enough. Either that was because his allies had stashed him somewhere or because he had been eliminated while he slept and was sent back to Sylcra, he didn’t know. What he did know was that it was quiet and he wanted a few moments to think before he opened his eyes.

So without moving a muscle and making sure his breathing was steady in case someone was watching him, he delved into the Seed’s interface.

Status | Skills | Quests | Inventory

Name: Lukas King

Tier: Warrior

Bloodline: Eyes of Insight

Mana: 215 397 / 215 397

Rate: 18% per hour

Strength: 419 > 486

Agility: 432 > 501

Constitution: 716 > 789

Arcana: 536 > 546

Stat Points: 0

Charges: 7/10

Wow that’s a lot of stats. How many monsters did I even kill… holy. It would have been more if I could use Stat Points, but damn, those numbers are rising fast, He thought excitedly. Forcing himself to look over the changes, even as his heart thumped in excitement and anticipation for what the Skill tab would reveal.

I'm going to miss this place when I leave. Unless where I go to has more points for me to harvest… which isn’t impossible… and–

Holy fuck.

My regen… It improved? Only by a percent, but still, how? Never mind, obviously it's from advancing my technique.

Amazing.

I didn’t know that was even possible, but not many warriors in Sylcra even had techniques. Those that did, kept everything about them pretty hush. Hell, other than Clite and Nel the only warriors that had them were the Argonauts.

My mana regan has gone up before, both when I accepted the Paragon’s Path and when I advanced to the Warrior tier. Five and two percent respectively. Both of those were because of me being a Paragon though. Once for accepting the thing in the first place, and the second for completing the first stage of the quest successfully. Most people, mortals and warriors at least, still take about ten hours to get to full if Rex and the Seed are anything to go by. I think Heracles was faster, but I never really pushed him, and he’s practically a Hero anyway.

I really need to spend more time with the Argonauts once I get back. Things were so hectic with training and the Tide I never really saw them, but there's so much I still need to learn.

Hmmm. Focusing on his regen rate, he began to run the numbers in his head, and tried to figure out what else changed and what he needed to do to capitalize on that.

I’m getting my mana back nearly twice as fast as the average joe. It’s not exactly a game changer though. Most of the stuff that uses my mana blows my regen out of the water. Most fights also only last minutes, at least right now, so it doesn’t make a massive difference. Stamina is stamina though, having more never hurts. Even if I can put a little more into my attacks for longer than the other guy, than that’s an advantage.

Especially when I get more copies of that spell.

Then once I’m in the Hero tier and start having fights that last for days and months, I’ll practically have twice my opponents mana. Maybe then, those fights wouldn’t last days or months.

Speaking of–

Luke concentrated on the bond between him and his sword and focused his attention on his secondary mana pool in Maximus, which if Luke was feeling it correctly, someone had wrapped in cloth and placed under his head like a pillow.

Unsurprisingly, he had drained it dry, and there wasn’t even a single drop of the energy left in the four foot long blade of gold.

Gotta fix that.

With a flex of his will he started pumping his mana into the blade at a rate that matched his newly improved regeneration. It would be nearly six hours until he was back at full capacity.

But considering my own reserves are full, I’ve been out for at least six hours. Not sure how to feel about that–

Wait. Where did the–

Fuck.

A startling change caught his attention. For days now, the energy of the healing potion he had drank at the start of the Tournament had resided in his mana. Full and ready to heal him should he ever need it.

Fortunately, it was still there, but barely. Only a small sliver of it remained. Maybe enough to recover from a solid hit if he got lucky, but that was it. Anything more than that would see him dismissed from the trial.

Well shit. This just got a lot harder. He realized, even as he tried to keep the frown off his face. I guess that’s what I get for losing consciousness for multiple hours in the middle of a combat situation. Still the fact that I still have any of it left, is good.

And the gains I made…

Worth it. And speaking of…

What was it again? He thought to himself as he switched to the Skill tab of his Status. Immediately the Truth he had comprehended rose to the forefront of his thought.

Death is inevitable, killing is easy, and the echoes of fate foretell the end.

Heavy stuff… but accurate considering what I can do now.

Status | Skills | Quests | Inventory

Foresight of the End

Tier: Hero

Progress: 10%

An expression of a Hero tier Truth created by Lukas King, evolved from The First Truth of Death. Gives users a limited ability to levy attacks against those that see him harm through the threads of fate and time. First Truth of Death

Tier: Warrior

Progress: 100% [COMPLETED]

[...]

…

That’s busted as fuck.

Very… and I mean very busted.

Luke’s mind was awash with possibilities. Truthfully, he had already known what he could do. Had known even before he lost consciousness. More than that, he could feel the ability. It sat ready to be activated at a moment's notice with a single thought.

Even so, it was magical. More than that though, it was frightening.

Just imagining fighting someone who could use a technique like that… it would mean instant death. What else could it mean?

How was anyone supposed to fight a person who could attack something that they would do in the future? If there was a way at all, Luke couldn’t think of it.

He knew intuitively that it wasn’t that simple though, not yet. He could already feel how crippling the mana cost promised to be. If his gut was right, and he didn’t have a reason to think it wasn’t, then that meant that even against warriors it would instantly drain every last shred of mana from his body, and would continue to do so for quite some time. Perhaps when he reached the very peak of the warrior tier, he might be able to use it once and not go to sleep. Twice if he was lucky.

