His Return

3. The First Crack

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁

Sweat beaded down his face as he slashed and hacked at every skeleton within his reach, his hair plastered over his forehead almost completely covering his eyes.

"More!" He yelled into the crowd.

Hands of dead beings clawed out of the ground before completely digging themselves out and lunging their boney bodies at him.

Both his hands occupied a sword. Beautiful and Breathtaking Identical Stygian Iron blades. Forged with the fires of Hephaestus, Hammered, Grinded and Designed in the forges of Damasen. Hardened in the Phlegethon River. Tempered and cooled in the Styx. Tested on the bodies of rebellious monsters in Tartarus. Truly, they were the perfect blades. Unbreakable and Deadly to all.

For the past year, aside from slaughtering any monster that crossed his way, all Perseus had done was train. Whether physical or power. He vowed to himself ever since he entered this wretched pit to make himself better than he was the last day.

With every day that passed, the stain of Tartarus made itself more visible on Perseus in the form of a tattoo. A marking of all the evils that laid inside the pit adorning itself upon his body.
It was a detailed representation of the darkness that had consumed him for so long, starting as a single dot and evolving into what was now the mesmerizing image of a large, pitch black serpent, boldly embedding itself on the left side of his torso. It began at the base of his waist and ended at his left pectoral. Perseus tried at all costs to ignore the mark but it proved to be pointless. Instead, he learned to embrace it, using the dark power the tattoo emitted as a blessing.

Over time, Perseus had managed to master every ability that was handed down to him by the three gods. It took an unmeasurable amount of time and dedication; pain and focus being vital factors in his progression but he expected this. Nothing ever came easily to him and it wasn't going to start now.

As time went by, he couldn't help but notice that monster attacks had lessened, and it didn't take long for him to figure out the reason. He'd been branded a cold blooded killer— a title that he'd gladly taken upon him, but though he loved being the man whose name struck fear into their hearts, he missed the constant failed attempts on his life that he'd grown used to.

Now he was stuck with skeletons whose moves never changed. Their attacks remained the same and eventually it became underwhelming and repetitive.

It was no longer exciting to fight them because he was so accustomed to it that everything they did was predictable.

•••

Couple of hours later

Perseus had been tending to the rack of drying plants for so long that it'd become second nature. Injury was no stranger to him inside of this hellhole, so he made it a top priority to keep the herbs living, just in case he ran into a situation that he couldn't heal himself from on his own. Gorgon's blood for example.

He grew quite tired of this place. The routine was the same almost every day. He longed for a real challenge. Not a random monster, not an army of dead beings, but a real opponent. He wanted to know how far all of his immense training had taken him.

Having finished with the plants, he summoned some food and fresh clothes. Thank Hestia that her power had no limits to distance, because if there had, he would have been definitely and completely fucked. He made his way to the fire that blazed in the center of the room, food in hands, and scraped off a portion into the fire.