He waited until two in the morning, when Paul's snoring came steady through the wall, and then he sat on the floor of his bedroom with his back against the bed and thought about a door.
Not a real door. The System had been very clear about that. A Gate may be summoned anywhere private. So he closed his eyes and pictured it, the way Great Sage had told him to: a frame, a handle, a threshold. Something to step through.
When he opened his eyes, it was there.
It stood in the middle of his bedroom rug, between his desk and his laundry pile, and it was made of thread. Golden thread, thousands of strands of it, woven so tight it looked solid until you got close and saw it moving, very slowly, like something breathing. Light leaked out around its edges. It hummed, low, almost below hearing, a sound like a spinning wheel in another room.
[Gate summoned.]
[Available destination: Floor 1 (Locked — First Entry).]
[Note: On first entry, the Host will be taken to the Spindle Room.]
Percy looked at the Gate for a long time.
Then he looked at his door. His real one, with the Yankees poster on it and the hook where his backpack hung. Beyond it, his mother was asleep. She had a book signing on Saturday. She'd made him pancakes that morning, blue ones, and asked him if he was okay, because he'd been quiet since the party.
I'm okay, Mom, he'd said. Just tired.
Ten percent of all injuries taken inside The Loom carry over to the Host's real body.
He'd have to be careful. Really careful. Long sleeves. Excuses.
He stood up, and put on his sneakers, and walked through.
The Spindle Room was round, and very quiet, and full of thread.
Thirteen spindles hung from the ceiling on long golden cords. Each was as tall as a man and wound thick with a different color: iron gray, deep crimson, storm blue, bone white, forest green, violet, gold, and others he didn't have names for. They turned slowly in the still air, all at slightly different speeds, and the light that came off them painted the curved stone walls in slow-moving bands of color, like sunlight through water.
In the center of the floor was a circle of pale stone. Percy stepped into it without being told.
[Welcome to The Loom.]
[Before the Host may enter the first Thread, he must take up a Class.]
[The Spindle Room will read the Host.]
The spindles stopped turning.
All thirteen of them swung toward him at once, like compass needles finding north, and he felt something brush through him. It didn't hurt. It was like someone flipping through a book very fast. He felt his body measured: fourteen years old, skinny, eight strength. Then he felt something reach deeper, past the body, past the boy, down into the sealed place where the other life lived. Down into eight years on a black beach. Into the weight of a bronze sword in a hand that wasn't this hand. Into a shield on his arm in the throne room of Olympus, the night he'd held the doors against an army.
The iron-gray spindle began to glow.
It came down out of the ceiling on its cord until it hung right in front of his face, and the thread on it was the dull, honest color of old steel.
[The Spindle Room has read the Host.]
[The Host's body is untrained. The Host's soul is not.]
[Recommended Main Class: FIGHTER.]
[FIGHTER — Masters of weapon and armor. Fighters do not cast spells. Fighters endure.]
[Grants: Stamina pool. Weapon and Armor Mastery. Second Wind. Action Surge. Combat Maneuvers.]
[Accept? YES / NO]
Percy looked at the gray thread. He thought about the bright spindles above it, the gold one and the violet one and the storm-blue one that was humming faintly, the color of a sky before lightning. Magic. Power. The kind of thing that would make sense for a son of Zeus.
But the Room hadn't offered him those. It had offered him what he'd been, all along, under the prophecies and the godly father and the curse of Achilles. A kid with a sword who didn't know how to quit.
Yes, he thought.
The gray thread unspooled from the spindle in a long, glittering line and wrapped itself around his right wrist, once, twice, three times, and sank into his skin like it had never been there.
[Main Class acquired: FIGHTER (Lv 1).]
[Note: Additional Class Slots unlock at Host Levels 20, 60, 100, 140 and 180. A Class may only be slotted if the Host has cleared its trial or found a teacher for it. Classes do not fuse.]
Against the wall, a weapon rack he hadn't noticed before lit up. On it hung three things: a short bronze-edged sword, a round wooden shield rimmed in iron, and a pair of plain cloth hand wrappings, folded neatly.
[Starting Kit:]
[Bronze-Edged Training Xiphos [Fighter] — ATK +6]
[Round Shield [Fighter] — DEF +5]
[Hand Wrappings [Monk] — sent to Locked Inventory. Requires a Monk Class Slot.]
He took the sword down off the rack.
It wasn't Riptide. It wasn't anything. It was a cheap bronze training blade, the kind the Hephaestus kids used to turn out by the dozen for new campers, with a leather grip and a nick in the edge near the hilt. But his hand closed around it, and his wrist turned it over, and his shoulder knew exactly where its weight wanted to go.
