That was a close call." Luke wiped the sweat off his forehead and crouched behind a decomposing log with the others, a fair distance from the snake. Luckily for them, it hadn't pursued them after striking. Allowing the party of four to retreat to a safe distance.
"I think we should kill it. If I'm right, that's a black-scaled king viper. The society buys them for a lot, and they're not supposed to be all that strong. Just incredibly rare," said Mykonos, rubbing his hands together greedily.
"Are you sure? It looks pretty dangerous … and angry, for that matter." Luke eyed the snake carefully, on guard for a surprise attack now that he knew the snake was there.
"It's fine if you don't get hit," Mykonos argued.
"How many merits are we talking about here?" June turned to Mykonos.
"A hundred and fifty merits for every vial of the venom, another hundred for each fang, and twenty per square foot of its skin. I can't remember the price for its organs, but it's not low."
"I'm in!" Spiros raised his hand. "A little risk to not come out here every day is worth it. I've already had enough mosquitoes bite me for a lifetime."
"June?"
"I don't know, Myko. How many talismans did you bring, and are they enough?"
"Five."
"I have three," said Spiros.
"I have five, too."
"Talismans?" Luke asked.
"Right, you're new. Uh, they're basically these slips of paper that explode. Inner Disciples make and sell them for two merits each." Mykonos reached into his pocket and pulled out a small slip of paper with some squiggly lines drawn on it.
"Is thirteen enough to kill that thing, though?" June asked, reaching into her pocket and pulling her own out.
"More than enough."
"If we try, and it doesn't die, I lose at most ten merits. If it does, I make hundreds. If it gets angry, I think we can run away from it, too. Yeah, I'm in." June nodded, satisfied with her assessment.
Mykonos smiled and looked at Luke. "Here." He held out two of his talismans and looked expectantly at June. With clear reluctance, she extended one of her talismans to him, too.
"I, ahh …"
"Here's what I'm thinking," said Mykonos, cutting Luke off and taking the tag out of June's hand and forcefully stuffing all three of them into Luke's. "We only really have one shot at killing it. We can't take turns tossing the talismans at the thing. A single nonlethal explosion will spook it, and I really don't want to find out how fast it can move, whether that's in our direction or away from us. I say we circle it and throw them all at once. Four explosions going off in its face should do the job quite well. Like I said, those things are rare, but they don't get too strong. The bestiary said that they concentrate most of their mana in their fangs, leaving the rest of the body fairly weak."
"Sounds good to me." Spiros slapped Mykonos on the back.
"Are you guys sure you want me to participate? You don't have to include me just because I tagged along."
"Luke, Luke, Luke," said Spiros, putting a hand on Luke's shoulder. "Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure killing the snake isn't the hard part. We're spending some easily earned merits and throwing them accurately at a very large snake's equally large face. The hard part is dragging it back to the society. Look how big it is. Do you think me and Myko are strong enough to pull it off?"
"Hey! I'd help pull it, too" June complained.
"Hmm." Both Mykonos and Spiros grunted half-heartedly.
"I hate you guys." She crossed her arms.
"Anyway," Mykonos added, "Spiros is right. We walked for two hours to get here, and dragging the snake out of the forest will be a lot easier if we have you helping us."
"All right, then. If all of you are okay with it. How do we use these, though?" Luke inspected the talisman.
"Super easy. All you do is rip this little bit off"—Spiros pointed to a perforated tab on the bottom of the paper—"and you throw it. It blows after five seconds, so make sure it's a few feet from you at the least. We should probably tie them to rocks or something, though."
This world is insane. They just sell the equivalent of grenades to teenagers in exchange for some cheap labor.
"Right, seems simple enough," Luke responded a moment later, looking at the innocent piece of paper with apprehension and a little bit of doubt. Exploding papers were an entirely foreign concept. At the same time, though, the idea that gods just walked around, actually blew people out of the sky, and that the Olympians were hunting him was equally strange. His standard for what was and wasn't possible had shattered quite a long time ago. Exploding paper was probably one of the tamer things he was going to have to get used to.
Doing his best to move quietly, even though he was fairly certain that snakes primarily perceived the world through their tongues, he got into position. After some planning, they had decided on a horseshoe-shaped formation encircling the snake's head. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out three rocks, the exploding talisman already attached to them with strips of cloth liberated from his robes.
The plan itself was simple: he and Spiros would aim for the snake's left eye, while June and Mykonos would aim for the right. June would give the signal.
"Now!" he heard her yell, and he instantly tore the perforated edge off the talisman and took aim, already counting down the seconds it would take to explode.
… and one!
He flung the rock at the snake, synchronizing near perfectly with the others. Time seemed to slow as he watched with bated breath. The rock sailed through the air—and into the snake's nostril.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. The talismans detonated in quick succession, spewing smoke and small bits of rock and chunks of snake flesh into the air. When the dust cleared, it revealed a brutal and bloody scene.
The snake, mutilated and in pain, was thrashing in the clearing. Its right eye was in tatters, and blood oozed out from the socket. Either June or Mykonos had aimed their attack perfectly. Its nose had likewise been blown to pieces, from where Luke's talisman had entered the cavity, and it had chunks of flesh missing from where the other two paper explosives had struck it along its body, leaving gaping and messy holes on its scaly body.
