Chương 239: Gaming Alone by Ezras Hargrave (Percy Jackson)
Summary: 14-Year-Old Percy Jackson just wanted a quiet school year. But when he finds himself kidnapped by monsters and himself being sacrificed to Gaia to aid in her rise, he comes to realise something. A quiet life was never for him. And if that was the case, he would tear his way through the world and live. All on his own. [Secret Quest: A Weakling's Will Has Been Cleared!] Hiatus
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13474531/1/
Word count:52k
Chapters:10
I: A Weakling's Will
It's strange isn't? How fleeting and quickly life can disappear, just like breath. It seems to always be there, all around you, but when you breathe it's only there for a short while before you need to let it out. It's so strange how it's said your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but my reality was something different.
It's so strange how I've lived my life without knowing the world around me, the truth of what lies beyond the veil, and only now do I finally realise the truth.
Whatever the case, I plan to start living life by my own terms, not the terms someone else has decided for me.
Hello. My name is Percy Jackson.
You're probably wondering what was up with that short and weird intro. And all I can say is, you'll understand what I mean soon. As unbelievable as it sounds, this is the story of how my life changed. How I went from a troubled kid who went from school to school, to one of the most powerful forces on the planet.
If you want to stop reading, I suggest you do so now. Because once I start talking… Well, I've been told it's hard to make me stop.
You're gonna stay? Alright then, I'll tell you my story.
For as long as I can remember, I've always been a troubled kid. ADHD, Dyslexia, and a strange tendency of trouble following me everywhere I go.
When I was a baby, for example, a snake somehow snuck into my cot while I was asleep, but I was somehow able to strangle it to death before it could get to me. Another time was at my last school with my friend Tyson. These guys got really crazy during a Dodgeball game, and set fire to the school, and the blame somehow got pinned on me. I was found innocent and ended up with a nice cheque as an 'apology' from the school, but I still wasn't allowed to come back this year.
Which I was fine with, don't get me wrong! See, getting expelled is nothing new for me. I've been getting expelled from basically every school I've attended since I was a little kid for some extraordinary reason or another. But the school I found myself in at fourteen was actually really nice.
It was called Westover, a boarding school. I figured it was just gonna be another one of those strict schools, where most of the guys are jerks, and I get picked on for being 'different.' And I was mostly right, except I wasn't picked on. It was the kind of school where everyone left the others alone unless they were looking to make friends, it was great!
I even found a couple of friends! Siblings in fact; Nico and Bianca di Angelo.
Nico was a cheerful kid, ten-years-old, who was obsessed with this game called 'Mythomagic,' a game that seemed to use cards and statues and looked to be based on Greek Mythology. He was hyper, barely able to sit still, and was great at cheering people up when they were down.
Then there was Bianca di Angelo, his older sister. She was twelve, a couple years younger than me, but she acted really mature for her age. That was mostly due to her needing to look after Nico, who no doubt would have gotten into some kind of trouble or danger if she wasn't around to stop him from doing so. She was pretty strict with Nico, and much more grounded in reality than he was.
How I met them is kind of funny, actually. I ran into them, literally. My last class for the day had just ended, so I had some free time, and was walking through the halls, when I remember I had some homework I had to hand in before the end of the day to one of my earlier teachers. I immediately started running through the halls to finish my homework and hand it in, when I accidentally ran into Nico. I apologised, he apologised, Bianca told us both off and we went from there.
But I guess you're tired of all this background stuff, huh? I suppose I should get into the nitty gritty of the story.
It all started towards the end of October, very close to Halloween.
Up until the 'incident' as I like to call it, the day went pretty standard. I woke up, brushed my teeth, and spoke with Bianca and Nico over breakfast, before we all went to our respective classes.
I sat through the torture that was Math Class, easily my most hated class, but managed to make some semi-decent notes I hopes would help me try and remember everything.
It was after Math Class I started to notice something strange. As I headed to English Class, I had a feeling I was being watched and it made me stop and look around for the source until I found it… And boy, was I shocked!
My eyes met hers and she looked away but there was no doubt it had been her looking at me. Alice Cymbeline, easily the prettiest and most popular girl in the school. She had waist-length blonde hair that looked like it had been kissed by the sun, and a pair of radiant blue eyes that were a clear, ocean blue.
Not much was known about Alice, she mostly kept to herself, but it made me curious as to why she'd been looking at me. Curious… And a bit nervous, if I was entirely honest. Why was she watching me? Had I done something to offend her? I hoped not, I made enemies of the popular kids too many times before.
She didn't look back over to me, so I just shook my head and put it in the back of my mind for later and headed to English Class.
English class was tough, all the words swimming off the pages and swapping over, making it hard to read through the literature we were studying today. But I was determined to do well, and felt I'd taken some decent notes by the end of class… Though nobody besides me would probably be able to understand my scribble.
