[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 40: Extinguished part 1

I was in trouble.

The Goliath's fist came down on the water like the hammer of a god and I only just barely pushed myself out of the way, hurling myself through the water as fast as I could. Reacting as best I could without slowing down, I curved myself up around the limb, Riptide tracing a swallow line around his arm as I rose. The wound closed almost as fast as I could make it, but I had no time to think about that as I felt power gather and threw my hand up in response. I exploded from the water's surface just as the blast hit, bursting against the surface and sending what would have been an agonizing wave through the water. The Goliath's beady eyes rose to track me, growing as used to this routine as I was, and he swung an arm thicker than a tree at me with absurd speed for something that size, aiming to swat me like a fly.

And like a fly, I changed directions in midair, just barely avoiding the blow again and nearly getting thrown out of control in the process. The water I'd willed to stick to my skin was pressing against me hard enough to hurt as I guided myself through the air in a process that was maybe a quarter flight and three-fourth somewhat controlled falling. I willed myself down and out of the way of the Goliath's strikes, falling quickly towards the relative safety of the water, which I willed to flood over its banks and lash out at the Goliath, trying to drag it further into the water.

Going on the defensive, the Goliath plant its feet and refused to be moved, massively stronger than even its size implied. I took the opportunity to get closer beneath the surface and took a strong swing at its toes, hoping to cut a couple off again, but this time I caught bone and was forced to withdraw quickly to avoid a hit. A moment later, another fist came down on the water and the process repeated along the same lines.

Have you ever fought one of those ridiculous bosses in video games with an absurd amount of health, to the point that even your best attacks seem to accomplish nothing? That was my life right now. My original plan of hitting the Goliath really hard hadn't worked. My back up plan of hitting the Goliath even harder hadn't worked. I'd thrown everything I had at the thing and knocked it down some, but however hard I hammered it, it just seemed to get back up. I'd smashed the Goliath into the ground with wave after wave until I'd almost collapsed and he'd just gotten back up.

I'd realized then that if I wanted to take this thing down, I couldn't do it all at once with giant attacks, simply because I'd kill myself trying and—perhaps even worse—it probably wouldn't work. So after I'd nearly run out of power, I'd withdrawn closer to the cliff, putting as much space between the Goliath and myself as I possibly could and buying time to regain enough of my own power to hit it some more. Kind of a wimpy strategy? Maybe. But it was the type of thing that had helped me beat a few video games and if the Goliath was going to act like a needlessly difficult boss monster, I'd treat it as such and wear it down. I'd never really cared too much about fighting honorably when death was on the line, anyway. I was like a Sicilian that way.

Except it hadn't worked out quite as well as I'd planned. When I'd resorted to cheap strategies, so had it and it had attacked the water with its breath weapon again, which was when I'd had my first sort of good idea and realized that the blast wasn't hurting me, but the shockwave the blast sent through the water. If I timed it right, I could separate myself from the water itself in time and avoid it entirely, because the shockwave wouldn't be able to reach me.

Of course, if I timed it wrong, I'd probably die. Which was why I'd figured out the water gliding thing, more or less. I had about zero faith in my ability to fly in any meaningful sense, but as long as I had the safety net of the water beneath me, it was fine if I tripped up an accidently fell fifty feet or moved the wrong way or crashed. Which I did. A lot.

Put together, those two things let me stay ahead of the Goliath's blast trick, for the most part. It would shoot the water and I'd flee into the air, maneuvering myself if I was a bit off. Technically, it was less 'flight' and more 'pushing the water I was holding myself with', but I managed to figure out how to sort of double jump or dash in midair. Mario made it look easier than it actually was, though, because it turns out that when you mistime a jump or put too much force into a dodge and slam head first into a rock, coins don't come out. Blood does.

While I was figuring out how to become the protagonist of a platform-shooter, however, the Goliath was figuring out how to be the boss of one. Avoiding his roar was the hard part, because it was like a cone, spreading out from its source—a fact I'd nearly learned the hard way when it attacked the water to force me into the air and nearly splattered me across the cliffs with the revolutionary discovery of 'shooting twice'. Even with my newfound mobility, I hadn't been able to dodge completely and the blast had nearly killed me.

The fact of the matter was, it was safer up close, simply because the blast was smaller up close and because the unfortunate truth of combat—and sort of the point of bows and guns, I guess—is that if you can hit your opponent and your opponent can't hit you, then you pretty much win. What had begun as an attempt to rest and regain my strength had quickly devolved into a mad scramble of exchanges I'd steady come out behind on. If I just stood around waiting and let it attack, it would just keep hitting my until I died, so I couldn't just play defense. I couldn't even outlast it, because whenever I thought the Goliath might be about to hesitate and take a breather, it simply cheated and scooped up one of the monsters nearby, fallen or otherwise. I had to harry it at least a little so it didn't go completely on the offensive and all of that meant getting closer.