[Sealed soul records accessed. Weapon Mastery (Sword) begins at Lv 3 instead of Lv 1.]
Hello again, he thought. I missed you.
He didn't know, then, how far that plain little sword would go with him. He didn't know it would be with him on every floor, and every road, and every battlefield after that. He didn't know that one day it would carry the light of a broken king's blade, and become something that had never existed in any world.
Right then, it was just a sword. He strapped the shield to his left arm and walked toward the arch on the far side of the room, where the stone opened onto darkness and the smell of something wet.
[FLOOR 1: THE SLIME NEST]
[Rank: F]
[Enemies: Lv 1–5]
[Main Quest: Defeat the Floor Boss. (The Boss has not yet appeared.)]
[Side Quest: CLEAN BLADE — Clear the floor without letting your weapon corrode.]
[Hidden Quest: ???]
The first thing that tried to kill him was green, and the size of a beanbag chair, and it made a noise like someone sucking the last of a milkshake through a straw.
[Green Slime — Lv 1]
[HP: 30 / 30]
Percy had fought a Titan. He'd fought a primordial goddess. He looked at the wobbling green blob in the mouth of the cave and thought, very clearly, this is going to be embarrassing.
It was.
The slime hit him in the chest at about the speed of a thrown medicine ball and knocked him flat on his back in an inch of cold cave water. It was heavier than it looked. It sat on him. It began, slowly and with great enthusiasm, to try to dissolve his T-shirt.
[-6 HP]
[-6 HP]
[HP: 88 / 100]
Get off. Get OFF. He got the edge of the shield under it and heaved. It peeled off him with a wet sound. He rolled to his feet and stabbed it, and the xiphos went in with almost no resistance and came out with green goo sizzling on the blade.
[Green Slime defeated.]
[+8 EXP]
[Item Drop: Basic Gel Core x1]
He stood there in the cave, panting, dripping, his shirt smoking slightly, holding a little glowing green marble.
Level one, he thought. Level one slime.
[The Host's survival probability during that encounter was 99.6%. Great Sage notes that the Host's heart rate reached 160.]
It sat on me, Sage.
[Noted.]
He learned.
That was the thing about the Slime Nest. It wasn't hard, exactly. But it was a teacher, and it didn't care whether he liked the lessons.
He learned that Green Slimes were slow and stupid and would chase him in a straight line forever, which meant he could fight them one at a time if he backed into a narrow tunnel. He learned that Acid Slimes, the yellow-green ones that glowed faintly in the dark, ate metal. The first time he stabbed one, his blade came out pitted and smoking, and a red notice flashed in front of his eyes.
[WARNING: Weapon corrosion detected. Side Quest CLEAN BLADE at risk.]
So he learned to fight Acid Slimes with the shield, shoving them into the water to dilute them, and finishing them only with the very tip of the sword.
He learned that Splitter Slimes, the fat blue ones, divided in two if you hit them with anything blunt, and the two halves divided again, and if you panicked and started bashing them with your shield you'd end up surrounded by sixteen angry blue marbles all trying to climb up your pant legs. He learned that one the hard way, in the dark, at three in the morning. He laughed about it afterward. Mostly.
And he learned his own body.
That was the strangest part. The soul memories were there, a whole lifetime of fighting, but the body didn't have them. He knew a sword stroke should go here, and his arm was too slow, or too weak, or tired too fast. He knew how to roll out of a fall, and his knees didn't. He had to teach this body every single thing, one rep at a time, the way he'd once taught twelve-year-olds at camp.
It was humbling. Gods, it was humbling.
It was also, in a way he hadn't expected, kind of wonderful. Every time he got something right that he'd gotten wrong an hour before, he felt it. That small click. Better.
[LEVEL UP!]
[Level 1 → Level 2]
[Fighter Lv 2. +3 Free Stat Points. HP and Stamina restored.]
The first level-up hit him like stepping into a hot shower after a winter day. Every bruise faded. His lungs filled all the way. He felt, for one glorious second, like he could run a marathon.
Okay, he thought. Okay, I get it now. I get why people play video games.
[Correction: This is not a video game.]
I know, I know. Training. Not a game.
[Affirmative.]
He stayed too long the first night.
He didn't mean to. Time in The Loom was strange: one hour in his bedroom was one whole day in the caves, and without a sun it all ran together. He fought, and slept on a dry ledge, and ate the protein bars he'd stuffed in his pockets, and fought again. When he finally stumbled back through the Gate, he'd been gone five hours of real time. Five tower-days.
