Apparently being struck by lightning two times in a row was where the beast drew the line, so he stopped pursuing Artemis and retraced its steps back toward me, trying to trap me between his different heads. This proved to be much easier than I’d hoped, especially since many of his necks were ridiculously long and able to stretch around me easily. In a matter of a few seconds—during which I slashed and pierced any head that dared come close to me—I had at least a dozen of heads snapping and taking chunks out of me from all sides.
Using all of my attack skills, I landed some good hits on a few of them, even managing to stun a couple, but ultimately wasn’t able to keep up with them. All that I could see was a cloud of dragon eyes and fangs.
“I can’t reach you to heal you,” Aphrodite said in the guild chat. “You need to get out of there.”
I was never normally one to feel fear, no matter the situation I was in. But this was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I was fighting a losing battle and I knew that beyond any shadow of doubt. I slashed the head in front of me only to have another take a bite of my heel or my thigh. He was killing me with dozens of small bites.
I bashed one of the heads with the side of my spear, pushing it down just enough for me to step on it. It reflexively snapped back up, sending me flying toward the top of the mass of heads as my HP was reaching less than ten percent. But using my skill to heal myself back to full health wouldn’t change anything. The monster would just continue striking at me until I really was dead.
I wanted to put on a show for my final moments of fighting and what better way to do this than with a gesture of brave defiance, namely launching myself at the base of all of its necks and trying to make a tide-turning wound there. There was no way Typhon was going to let me do that, of course. Especially not now that he had me surrounded on all sides, and the attacks just kept on coming.
I let out one last scream and watched my HP bar reach zero as I succumbed to my wounds. Even though I felt my body give up and stop moving, I was somehow still aware of what was happening. I was now looking at my body from the outside, seeing how the dragon’s heads—having made sure I was dead—now turned their attention toward Aphrodite instead. The heads that had been observing the battlefield had probably seen her heal me and suspected that she might be able to resurrect me so it made sense to attack her right after, even though Artemis was doing her best to infuriate the dragon with her constant volley of arrows.
I couldn’t imagine what they must be feeling now. They were powerful goddesses, but we’d just lost a third of our strength against a beast I’d brought on us through my defiance of my father. I knew that neither of them would consider defeat to be an option, and they both continued to fight bravely, but I had no doubt some panic was probably starting to set in. But then again, they didn’t know what I did.
When all of Typhon’s heads had turned away from me, I suddenly felt the sweet taste of ambrosia flood my mind and saw my body surrounded by a faint golden glow. Luckily, the glow wasn’t bright enough to attract the dragon’s attention back to me before my presence was pulled back into my own body.
I opened my eyes. My HP and MP bar were both completely full, though all my buffs had disappeared. I hadn’t really expected them to stick around after I’d died though, and I was mainly just happy to see my plan had worked.
The dragon had turned its attention away from me and I was at full health again while he was definitely starting to look quite rough. I received a few messages from the guild chat that were probably sent while I was down as a crept toward him.
“No, he’s down!” Aphrodite cried.
“You need to go around and raise him again,” Artemis responded. “I’ll pull the beast away.”
“It’s coming this way,” Aphrodite said in a hurried voice.
“Wait... You’re up again?” Artemis asked. “How did you resurrect yourself?”
“I’ll explain later,” I replied. “Protect Aphrodite and I’ll try to attack from behind.”
“It won’t work, just like it didn’t work before.” Aphrodite sounded frustrated though I could tell she was relieved to hear I was alive. “What are you going to do now to damage him, since the coils won’t work anymore?”
The answer to her question came in the form of a level-up notification.
* * *
You have gained a Divinity Level. Congratulations, your Divinity Level has increased to 7.
* * *
Divinity Level: 7 (Minimum 2)
Followers: 25,001 / 30,000
Divinity Points: 7/7
* * *
The good thing about the way the Dark Energy communicated and spread information was that the moment we were exposed to it, we instantly absorbed it and comprehended it. Which meant I was able to pull up the next flashing notification before I’d even had the chance to blink once.
* * *
You have unlocked 1 divine skill.
* * *
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
One new skill normally wouldn’t make such a big difference but when it came to divine skills—those that were meant to alter the world and those who inhabited it—one more skill might be all I needed. And as I looked at it, it definitely seemed like just what I wanted right now.
* * *
Name: Hundred-Fold Lightning Smite
Level: 1
Type: Active - Divine
HP Consumed: 0
MP Consumed: 100
DP Consumed: 7
Power: 2600000
Range: 7000ft.
Precondition: None
Description: The divine evolution of gods is bound to their life and needs. At some point during Zeus’s life, the need for a powerful, multi-targeted smite attack was so important that it manifested itself as a divine skill. This form of the smite attack is not just one divine lightning strike divided into one hundred parts but rather one hundred individual punishments to be dealt to beings who dare defy the thunder god’s dominance.
* * *
There was something about the Dark Energy that sometimes made me think it must be sentient, and this was yet another bit of proof. I could have gotten a skill that controlled the weather on a larger scale, or any other type of skill for that matter, and yet I’d gotten this. Admittedly, a long-range teleportation skill would also have been able to save me from this situation, but I had a feeling that the Dark Energy, the force behind everything in the Apocosmos, knew more about each of us than we dared admit. It knew that I wouldn’t want to use a skill like that if it meant leaving Artemis and Aphrodite to fight this beast alone.
