“What are you doing here, we must go, Hercules!”

  The words had been yelled in Arson’s direction countless times. While lost in the loop in the realm of Olympus Arson found himself hungry for anything that would change not only his fate, but the fate of those around him.

  After hearing the head librarian of the Catacombs of Olympia yell those words a few dozen times, the twist of panic and urgency had faded to be nothing more than an inconsequential warning; feeling no more weighty than a parent’s roar of disapproval at running indoors.

  Arson searched through the catacombs for anything that could make him powerful enough to fight against those fierce enough to assassinate gods. What he instead found, was an unfathomable amount of incomplete knowledge.

  One of the many techniques he’d come across was a palm art. This dead art was far More complete than any other tome, making it the least dangerous option for Arson to learn.

  Seeing that he’d failed to save the gods more than a hundred times, Arson began searching for other options. Rather than racing around Olympus trying to take on unreasonable odds, Arson sharpened his mind, body and soul. Though in the physical form of a DemiGod, much of what his mind learned in the body of another, was easily transferred into practice once he eventually returned to his own body.

  Countless restarts ticked by, and Arson was gratefully forced to use the mana dense environment of Olympus to train. Though he was in the body of Hercules, his soul and mind were refined even further than they had been while training in Origin with masters he no longer remembered.

  His once aimless travels throughout Olympus resulted in a culmination of discoveries, that Arson wondered if even Hercules knew of. He couldn’t search through the mind of his host for answers, thus only knew of Olympus as much as he was able to uncover while stuck within the time loop.

  There were various sections of Olympus that the gods used to train. A underwater tank with increased gravity which Poseidon used. A chamber filled with artificial storms used by Zeus, and a place known as the Ancestral Halls that was filled with darkness and the souls of feral dead gods harvested to train descendants of Hades and those he deemed as worthy.

  All of these areas were off limits to Hercules, making Arson’s entry to all of these sights of power rather tricky. Without his training in stealth while within Origin, Arson would have never gained entry to any of the gods’ most sacred training grounds. Yet it was these very skills that started to show Arson the stability of his mind was no longer entirely within his control.

  Often between the restarts, Arson would dream. Dream of places he’d never been. Skills he now knew were his own, yet he’d never been taught, nor witnessed the practice of. Further more, the glimpses of himself traveling and training in a majestic city entirely made of runes and mana that seemed to be the foundation for what was now his entire power base as a Cultivator.

  All of these dreams and seemingly god gifted skills pushed Arson to a new height. A height that bled over into the rest of his travels within Endless, making his time in Olympus, and the realms beyond far more rewarding than they would have been otherwise.

  Arson didn’t discriminate. He used all of the areas within Olympus meant to train, and more. Though he had access to places unimaginable to even the noblest of HonorBorn societies, sects, and even iconified immortals, Arson’s biggest issue lay with his misguided attempt at completing a lost art. An art that had never been seen as anything more than a frivolous hobby of a long dead god.

  Still he practiced. He performed the palm art so many times that he became used to losing his arms, as the power of the technique resulted in implosions that eviscerated his limbs with every attempt. Some of the attempts so devastating that he killed himself entirely, restarting the loop to his own frustration at each failed try at achieving the lost art.

  Though he spent an incredible amount of time failing, his growth wasn’t nonexistent. With every lost arm, death, or expanse of time forced to watch his arm regrow from nothing more than a nub consisting of shattered bones, and flayed muscle layers, he grew stronger.

  Underwater within Poseidon’s gravity chamber, the art became compact, and Arson soon became able to practice the technique multiple times without losing the limb. Hercules’s increases in bone density and musculature never remained heightened after each reset, but Arson’s use of the demigods body became fine tuned like that of a perfectly stringed violin.

  While in the chamber of storms, Arson learned how to condense mana and manna. The higher level of energy still far out of reach for him even after he managed to escape Endless, but without his time in Olympus the feat would have never been achieved.

  The interior garden that was saturated with volatile storms was enough to force Arson to manage his ever-growing mana, and even learn to control external manas with multiple affinities.

  For unknown reasons to Arson, his mana pool didn’t reset when he restarted within the loop. Any growth that was obtained while training within Olympus, was maintained, making his training that much more difficult, as Hercules’s body wasn’t meant for such incredible amounts of volatile manas as Arson’s own form was.

  Arson had to learn to wield a body build for what was seen as a pure physical strength, while having access to the same amount of magical might as Hercules’s own father, Zeus. Which inevitably lead to a realization that helped Arson get far closer to achieving his goal, and nearly becoming the first godling to ever complete an Immortal’s technique.