[WARNING: Run length exceeded 3 tower-days.]
[Status Effect: THREAD-WORN (-20% INT, -20% WIS) for 24 hours.]
He found out what that meant in third period, when Ms. Kowalski handed back a pop quiz on the Louisiana Purchase and he realized he'd written the same sentence four times. When Matt said something to him at lunch and he just stared, because the words wouldn't arrange themselves into meaning. When Nancy grabbed his arm on the way out of the cafeteria, hard, and pulled up his sleeve before he could stop her.
There was a burn on his forearm. Small. Round. The shape of an acid slime's touch, faded to a tenth of what it had been, but real.
"What is that?" she said, very quietly.
Percy looked at her. Nancy Bobofit, who'd slept in a bathtub with the door locked. Who knew exactly what it looked like when someone was hiding bruises, and exactly what kind of lies people told about them.
"It's not what you think," he said.
"That's what my mom used to say."
It hit him like a slap. He stood there in the hallway with kids flowing past them, and he thought about lying, and he thought about her face at midnight on his doorstep with a split lip.
"Nobody's hurting me, Nance," he said. "I swear. I swear on my mom. It's something I'm doing. It's hard and I'm still figuring it out and I can't explain it yet. But nobody's hurting me. Okay?"
She looked at him for a long, long time.
"When you can explain it," she said finally, "I'm the first one you tell. Before Rachel. Before Matt. Me."
"Deal."
She let go of his arm. Then she punched it, on the other side, not very hard. "Wear long sleeves, idiot."
After that, he kept his runs to two tower-days. Two hours of his night. He slept the rest, and it was enough, mostly. And he learned one more thing in the Slime Nest that had nothing to do with slimes: the people who loved him were watching. Every bruise he brought home, he'd have to answer for.
The Slime King wouldn't come out.
By the fourth night, Percy had cleared every cave on Floor 1 three times over. He'd found the deep cave with the acid pools, where the ceiling dripped and the air made his eyes water. He'd found the King's pit at the very bottom of the Nest, a great round hole in the stone sealed with a membrane of hardened green gel, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat. He'd stabbed it. He'd kicked it. He'd yelled at it.
Nothing.
[The Floor Boss of the Slime Nest spawns after 1,000 slimes have been slain.]
[Current count: 412.]
Percy sat down on the edge of the pit and put his face in his hands.
A thousand, he thought. A thousand slimes.
[Affirmative. At the Host's current kill rate, approximately 6.2 additional tower-days.]
I'm going to be dreaming about milkshake noises for the rest of my life.
[That is probable.]
So he ground.
He ground through the rest of that week, two tower-days a night, slime after slime after slime. He got faster. Better. He learned to kill Green Slimes in one thrust, and Acid Slimes in two without letting a drop touch his blade. He learned to feint a Splitter into the water, where it couldn't split, and then finish it. His Weapon Mastery climbed. His Stamina climbed. The Fighter class started giving him things.
[Fighter Lv 5: SECOND WIND unlocked. Once per rest, instantly recover 25% of max HP.]
[Fighter Lv 8: COMBAT MANEUVERS unlocked — Trip, Disarm, Riposte. Cost: Stamina.]
[Fighter Lv 10: ACTION SURGE unlocked. Once per rest, take one additional full action.]
And somewhere around kill number 850, in the outermost cave, he saw it.
A flash of gold. Small, round, about the size of a cat. A slime, but not green, not yellow, not blue. Gold, shining softly like a coin in a fountain. It was sitting at the edge of the water. When it saw him, it didn't charge. It froze. Then it turned and fled, faster than any slime he'd ever seen, bouncing off the cave walls like a pinball.
[Golden Slime detected.]
Percy chased it for an hour.
He chased it through the outer caves and the low tunnels and the acid pools. Every time he got close, it squeezed through a crack he couldn't fit through and came out somewhere else. It was ridiculous. It was undignified. He was a fourteen-year-old boy chasing a gold jelly through a cave at three in the morning, yelling come back here, I just want to talk!
And then he stopped yelling.
Because it wasn't fighting him. Every other slime on the floor threw itself at him the moment it saw him. This one ran. This one was scared.
He sat down in the middle of the tunnel, set his sword on the stone beside him, and waited.
It took twenty minutes. The Golden Slime crept back out of its crack, inch by inch, quivering. It stopped about four feet away from him. It looked, in whatever way slimes looked, at the sword on the ground.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," Percy said. "Promise. I've been killing your cousins for a week. I'm kind of over it."
The slime quivered.
Percy dug in his pocket, found the last half of a granola bar, and set it on the stone.