That’s why I’d received a skill that might never be useful in any other situation but this one, essentially burning a divine skill slot. But right now I couldn’t have cared less about the wasted potential of this level up. I kept moving forward as I felt the power invested in me by my believers barely be able to be contained within my body.
A few dozen feet away from the beast, I realized my hair was flowing upward, then my clothes, until I finally also felt my feet lift from the ground. The distance between the ground and my feet became larger while I figured out how to control what was happening. This sudden ability to fly wasn’t part of the skill but rather a side effect of the thousands of my followers, praying for their safety and for me to defeat the terrible beast that had attacked their lands. Never before had I felt the responsibility and honor of protecting mortals from danger, because I had never cared enough to protect them. This was all new to me.
Waves of satisfaction rushed over me as I was finally able to freely move through the air, the electricity surging through my body to push me wherever I wished to go. And where I wanted to go was straight to the dragon who had now cornered my two comrades, with both of their HP bars now having fallen well below half. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to contain all this divine energy in me for much longer but neither did I expect to reach the dragon unnoticed. Another advantage of having a hundred heads was that you could always spare a few to watch your back.
“I thought I’d killed you,” the king of monsters growled through one of the heads that had spotted me, while the rest continued attacking Artemis and Aphrodite behind him.
“You thought that because I wanted you to think it so,” I announced. “And now I want you dead.”
“You are arrogant just like your father!” Typhon shouted, his voice carrying through the valley and down the mountain, “but you’re not strong enough to—”
I was not going to listen to any more of the ancient beast’s ramblings. Partly because there was no reason to put myself through its attempts to intimidate me, but also because I couldn’t hold back the attack any longer. I released the first bolt onto the head that was talking to me, interrupting what it was saying by means of exploding its head, with blood and ichor flung all over the others.
Its neighboring heads shot back in surprise and pain but they only had a split second to react before more deafening strikes came from the sky above and split them open too. One after the other, the heads were destroyed, leaving in their stead the long severed necks that initially writhed in agony, catapulting spurts of blood upward into the air before falling lifeless to the ground.
In a matter of seconds, more than half of the beast’s heads had been obliterated and the top of Mount Olympus was hit by a rainstorm of blood so heavy that the battlefield was quickly becoming flooded by it. The king of monsters, however, was no ordinary unthinking beast. He knew that there was no way to beat me like this and tried to flap his giant wings to escape.
But I wasn’t going to just let him leave. I focused my attention on the head that seemed to have control of his motor skills and wiped it out of existence. At first I struggled to control the new skill so precisely and had a couple hits that were directed at the wrong head but pretty soon I had gotten the hang of it and hit the right one, bringing the dragon down before he was able to take flight again.
The screams and wails of his remaining heads made it obvious that Typhon realized his reign of terror, the millennia of destroying and breeding terrible creatures, was coming to its end. But not for a single moment did Typhon acknowledge this fact and lay down to accept his defeat and imminent demise. The king of monsters fought until the very end, snapping and biting at me for having the audacity and bravery to fight him head-on.
But it wasn’t just me who was fighting him. It was the thousands of followers who prayed to me to make the beast go away. The people who wanted me to protect them and to save them from their worst nightmare come to life, the monster the stories described as the destroyer of worlds.
I was only the tool through which their wish could be granted and I was more than happy to do so. The lighting strikes kept coming until there was only one head left in one piece, which looked up at me with eyes filled with anger and despair as other necks flailed aimlessly around it.
“You have bested me, Zeus,” the king of monsters said. “I surrender to you and promise never to hurt you or your people ever again.”
Its words rang true, but its eyes burned with uncontrollable anger. It seemed like he could barely hold himself back from snapping at me, just as I could barely hold back the last of the hundred lightning smites in me.
“You have walked these planes for far too long, Typhon,” I announced. “It is time for you to move on.”
“You do not have to end this here,” he pleaded, his voice becoming more guttural with each syllable. “I will do whatever you ask of me. I can’t kill Cronus, but I can help you kill him.”
“You are a beast of murderous intent,” I said, “in a world that is moving away from such primal instincts. You have plagued the lands with your nature and the monsters you spawned for far too long. Your end is here.”
The last remaining head launched itself at me, and I reacted just in time to smite it with the last lightning strike, sending its blood and flesh flying to cover me from head to toe in red gore. The king of monsters collapsed to the blood-soaked ground, sending splashes of his own blood at the buildings around us and bringing a large piece of the defensive wall down with it.
I barely had the chance to take a breath, much less ask the women if they were okay, before a golden notification flashed into my view along with a deafening series of trumpets.
* * *
Attention all citizens of the Greek realms. The god of thunder, Zeus, has slain the world raid boss Typhon, the king of monsters.
Zeus is now the supreme monster slayer in all the Greek Apocosmos realms.
* * *
I tried to swipe the notification away but was unable to. It just stayed there, glittering in all its golden-lettered glory.