Using it against a Hero, if it worked at all, would likely be suicide. He would wring his whole body dry in the attempt. Activating it wouldn’t kill him, but being unconscious would.

Even so, as an ace… It was monstrous. An instant win button if he ever needed one. Even with the cost making it impractical.

But still. With this it doesn’t even matter if someone has a protective talisman or something. If their future self is a few feet away from their true body, I fire an arrow, and they're dead. Just like that.

What scared the shit out of Luke though, was what it said about Theos. According to the Seed, he alone was the person who had made this particular technique. How he made it, Luke didn’t have the slightest clue, but the fact that he had suggested that no one else had it. It was a small comfort, but now that Luke knew something like this was possible, he couldn’t help but be paranoid.

Theseus’s ability to command water with the degree of precision and power that he had just hours ago seemed like it was the pinnacle of power. Except, if something like the Foresight of the End was only a Hero tier ability, what could someone with a Saint tier ability do… no wonder gods were called gods.

Most of them seemed to have the power to squash mortals like a bug, but if Luke could attack through time, what could they do?

What were their limits?

Did they even have any?

Suddenly, he remembered something Arke had said the day he died about Aeolus having a demiplane.

Cultivating was magical, it truly was, but up until now Luke had never really comprehended the scale of the abilities he was reaching towards.

Aeolus had seemingly constructed a world in the space between Earth and the afterlife. With a sun, trees, brick roads… the whole package. It had exploded, but still, a world was a world. Thinking smaller, people had ways to put things in pocket dimensions and lock them behind keys that you plugged into random points in the air.

Meanwhile, Luke’s own journey had essentially been collecting mana in his body so he could punch harder, and more recently, fly.

Granted, he had just started, but never before had the distance between the heights he needed to achieve and his current state seem so unimaginably vast. Nor had it ever seemed so achievable.

Honestly, the way he had gained the technique felt… easy.

Months of absolutely no progress and then suddenly, he had moved beyond it all. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it felt strange even to him.

Then again, my bloodline is called the Eyes of Insight. I’m related to Prometheus, the Titan famed for his foresight. I’ve had the ability to predict the future in a limited sense for a while, but this is–

I don't know what this is, but it’s not a coincidence. Is having the bloodline making me predisposed to advancing in a certain direction? Am I inadvertently following in the footsteps of my Titan ancestor?

I never really thought about it before, mostly because I unlocked the First Truth of Death before I freed Heracles and awakened my bloodline, but what if even that evolution was influenced by my bloodline when it was still dormant. Obviously I couldn’t use it, but I did have it.

Who the hell is Max?

It seems awfully strange that someone descended from an imprisoned Titan just ended up floating in the ocean as a baby within spitting distance from a tomb that contained an egg from the baby of one the beast that's eating his ancestor’s liver.

Unless… Prometheus is imprisoned somewhere near the archipelago. Maybe he had some conjugal visit or something… I don’t know. Or maybe one of his kids is just wandering around knocking mortals up. Weird, but Lukeus literally does the same thing. Who knows how many illegitimate great grandchildren Cyzicus has at this point.

Anyways… What did Prometheus do to drive himself insane? Is that going to happen to me too? Am I going to push my technique past some invisible threshold, and just have something break in my mind? Obviously the Titan’s blood is pushing my Techniques in some direction, is it really so insane that it pushes me to madness too?

Okay. Relax.

I’m getting paranoid and I’m getting ahead of myself. Hopefully.

“When do you think he’s going to wake up?” Spiros suddenly said, his voice coming from Luke’s left.

It pulled Luke free from his thoughts. Something that he was more than grateful for.

“Soon, hopefully.” Arya said.

Taking that as his cue, Luke stirred. Shuffling on the surface he was laid out on, he fluttered in eyes, and faked a yawn. “Hi.” He said, taking in their surroundings.

They were out in the open, and gathered around a fire. Just the three of them. Seeing as no monsters were attacking and it was pitch black save for the many stars in the sky, Luke correctly assumed it was night.

“Welcome back to the waking world.” Spiros said poking a log in the flame with teh butt of his spear.

“Glad to be back. Where are Ella and Theseus?”

“Next round. We volunteered to watch you while they moved on. Ella took a big hit, and wanted to leave and then Thesues asked to go too. We didn’t want to make it a fight, so we agreed to watch you.” Arya said.

“Oh.” Luke didn’t know what else to say. Rationally speaking, he would have preferred that Spiros and Arya move to the next round, but he also felt better about the two of them watching him rather than the Son of Poseidon.

“Mhm.” Spiros grunted.

“How long was I out?”

“You fought like a maniac for like two hours, and then you suddenly dropped. You’ve slept for the better part of the day. Missed most of the fighting too.” Spiros said.

Luke nodded. “Well, thanks for keeping me safe.”

“It wasn’t easy. We got to you pretty fast, but keeping everything off of you was a pain. At one point, we thought you were a goner. But you’re welcome. You helped plenty too, so we weren’t going to leave you behind.” Spiros said.

“Did you advance your technique?” Arya suddenly asked.

“... I did.” Luke admitted.

Arya and Spiros shuffled and looked at each other, and then at once they both turned to Luke.

“Hmm. I thought so. It seems familiar. Where did you learn it?” Arya asked, her eyes boring into his.

It felt like they were looking into his soul, and Luke realized that the jig was finally up. It must have shown on his face, because the next moment Spiros burst into laughter.

“So, are we going to talk about it or what? Spiros grinned.