The Golden Slime crept forward, and engulfed the granola bar, and glowed very brightly for a second, like a lightbulb flickering on. Then it bounced, once, happily, and dissolved into a cloud of gold sparks.
[HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: The One Who Ran.]
[The Host found the Golden Slime and chose not to kill it.]
[Reward: Slime Ring (Rare) — HP Regeneration +1.]
[Reward: Summon Card: Slime (x3).]
Percy slid the little gold ring onto his finger and grinned at the empty tunnel.
Mercy gets you loot, he thought. Noted.
[Noted.]
The membrane over the pit burst at kill number one thousand, and the Slime King came up out of the dark like a wave.
[FLOOR BOSS: THE SLIME KING — Lv 15]
[HP: 900 / 900]
[Abilities: Absorb (heals by consuming smaller slimes), Royal Split (divides into four below 50% HP)]
It was the size of a minivan, and translucent green, and there were things floating inside it: rusted swords, old bones, a helmet, the dissolving shapes of everything it had ever eaten. A tiny gold crown floated in the middle of it, bobbing gently. When it moved, the whole cave shook.
Percy was Level 12.
It rolled at him, and he dove, and it went past him and hit the cave wall so hard the stone cracked. Then every slime left on the floor came pouring out of the tunnels toward it, green and yellow and blue. It rolled over them and absorbed them one after another, and every one it took in made it glow brighter, and the damage he'd done to it vanished.
[Slime King: Absorb. +60 HP.]
[Slime King: Absorb. +60 HP.]
Oh, come on.
He couldn't out-damage it while it had food. So he changed the fight.
He stopped attacking the King. He started killing the little ones, the ones streaming toward it from the tunnels, before they could reach it. Shield-bash, stab, move. He made himself a wall between the King and its dinner. When the King rolled at him he Tripped it, a low hooking sweep of his leg he'd learned on the Splitters, and it skidded and wobbled. When it lashed out a pseudopod he Riposted, and the counter-stroke bit deep.
It took twenty minutes before the tunnels stopped producing slimes. Then it was just him and the King, and he took it apart.
[Slime King HP: 450 / 900]
[ROYAL SPLIT!]
It burst into four. Four smaller kings, each the size of a car, each with a smaller copy of the crown floating inside it, coming at him from four directions.
One hit him from behind and slammed him into the wall. Another landed on him.
[-88 HP]
[-72 HP]
[HP: 41 / 260]
He was under it. Inside it, almost, green slime closing over his arms and his chest, starting to burn. He couldn't breathe.
[SECOND WIND!]
[+65 HP]
It gave him just enough strength to tear his sword arm free.
[ACTION SURGE!]
He stabbed the crown.
It was instinct, old instinct, the part of him that had once looked at a Hydra and thought don't cut the heads. The crown was the only thing in the slime that wasn't slime. So he drove the xiphos straight through the jelly and into the little floating circlet, and it cracked.
All four kings screamed, a high whistling sound like steam from a kettle. The one on top of him went soft and runny and slid off him in a wash of green goo. The other three were already flowing back toward each other, trying to merge. Percy got to his feet, coughing, dripping, and went after them one by one, aiming for the crowns.
The last one burst on the edge of the King's pit, and a small cracked gold crown clinked onto the stone at his feet.
[FLOOR BOSS DEFEATED: THE SLIME KING.]
[FLOOR 1 CLEARED. Thread tied off.]
[+1,800 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 12 → Level 13]
[LEVEL UP! Level 13 → Level 14]
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: CLEAN BLADE.]
[Reward: Weapon Mastery (Sword) +2. Blade Oil (Uncommon) x5.]
[Loot: Basic Gel Cores x214. Minor Healing Potion (tower-only) x6. Cracked Slime Crown (Rare).]
[Waypoint established: Floor 1. Floor 2 unlocked.]
Percy sat down on the edge of the pit and laughed until he was coughing again.
I did that, he thought. Me. Not a son of Poseidon. Not the hero of Olympus. A mortal kid with a training sword and a granola bar.
[Great Sage notes that the granola bar was not involved in defeating the boss.]
It was involved spiritually.
There was a pause.
[...Acknowledged. Congratulations, Host.]
It was the first time the System had ever said that. Percy didn't know yet that it would remember the moment, in its own strange way, for a very long time.
[THE MARKET is now open at the base of The Loom.]
The Market was a single wooden stall, lit by a paper lantern, standing alone in a pool of light just inside the Gate. Behind it stood the Broker.
It was tall and thin and made entirely of gray thread, wound around and around a frame in the vague shape of a person. It had arms and hands and a head, but no face, just a smooth oval of tightly wound thread. It was wearing an apron.