"Another round?" Spiros shouted.
"No! Let it bleed for a minute. It won't survive those injuries for long. We'll pelt it again if it runs, but let's try not to damage it too much," June shouted back.
After five minutes of watching the snake writhe in pain, Luke was tempted to hit it with another set of talismans just to put the creature out of its misery. Looking at the expressions on the others' faces, he assumed they were, too. Except none of them wanted to damage the snake further and, in the process, devalue it. They, after all, had decided to kill the creature for money. Damaging it more than what was necessary ran counter to the goal.
"Let's just hit it with another one," Spiros broke in, having seen enough of its suffering.
"We can't. It's still moving around too much. If we hit it in the wrong place, the whole thing may as well become worthless. At that point, we would just be killing it for no reason at all," Mykonos said quietly, mirroring Luke's own thoughts on the matter.
"Fine." He turned around and sat behind a tree, facing a direction where he couldn't see the snake.
Ten torturously long minutes after they had launched their attack, the snake finally went limp.
"This is going to be a pain to drag back to the society." June idly ran her hands along the snake's scales. Grimacing as she got some blood on her hand, she pulled out a napkin and wiped it off. "Should we leave it here and put in a request for a mission to move it back to the town?"
"No." Mykonos shook his head. "If we do that, we'll have to leave it here overnight. Scavengers will eat parts of it, and its mana will have evaporated. It'll be worthless by tomorrow."
"Fine. I'll grab the flowers, and you guys can figure out how to move this thing. Luke, your mission was for ten of them as well, right?" she asked sweetly.
"Uh, yeah. It was, thanks."
"Don't thank her!" Spiros raised his hands in protest. "I told you she wouldn't help drag it back."
"You knew I wouldn't anyway," June snapped back while picking up the flowers.
"That's not what you said before." Mykonos looked at her disapprovingly.
"Fine! I'll help you drag the stupid snake back. I swear to the deities, you two are so annoying."
Luke smiled at their banter while simultaneously feeling like he was intruding. Shaking his head, he paced around the snake, trying to figure out how exactly they were going to drag the behemoth back. He had grown stronger, a lot stronger than should have been possible in the scant few days he'd been here, but not strong enough to drag that thing back. Thankfully, he wasn't alone.
"I vote that we drag it from the tail," Luke suggested, looking at the mutilated head. While mostly intact, it was covered in the creature's blood. Not something that Luke wanted on his body. Or something that he wanted to look at for any length of time. Honestly, he was surprised that he hadn't thrown up.
"Smart. Let's get to it," Mykonos agreed. "Hopefully we get back before night falls."
Luke, along with the others, dragged the carcass through the forest. Sweat dripped down their faces and covered their backs. The hike into the forest had been pleasant. The trek out, not so much. Luke's feet constantly dug into the ground as he was repeatedly forced to step into mud and softer dirt, something he normally would have avoided. With the snake, however, watching where he stepped was an exercise in futility.
This is torture.
"How much longer?" June whined for the umpteenth time. Something that Luke could sympathize with, considering they had been dragging the snake for three hours already.
"June. You're my sister and I love you, but shut up!" Spiros snapped at her.
"What he said," Mykonos parroted, exhausted from the arduous task and in no mood to hear any complaints.
Luke shook his head in amusement, the only one in their impromptu group in a pleasant mood.
As hard as this is, I better get some nice stat points out of this.
The trek, in addition to being uncomfortable, had also been longer than any of them had expected. It would have been even longer if Spiros hadn't surprised Luke with how freakishly strong he was.
Luke estimated that Spiros alone was carrying forty percent of the creature's weight. Apparently he had taken the midstage trials and come out just a little short of qualifying. Luke was curious to know how he had achieved that feat, especially as he had joined the society at the same time as his cousin and sister.
From what Luke had seen of Mykonos and June, while they were both in exceptional shape from their time in the society, they weren't quite what Luke would call ridiculous in terms of strength and were just a little stronger than him—albeit in slightly different ways. Mykonos was durable, while June moved with uncanny grace. Spiros, on the other hand, had clearly stepped into the realm of superhumans, at least by Earth standards. The fact that he was still considered to be a lower-stage mortal on Theos was telling of how powerful actual midstage and beyond individuals were. Especially the beyond. Luke suppressed a shudder, recalling Aeolus's abduction and cannibalization of the souls. An event that he suspected would keep him awake at night if he ever stopped pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion.
An hour later, they finally breached the tree line. What came into view horrified them all and sent currents of fear down Luke's spine.
Flying in the air above the Luminous Sky City was Arke. The nine suns of Theos beautifully descending below the horizon in a line behind her, she sat imperiously on a throne made of light. Her wings folded behind her back, and her white hair fluttered gracefully in the wind. Nine humans, presumably the society's nine warriors, prostrated themselves before her midair, not daring to lift their heads in her presence.
Fuck me. I'm dead, aren't I?
"Kneel!" Spiros barked, dropping face-first into the dirt, quickly followed by the other two.
Threat detected.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Thanks for the warning.