  His proudest moment in Endless as a whole was standing in front of the first TitanSteel Tree, and leaving a handprint embedded in the oak that was as large as a city itself. His small handprint showed him the might of something unconquerable. It showed him that he was far from the power of the gods, and may not be able to save everyone with overwhelming force or might, but instead, he may have no other choice but to be but a small coin placed perfectly to tip the balance of scales being weighed against the gods he was meant to save.

  All of this lead not only to Arson bringing the technique to near completion, but also to the realization that the palm art wouldn’t be enough to save the gods from dying either, making him open his single minded focus, to that of true genius and a balanced measure of any and all possibilities.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  The series of epiphanies resulted in Arson training his martial skills in the Ancestral Halls of Olympus until his every movement was as deadly as a knife point aimed at undefended organs.

  Ultimately this was what allowed Arson to strategize; practicing an all out assault against the force that was devoted to purging the gods from existence.

  None of these details were why Arson currently tossed in his sleep taken with a nightmare. They were the factors that gave him the ability to be accepted by the Atlantians. Beings with such might that Arson’s incomplete palm art was taught in its entirety simply to children, meant to guide their incredibly strong youth to be unmatched in the world of Cultivation.

  His next trials after Olympus left him with an understanding of how truly weak he was. Far more than the small mark he left in the tree at the center of Olympus. Even more than anything else he faced while in Origin, or at the hand of the child of Omen, his once torturer.

  Not once did he defeat an Atlantian in martial combat, mana craft, nor did he even manage to learn to speak using runic telepathy, and had been seen as nothing more than a handicapped toddler, instead of being considered to be the potential intellectual equal that he’d wished to be by the powerful society.

  The fact that he’d been accepted had been nothing more than a fluke. Forced to defend himself in desperation as the trials delivered him to an oceanic depth that he could barely move properly within. Arson used the strongest technique within his arsenal.

  A palm art respected by the Atlantians. The memories of his times in those depths were some of his darkest, and even rivaled the night terrors that often pushed him to rely on his body’s lacking need for sleep.

  Between his distorted memories of Origin and the time in one of the lost realms, Arson spent every moment since leaving Endless awake.

  No longer being powered by the runic systems of the trials however, his need for sleep had finally caught up to him. Which now found him wrestling with an internal darkness that was still growing within his soul realm.

  A cackling laughter, and a deep resonating voice that spoke to him in the back of his mind now served as proof to the mental traumas that carved lasting scars into Arson’s soul and the depths of his mind.

  He sat up screaming in bed. At first not knowing where he was, Arson nearly destroyed the room he slept in. Conductive water orbs fired in every direction in his room until he remembered that he wasn’t in Endless.

  He blinked rapidly, sighing heavily. He hadn’t been asleep since he’d lost consciousness in his last sparring match with an Atlantian named Midas; the only Atlantian that was able to speak the common tongue of the realms.

  “Wow… I must have really been tired,” said Arson. He was embarrassed at the sight of his destroyed living space, but let his racing heart calm as he remembered what was coming next in his own pursuit of happiness outside the trials.

  Promethia did say if I continue to practice the breathing technique that she taught me that I’d eventually never need to sleep again… I wonder how much longer I will need to practice to achieve that? Oh well, I’ll just add that to my list, thought Arson, pushing aside his stressful dreams and his want to escape his near nightly terrors, instead thinking of the exciting day ahead of him.

  “What are you smiling for, goofy, you proud of yourself for this little stunt?” asked Anastasia.

  “Shut up, no, just excited for today’s practice heist.”

  “What, you idiots were serious about that? I thought you all were just discussing that as a way to get out of training,” said Anastasia with a laugh.

  “As much as relaxing with my friends is, I think you know me by now, not going to waste time talking about something I’m not going to actually pursue.”

  “Yeah yea yeah, whatever.”

  Arson rose, getting out of bed and storing the scythe that he hadn’t even noticed he’d summoned, when a question rose to the surface of his mind now that he was alone and could ask Anastasia without his friends around.

  “Hey Anna, did you notice anything odd about my training session before the others arrived?”

  “Other than the ungodly amount of mana in the room and the strange portal energy all around you, no why?”

  Wait what…? The words struck Arson completely off guard. He hadn’t noticed anything abnormal.

  Was I really that focused? Or was I distracted maybe? I can’t even tell anymore.

  “Strange portal energy, don’t you think that is something you should have mentioned sooner?”