"SELLING?" it said. The voice came from everywhere at once, like a radio.
"Uh," said Percy. "I guess?"
He emptied his pockets onto the counter. The Broker sorted through it all in about four seconds.
"BASIC GEL CORE. COMMON. FIVE DOLLARS EACH. CRACKED SLIME CROWN. RARE. ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. TOTAL: TWO THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DOLLARS."
A card appeared on the counter, plain and black, with a little gold spindle printed on the front.
[System Debit Card issued. Balance: $2,270.00.]
[This card works anywhere in the mortal world. The mortal world will not question it.]
"Two thousand dollars," Percy said. "For slime."
"YES."
He thought about his mom's old laptop, the one with the cracked hinge and the M key that stuck, so every chapter she wrote she had to go back and fix every word with an M in it. She'd been saving for a new one for a year. She kept a jar on top of the fridge.
The next Saturday, a box showed up at the apartment with no return address. Inside was a brand-new laptop and a note in block letters: FOR THE NOVEL. FROM A FAN.
Sally cried. Paul spent a week trying to figure out who'd sent it. Percy ate his cereal and said nothing, and felt better than he had after beating the Slime King.
[FLOOR 2: THE GOBLIN WARCAMP]
[Rank: F]
[Enemies: Lv 15–25]
[Main Quest: Defeat the Orc King.]
[Side Quest: BURN THE SUPPLIES — Sabotage the camp before the final battle.]
[Hidden Quest: ???]
Floor 2 was the first floor that fought back with a brain.
He came out onto a hillside of dead grass at dusk, under a bruise-colored sky, and looked down at the war camp. A palisade of sharpened logs. A hundred tents, a hundred cook fires. Watchtowers at each corner with archers in them. In the center, a sunken pit ringed with torches, and behind it the biggest tent of all, red and black, flying a banner with a broken skull.
The drums started the moment he stepped onto the grass. They'd seen him.
The goblins didn't come at him one at a time, the way the slimes had. Scouts came first, to see what he was. Then archers, from the towers, to pin him down. Then spearmen in a line, three across, while the scouts circled behind. A shaman in a mask of bird skulls stood at the back of every group, chanting, and every time he chanted, the goblins hit harder.
[Goblin Spearman — Lv 17]
[Goblin Archer — Lv 16]
[Goblin Shaman — Lv 19 — Buffing nearby allies.]
Percy, Level 14, held them off for six minutes the first time. Then an arrow took him in the thigh and a spear took him in the side, and he ran limping back up the hill with half a war party behind him and threw himself through the Gate onto his bedroom rug at four in the morning.
They work together, he thought, lying there with his hand pressed to the long shallow scrape on his real side. I can't fight a whole army by myself.
So don't, said a voice in the back of his head. It sounded a lot like Annabeth at fourteen, leaning over a map. Don't fight the army. Fight the camp.
He went back the next night and went around the hill, through the woods on the east side, slow and quiet. He found the supply tents behind the camp, full of food and weapons and barrels that smelled like lamp oil. He lay in the bushes for a whole tower-day, learning when the guards changed shifts. On the second night, he crept in, tipped the barrels over, and lit them with a torch from the nearest cook fire.
The explosion knocked him flat.
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: BURN THE SUPPLIES.]
[The Goblin Warcamp's morale has collapsed. Enemy stats -15% for this run.]
After that, it was different. The goblins were scared and hungry and scattered, and he hunted them through the burning camp in twos and threes. He learned to kill the shamans first, always. He fought his way to the edge of the pit.
And then the Hobgoblins came out of the red tent.
[Hobgoblin Warlord — Lv 30]
[Hobgoblin Warlord — Lv 30]
They were seven feet tall, gray-green, tusked, armored in iron, and they fought as a pair, one with a flail and one with a tower shield. Percy got the flail one down to half. Then the shield one rammed him off his feet, and the flail came down on his chest.
He felt his ribs go.
[-140 HP]
[HP: 0 / 320]
[THE HOST HAS DIED.]
There was a moment of total darkness. Cold. Silence. Like falling, the way he'd fallen once, through the floor of a throne room.
Then he was on his bedroom rug, and the Gate was collapsing behind him into a pile of dull, dead thread, and he couldn't breathe.
[Ejected at 1 HP.]
[All loot from this run has been lost.]
[Floor 2 has relocked to its start.]
[The Host may not re-enter The Loom for 24 real hours.]
[10% injury carry-over applied: Fractured rib (left, 1).]
He'd died.