Of course, doing that had its own risks—namely, the Goliath could hit me with everything else it had. It became a constant series of near-misses, of hastily evaded punches, barely avoid breath attacks, and attempts to hurt it back whenever I had the chance while gathering enough power for attacks large enough to actually do something.

It kicked and punched at me and I avoided it by swimming fast enough to pop a normal human's body, moving with the water as it was displaced to carry myself away. It attacked the water and I took to the air, guiding myself clumsily around its attacks as I made it back to the water. Sometimes, if I had to, I'd stand on the water's surface to give it a better target, lure it somewhere, and distract it—and then I'd hit it with a hundred foot tall wave, one that was two hundred feet tall, or something even greater when I thought I could handle it; something large enough to pick the Goliath up, send it's entire weight crashing head over heels, and pummel it's flesh. I'd break bones, sometimes, maybe even crush parts of its skull, tearing and bloodying it's flesh in the process.

And it just got back up.

...Was this what fighting me was like? Fighting an opponent that healed from anything that came it's way, regained its strength whenever it should have been getting tired, and just kept fighting and pulling out tricks instead of just going down?

If so, I was kind of an asshole when I wasn't me. I wasn't even sure how long I'd been fighting now, but I was getting sick and tired of it—this was a ridiculous battle and it was becoming increasingly obvious I couldn't win it. A part of me just wanted to up and leave, to escape back to Rivira, get Welf, and try and go.

Except here's the thing—I was starting to think Welf might have had a point. When I thought of leaving, tempting as it was, I began to doubt myself. What would happen if I left this thing here? If I just ran away and someone else found it? Logically, I knew that adventurers had to be prepared for what might happen in the Dungeon, but this wasn't just a random problem; this had all started because of me. And while plenty of people had faced Goliath's before, seeing as it was a creature that respawned every couple of weeks, this was hardly a normal example of the species, not unless Eina had messed up it's description and forgotten to mention it's absurd regeneration.

Could I just run away, brush this off as something that wasn't my problem and leave it to someone else in the hopes that they would deal with it, knowing they might die if they couldn't?

Or was Welf right? Were these noble excuses I was making to myself just because I didn't want to leave? Did I actually want to charge into danger, to—

I was tired and letting my thoughts wander and my distraction cost me. What should have been a routine dodge was a bit too slow, a bit off, and the Goliath hit me hard enough that I flew from the water all the way to Rivira, six hundred feet above it, and only the water I'd managed to surround and protect myself with at the last moment kept me alive. It did not, however, keep me from crashing into a house, through it, across the street, and into someone's shop.

Damn. Not only did that thing have a throwing arm, but it could kick. I'd have made a bad joke about the New York Giants, but I was honestly struggling to remember what sport they played.

"Damn," I swore, partially because of the pain and mostly because I'd let myself be hit. Welf's words kept coming back to me now, making me worry and wonder and doubt, and I didn't need that right now. I needed to focus and fight, no matter what, same as I always did.

Because that worked out so great in Manhattan, I couldn't help but think and it hurt. Enough that I nearly decided I was an asshole even when I was me.

I shook the thoughts away and struggled to rise, not hurt too badly, considering. The bigger concern was my headspace right now, because I wasn't in a good one, probably because it had been a long...day. Sure, let's go with that.

Should I use the last of my Nectar? It was tempting but...no, I couldn't risk it. Handy cure-all it may seem, but even a bit too much and it'd kill me as fast as the Goliath would, if not faster, and I was still feeling too warm. A potion then, maybe, or something like it. I should be able to find one in a place like this, right? It was an adventurer town.

In fact, as I stood up and staggered out of ruined building I'd been tossed through, I had a chance to look around. The entire town of Rivira, stripped almost but not entirely bare...it made me think of Manhattan, when it was bound in a magical sleep and I'd fought to protect Mt. Olympus. There'd been giants then, too, among other things, but I hadn't been alone at the time. I'd had people setting traps and making plans, making machines and turning streets into jungles. I'd had my friends and Annabeth and...

What would you do if you were here, I wondered, because my brain was being a dick to me today.

But when I thought of an answer, my shoulders sagged and I gave a tiny, hollow laugh.

"Sure," I said to myself. "Why not?"