  “What, you aren’t serious, are you? You must be kidding me, kid. I’d have to ring the alarms every other moment if you wanted me to alert you to the strange energies around you at any given moment.”

  Arson rolled his eyes, sucking his teeth in annoyance as he checked the time and walked into the hallway, doing his best not to read the nameplate above his doorway that read, Reaper, before he stepped out of the room.

  Guess I’ll have to do more research myself.

  He was hoping that Anastasia would have been able to scan whatever it was that attacked him, letting him know if it resonated with his own soul and mana. At least then he would know if it was potentially a rogue Gestalt form, or another sort of anomaly.

  “If it happens again, will you—“

  “I got you, kid. I thought it was strange too, they were just too fast for me to scan quickly enough to get a direct signature at what they were, but now that I know what I’m looking for, I’ll watch out.”

  Arson nodded, uncaring that she’d cut him off as she knew what he needed and had already had plans to take care of matters in that regard.

  He pushed the slight worries to the back of his mind. The task made easy. All it took, the sight of his friends’ portraits placed outside the rooms they’d decided to occupy in the hotel they used as a base.

  First came Khalif’s. His silver haired friend sat in a throne made up of purest darkness. At first, the entire image seemed to be just of his friend and the throne set in front of a purely black background. However the longer that Arson looked over the image, the more that stood out and became apparent. Numerous details and factors were hidden, their outlines only standing out when using an immense amount of focus to discern their locations.

  There is an entire bloody empire behind him…

  Arson was forced to take a step back to see the entirety of the kingdom’s magnitude being displayed behind Khalif.

  Hmm, I wonder if anyone else noticed this?

  Arson moved on, once again stopping at Xani’s photo. The image of his oldest friend in a crown made of solidified atmosphere brought a smile to his face.

  The rigidity of the crown made out of clouds, made Xani’s rarely seen smile stand out that much more brilliantly. The Cultivator’s body was seemingly naked, her modesty covered only by the clouds she swam through. A kingdom in the clouds only comparable to that of Olympus below her as she aerially backstroked.

  I know she is quite bent about this one.

  Xani had often gotten in trouble for three things as a child. One, dismantling devises small and large. Two flying through the skies for expanses of time that left much of the orphanage wondering if she was dead or alive. While the last issue was a result of her want to experience life without clothing, of any kind.

  Her affinity for the air was far more powerful when her every pore was exposed, making the wearing of clothing literally diminish her power. It took Almarine receiving many a fine for Xani being seen flying above Maelstrom without clothing for the problem to become large enough for Xani to care to change.

  Not that she wears much clothing now…

  Arson continued on to see Micro’s portrait. The image there was dazzling. It showed the Cultivator stepping out of an armor suit made up of void infused nano bots. The winking woman reminded him of his mother as the nano bots exposed tattooed skin, peeling back section by section as she seemed to step free of a single piece of equipment, rather than a normal armor suit composed of many parts.

  Those swords though.

  Arson shook his head, smirking at the twin swords Micro held before he stepped away.

  The twin hook blades were yet another reminder of one of his three visits to Atlantis. The first he’d spent alone, but by the time the trials of Endless sent him back, Atlantis had been repositioned above sea level, and the Pocket Apartment Gang had also accompanied him, which made him believe that maybe the advanced society of Cultivation gods had also had an impact on Micro as much as they had on himself.

  Almost makes me hope these portraits are our futures, thought Arson, strolling toward the elevator.

  He tried not to be bothered by the strangeness of the portraits and the landscapes shown outside each of their rooms, but couldn’t help it. Especially as he glanced at Rob’s portrait before stepping onto the opening elevator.

  Rob stood atop a lake or ocean. A far more advanced water breather on his face than the one he currently sported. His eyes seemed to stare back at Arson with expectation.

  Rob’s entire body in the portrait consisted of what seemed to be rippling water, which hinted to a destiny or even alluded to a future of Cultivation for his friend. However Arson was slightly bothered by his friend whom wished to be nothing more than a chef, standing backed by a massive limb.

  If this is your future buddy, what could happen to change you so drastically, thought Arson, staring at the only portrait that truly bothered him beside his own.

  An arm made from volatile geysers stretched from the body of water at Rob’s feet, and parted a tidal wave that threatened to slam down over him.

  If that guy really is Rob, and he still treasures the culinary arts, I bet he can make foods that I can only imagine, thought Arson, once more shaking his head to himself as the elevator doors closed.

  “Here goes nothing…!