Not really. Not like the Pit. He was here, on his rug, breathing, every breath a knife in his side. But for one second in the dark he'd felt it, the cold and the nothing, and every cell in his body had believed it.
He curled up on his side on the floor and shook, silently, for a long time.
Training, he thought. That's what it's for. So it happens in there and not out here.
Great Sage's text hung in the air in front of him, cool and blue.
[Great Sage notes the Host's vital signs indicate acute distress.]
[Great Sage does not know how to address acute distress.]
[Great Sage will remain here.]
And it did. It hung there in the dark, a little glowing box with nothing else on it, for the whole hour it took Percy to stop shaking. He didn't know whether it was a program running or a choice it was making. He didn't care. It helped.
His mother found out at breakfast, because he couldn't lift his arm high enough to reach the cereal.
She watched him try twice and wince and give up. Then she set down her coffee, came around the table, and very gently lifted the hem of his shirt.
The bruise was the size of her hand. Purple and black, across his ribs.
Paul put his newspaper down.
"Percy," Sally said. Her voice was very calm. It was the calm that comes right before something huge, like the sea pulling back before a wave. "Who did this?"
He'd lain awake an hour preparing a lie. He looked at her face and couldn't say it.
"Nobody did it to me, Mom. I did it. I've been training. For something. It's hard to explain."
"Training for what, sweetheart? You're fourteen."
I know. That's the problem.
"I can't tell you yet," he said. "Please. I will, I swear. I'm being careful. I promise I'm being careful."
Sally looked at him for a long time, her hand still on the edge of his shirt. Then she looked at Paul, and Paul looked back, and one of those silent married-people conversations went between them that Percy couldn't read.
"Doctor," Sally said finally. "Today. And when you're ready, you tell me. All of it. Because I am your mother, and whatever this is, you are not carrying it alone. Understand?"
His eyes burned. "Yeah, Mom."
She kissed his forehead. Then, because she was Sally Jackson, she made him a fresh bowl of cereal and set it down in front of him so he wouldn't have to reach.
He went back in two days later, when his rib had healed enough to breathe through. He went back angry, and smarter, and patient.
He burned the supplies again. He killed the shamans first. He didn't fight the Hobgoblins as a pair. He waited on the hill for a whole tower-day until the flail one patrolled the western wall alone, and took it there. Then he lured the shield one into the burning supply tents, where it couldn't see past its own shield in the smoke, and took it too.
[Hobgoblin Warlord defeated. x2]
[LEVEL UP! Level 17 → Level 18]
And then he walked down into the pit.
[FLOOR BOSS: THE ORC KING — Lv 34]
[HP: 2,600 / 2,600]
[Abilities: Warhorde, Cleave, Berserk (below 30% HP)]
The Orc King was nine feet tall and broad as a doorway, with green-black skin and yellow tusks capped in gold, a cloak of wolf pelts, and a cleaver as big as a car door. The last of his army crowded the rim of the pit to watch. Torchlight. Smoke. Drums.
And at his right hand stood a woman.
She was an orc too, but leaner. Seven feet tall, head shaved, and her lower jaw wasn't a jaw at all. It was solid iron, bolted on, with tusks forged into it. A great axe was strapped across her back. She was watching Percy with sharp yellow eyes, not with hate, but with interest.
[Varka Ironjaw — Champion of the Orc King — Lv 32]
"LITTLE HUMAN," the King rumbled. "YOU BURN MY FOOD. YOU KILL MY WARLORDS. NOW YOU COME TO MY PIT. WHY?"
[Victory probability: 9%.]
Percy had spent three tower-days watching this camp from the hills. The orcs fought dirty in the field. But in the pit, at night, they settled their own disputes differently. No weapons. No help. Two fighters, bare-handed, in the ring of torches, while everyone else watched in total silence. He'd seen Varka Ironjaw win three of those fights. Nobody had interfered. Not once.
Percy unbuckled his shield and dropped it in the dirt. Then he stabbed the xiphos into the ground beside it, point first, and let go.
The crowd went dead silent.
"I challenge you," Percy said, loud and clear, "under the law of the pit. No weapons. No horde. You and me."
The King stared. Then he laughed, a huge booming laugh that shook the torches. "THE LITTLE HUMAN KNOWS THE LAW!"
"I've been watching."
The King stopped laughing. He looked at Varka. She gave the smallest nod. He handed her his cleaver.
[HIDDEN QUEST TRIGGERED: THE LAW OF THE PIT.]
[Defeat the Orc King in unarmed single combat.]
It was the hardest fight of his life. Both lives.
The King hit him, and he flew across the pit and hit the wall.
[-110 HP]
He got up. The King hit him again.
