Atlas' eyes widened, and he frantically scrambled to leave the area. The moment Apollo said the number 10, the strange red arrow flamed up at the tip. It was a burning red flame, not like the usual orange or blue.
The teen continued dashing forward as he saw the flame zigzagging through the trees, trying to avoid the arrow that would soon come. He knew that would hardly help when dealing with the God of Archery, but it was still better to try while he could.
The god's counting was loud and clear despite the enormous gap between them. That fact put Atlas on even more alert.
"5, 4, 3, 2…"
He rapidly climbed a tree and watched as the god counted the last number and released the bow from the invisible string.
'Holy…'
With fire at its tip, the flaming arrow burnt everything in its path. It just went straight through them, whether tree or stone, incinerating it all. Atlas cursed inwardly and began circulating the Divine Energy in advance.
Very soon, the arrow reached the large, tall tree he was on and paused midair for a while, causing the flame to dwindle. However, when it started moving again, the flame had increased to even new heights, spreading to become the size of a large ball.
It tilted up a few angles, directly aiming at Atlas, who had barely enough time to react to its sudden defiance of physics.
The only thing he could do was move the energy through his body equally. Although that plan clearly backfired.
As soon as the arrow touched him, the white shirt he was wearing burned and left no traces behind, and the skin fearfully close to his heart was almost burned to the barest tissue.
He clenched his chest in deep pain as he tumbled down from the tall tree. Sounds of bone cracking echoed throughout the once silent forest and a small yell of anguish followed after.
Apollo watched amusedly and walked towards him slowly. It took him at least five minutes to get extremely close to Atlas, and by that time, the teen was close to fainting.
"Take this as your first lesson. You should never do that when you know where the attack is aiming for. Some might take what I'm saying as rubbish, but as long as there is a direct path being paved by an attack, then you should always seek to protect the targeted area first!"
The god dropped the arrow and brought out a tiny bottle. He opened it and the medicinal scent of various herbs wafted through the air in large quantities.
He dipped his fingers into the bottle and brought them out after a god second of soaking, then placed it over Atlas' burned chest.
"Water from the Spring of Healing." As he said that, a small drop floated down rapidly and crashed into his chest.
It was almost as if a company of small doctors resided inside the water itself. In the span of a few milliseconds, Atlas' body healed rapidly, clearing the burn marks until there was nothing but a few white marks on his light brown skin.
The titan got up, groaning and staring at the god with even more hatred than before.
"That was an asshole move, you know?"
Apollo merely shrugged, smirking. "What could I do? You were trying to run away. This is resistance training, not an evasion one. So from the top, and this time, you don't move."
Atlas; face turned ugly, as Apollo said. It was the worst form of torture for someone like him who was used to thinking while fighting and in fast-paced battles. Now, he could still think, but most solutions that involved dodging were instantly unavailable.
Soon enough, Apollo gave Atlas somewhere to stand. The instructions were simple.
"Don't dodge. Figure out the correct ways to resist elemental attacks. Warning time of ten seconds." Those were Apollo's literal words with no additions or removals at all.
The teen wasn't happy with this, clear from the grimace he wore on his face.
"Alright, I'm going to count now!" Apollo yelled out, from where he stood to the relatively close direction that the teen stood.
He pulled out an arrow from his quiver and lodged it into the invisible string of his golden bow. This arrow was quite different from the first one. Instead of a hot red colour, the arrow Apollo was now using was blue.
'Blue is water, isn't it? That can't hurt me, but I have to take extra precautions,' Atlas thought, running the energy through his body.
A second later, as he expected, the familiar sound of flowing water emerged from the arrow and a small stream of water curled around the arrow like a snake.
'Since it's water, it means it will flow unnaturally like fire and, following what he said before, it means I don't know where the attack will hit my body. So from that, I need to spread the energy equally again!'
He distributed the energy in equal portions just as the arrow left its string and, as he expected, the strange projectile weaved through the spaces in between trees and dodged objects in a lifelike manner as it headed for Atlas.
On the last stretch of the attack, the arrow suddenly seemed to have lost all the 'life' it had before. Crackling noises emerged, and the arrow turned into a frightening pale white colour. All Atlas' senses were telling him to escape. However, that was against the rules of the game.
And so, he stood there waiting for potential death to come.
The icy arrow hit him in the thigh, providing a familiar sensation of freezing warmth. Apollo reached his side in an instant, staring down at him with a little smile on his face.
"You did better that time, but not good enough. You need to think on a deeper level. How could you forget that ice is derived from water?!"
He healed Atlas again and hours passed as they followed the same cycle with very few switch-ups.
By the time they finished for the day, he had five head wounds, fifteen chest wounds and over fifty on the rest of his body.
****
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