[-96 HP]
He got up.
He stopped trying to hit back. He started trying not to be hit. Ducking, weaving, always moving, letting those huge fists sail past and slam into the dirt. He watched. The King was impossibly strong, but slow, and used to fighting people his own size. He punched downward, like hammering a nail, and every time he did, his weight came forward onto his front foot.
[SECOND WIND!]
Percy waited for the next downward punch, stepped inside it, the way he'd stepped inside Clarisse's spear a lifetime ago, and hooked the King's front ankle and threw his whole weight against the back of the King's knee.
The Orc King went down like a falling tree.
[ACTION SURGE!]
Percy was on his back before he could rise. Arm around the thick green throat, legs locked around the King's chest. It was a choke Clarisse had taught him, a long time ago in another world, laughing the whole time. Doesn't matter how big they are, Prissy. Everybody needs to breathe.
The King thrashed. Rolled. Slammed Percy into the dirt again and again.
[-55 HP]
[-62 HP]
[HP: 18 / 340]
Percy held on.
He thought about the bruise on his ribs and his mother's face at breakfast. He thought about the cold dark second when he'd died in the burning camp. He thought about Damasen and the drakon, every day, every day, every day.
He held on.
The Orc King's huge hand slapped the dirt. Once. Twice. Three times.
The pit erupted.
[HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: THE LAW OF THE PIT.]
[THE ORC KING has yielded.]
[FLOOR 2 CLEARED. Thread tied off.]
[+4,600 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 18 → Level 19]
[LEVEL UP! Level 19 → Level 20]
[Class Eligibility unlocked: MONK. (The Host has won an unarmed trial by combat.)]
[Host Level 20 reached. SECOND CLASS SLOT UNLOCKED.]
[Slot MONK into Class Slot 2? YES / NO]
Percy lay on his back in the dirt, staring up at the sky through the smoke, laughing weakly. Yes.
[Second Class acquired: MONK (Lv 1).]
[Grants: Focus pool. Unarmed Strikes. Speed. Evasion.]
[Locked Inventory released: Hand Wrappings [Monk].]
[Loot: Orc King's Cleaver (Rare). Goblin Totems x4. Crude Weapons x11.]
A shadow fell over him. Varka Ironjaw knelt beside him with his xiphos in her hand, pulled from the dirt. Behind her, the Orc King was sitting up, rubbing his throat, staring at Percy with something half rage and half respect.
"Pit-champion," Varka said. Her iron jaw clicked when she spoke, and her voice was low and rough, like gravel in a river. "I have fought in this pit for as long as there has been a pit. I have watched a hundred challengers. None of them beat him. Not one." She held out his sword, hilt first. "Until a human child who smells like the deep places."
Percy took it.
"I want to follow you," Varka said.
He blinked. "What?"
"This place is a Thread. A story. I have lived it ten thousand times. The same fights. The same fires. The same pit. I do not know how I know this. But I know it." Her yellow eyes fixed on him. "You are the first thing that has ever happened here that was not already written. I want to see what else is not written."
[NOTICE: Varka Ironjaw is a Tower-Born being. She may leave The Loom with the Host, if the Host permits.]
Percy thought about what it would mean to walk a seven-foot orc with a bolted iron jaw out of his closet and into his mother's kitchen. He thought about Mrs. Hernandez down the hall.
"Not yet," he said. "The world I'm from isn't ready for you. I'm not ready. But I'll be in and out of here all the time. And when I'm ready, I'll come for you. I promise."
Varka nodded, once.
"I will wait at your Waypoint," she said. "I am good at waiting. I have done it for a very long time."
She went back to her King. Percy watched her go, and something stirred in him that he hadn't felt since before the trial. Someone had chosen him. Not because of who his father was. Not because of a prophecy. Just because of what he'd done.
[STATUS]
Name: Perseus Jackson
Age: 14
Race: Human (Mortal)
Vessel Rank: F
Level: 20
Classes: Fighter (Lv 20) · Monk (Lv 1)
Divine Parentage: Zeus (Bloodline: Dormant)
Titles: Adopted Son of the Sky
HP: 380 / 380
Stamina: 210 / 210
Focus: 20 / 20
Faith Points: 0
STR: 22
AGI: 21
VIT: 20
INT: 13
WIS: 18
CHA: 15
Free Stat Points: 4
Skills: Weapon Mastery — Sword (Lv 9), Shield (Lv 6) · Second Wind · Action Surge · Combat Maneuvers (Trip, Disarm, Riposte) · Unarmed Strike (Lv 1) · Sky's Favor (Lesser)
Equipment: Bronze-Edged Training Xiphos · Round Shield · Hand Wrappings · Slime Ring
Inventory: Orc King's Cleaver · Goblin Totems x4 · Minor Healing Potions x4 (tower-only) · Summon Card: Slime x3
Waypoints: Floor 1 · Floor 2
[MAIN QUEST UPDATE: The Boy Who Would Be Hero]
[Time remaining: 0 days, 5 hours.]
Percy stared at the numbers. He'd lost track. Two weeks of nights in The Loom, of slimes and goblins and dying and getting back up, had slid past him like water through his fingers. Today was the day. The Yancy Academy field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It was seven in the morning. He had a geometry test second period.
He skipped it.
He got to the Met at 11:30 with a gym bag over his shoulder. Inside it were a bronze training sword and a round wooden shield, which, he'd discovered, mortal security guards' eyes simply slid right off of. He went straight to the Greek and Roman galleries.
They were there. Twenty-odd kids in Yancy uniforms slouching behind a tour guide. And at the back, a teacher in a wheelchair, with a shaggy beard and a tweed jacket and kind brown eyes.
Chiron.
He looked older than Percy remembered, even at the end of the first life. More gray in his beard. A long scar across his cheek that hadn't been there before. Hands knotted and stiff on the wheels of his chair. This world had been harder on him. This world was harder on everyone.
And next to him, limping on crutches, was a boy with curly brown hair and a wispy chin beard and a worried, gentle face.
Grover.
Percy stopped in the doorway while a tour group of retirees flowed around him like water around a rock. Grover Underwood. The first person who had ever known what he was. Who had walked into the middle of the throne room of the gods and put his hand on Percy's shoulder while they read out his death sentence.
Grover was talking nervously to a tall blond boy at the front of the group. A boy with a smirk, and expensive sneakers, and sea-green eyes. Ezra Coleman laughed at something Grover said. Not with him. At him. He shoved Grover's shoulder, not quite hard enough to knock him over on his crutches.
Percy's hand curled into a fist. He made it uncurl.
He's fourteen. He's a jerk and that's all. He hasn't done it. Not here. Not yet. Keep him alive.
The lights in the gallery flickered.
The Yancy kids didn't notice. But Grover's head snapped up, and every drop of color drained out of his face. In his wheelchair, Mr. Brunner went very, very still.
From behind a marble statue of Medea with a knife in her hand, a woman stepped out into the light. She was dressed like a teacher, in a gray skirt suit with glasses on a chain. But her skin was the color of old ash, and her eyes burned like coals, and the shadow she cast on the floor had wings. When she smiled at Ezra Coleman, her teeth were black.
[ENEMY IDENTIFIED: TISIPHONE, Avenger of Murder, Eldest of the Erinyes — Lv ???]
[Victory probability: <1%.]
[Great Sage recommends the Host does not attempt to win.]
Yeah, Percy thought, unzipping the gym bag. I wasn't planning to.
"Ezra Coleman," the Fury purred, in a voice like a blade on a whetstone. "I've come such a long way to find you." She sniffed the air like a hound. "How strange. You haven't done it yet. But I can smell it on you, boy. The blood. The water. Some other you, somewhere far away. I am the Avenger of Murder. And I don't mind collecting early."
Every display case in the gallery shattered at once.
The Yancy kids screamed and scattered. Ezra stood frozen, smirk gone, staring at the thing unfolding out of the teacher's body. Wings ripping through the gray suit. Claws lengthening. Ten feet tall. Twelve.
Grover threw his crutches aside, goat legs showing under his uniform pants, and grabbed for Ezra's arm. Tisiphone swatted him across the room like a fly.
Mr. Brunner was reaching under the blanket on his lap. Too slow.
Tisiphone lunged for Ezra.
Percy was already moving. He crossed the gallery in four strides and threw himself into the space between the Fury and the boy, shield up, just as the claws came down.
The impact drove him to his knees. The shield split straight down the middle. His arm went numb to the shoulder.
[-190 HP]
[HP: 190 / 380]
But the claws didn't reach Ezra.
Tisiphone reared back, hissing. A mortal boy in a hoodie knelt between her and her prey, with a split shield on one arm and a cheap bronze sword in the other.
"Who the hell are you?" Ezra squeaked behind him.
Percy got to his feet.
"Nobody," he said. "Get behind me, kid."
Across the room, sprawled against a shattered display case, Grover lifted his head and looked at the boy with the sword. Something flickered behind his eyes, confused and faraway and aching, like a word on the tip of his tongue.
"...Percy?" he whispered.
And the Fury attacked.