Lunch finally rolled around, and I grabbed my food and sat at a table. I was joined shortly after by Nico and Bianca.
"Hey," I greeted them both with a smile. "How were your classes today? You had Science, right Nico?"
"We dissected frogs!" Nico said eagerly. "It was kinda gross, and one kid threw up, but I thought it was super fun!"
I grimaced lightly at my own memory of dissecting frogs. Yeah, I could see why someone would throw up. I'd come close when I did it. "Good to hear," I offered Nico a smile. Better to not show him how uncomfortable that made me. "What about you Bianca? You came from History, right?"
"We were doing Ancient History," Bianca nodded, scratching the back of her head. "We were focusing on Greece, learning about Achilles."
"Achilles?" I blinked. "The guy with the weakness in his heel, right?"
"Yeah," Bianca nodded. "Apparently, he fought an Amazon Queen at one point but after he took her helmet off he fell in love with her and felt bad for killing her."
I blinked. That was interesting. Falling in love with someone after you'd killed them? Sounded very interesting, and it made me wonder just how beautiful this amazon queen must have been.
"What about you?" Bianca asked. "What happened in your class?"
"Nothing much," I grimaced. "Struggled through Math and English, made some decent notes- for me making them anyway. Though something crazy happened between classes, and looking back I think I must be crazy," I chuckled at the absurdity of what happened, realising it must have just been a coincidence.
"What's that?" Nico asked, tilting his head.
I looked at him with a smile. "I could have sworn, as I was heading to Math Class, that Alice Cymbeline was looking at me," I told him, getting an incredulous look from Bianca. "Yeah, I know it's crazy. It's just when I looked at her, our eyes met, and she looked away. I think it must have just been a coincidence though, no way she was watching me."
"Obviously," Bianca told him. "Not to sound like a jerk, Percy, but popular girls like her don't look at unpopular kids like us. You must have imagined it."
"I know, I know, was nice to pretend she was looking at me though," I chuckled again. "She is pretty, but there's no way she would be looking at me."
"Um… Percy? Bianca?" Nico spoke up. "She's looking at Percy right now."
My back stiffened, and I saw Bianca's do the same, and I followed Nico's gaze to see her again, Alice Cymbeline, and she was staring right at us. No, not at us. At me.
Once again, our eyes met. And once again, she looked away quickly.
"That's weird," Bianca frowned. "She's never looked at you before, why is she looking now? If she wants to talk to you or know something about you, she should just walk up and ask."
"You should go say something to her," Nico suggested, bouncing up and down. "Maybe we'll become popular kids if you can get an in with her!"
"Not happening," I shot him down. "Being popular is not as great as it looks, I'm pretty sure of that. Never been popular but I have been infamous throughout a school before. I'm pretty sure we don't wanna be popular. How about we just ignore her and go back to our talk?"
"Alright," Nico pouted, then looked at Bianca. "Tell us about this Amazon Queen! Maybe I have her in my Mythomagic set."
Bianca rolled her eyes at Nico's antics, but the smile she had was plainly visible and wasn't leaving any time soon. "Her name was Penthesilea, and apparently she has unrivalled beauty…"
Nico and I listened diligently to Bianca's speech, and the story of the Amazon Queen: Penthesilea. She was a daughter of Ares and Otrera, the first Queen of the Amazon's, and fought in the Trojan War on the side of Troy. She was later killed by Achilles in combat after distinguishing herself on the battlefield for a day, but he fell in love with her after he took off her helmet.
It made me think, did Achilles and Penthesilea really need to be enemies? If Achilles had seen her face sooner, could the pair have talked things out? Or was she destined to die at the hands of someone who had fallen in love with her from the start?
Something about that story stuck with me, hard. It lingered in the back of my mind as I attended the rest of my classes after lunch.
History, Gym, Music, and Science classes filled the rest of my day. Learning was tough, as it often is with dyslexia, but even so I did my absolute best to work. I wanted to make my mom proud of me.
Huh? What do you mean I didn't mention my mom before? Oh well, I'll talk about her now so be patient.
My mom's name is Sally Jackson, and she's the best parent on the planet if you ask me. She'd had a life that was rough like mine. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was young, and she was taken in by her uncle. Midway through college he made her quit, so she could take care of him when he was nearing death's door. Life was rough for her after that, but she said a highlight was meeting my dad.
I've never met my father, but my mother says I look like him. Dark hair and sea-green eyes, apparently my face is even similar to his. She told me she only spent one summer with him, at the cabin in Montauk, and ended up pregnant with me.
Sadly, my mom didn't have enough money to look after both of us and ended up marrying a really bad guy. Someone who I'm happy to say has all my hatred.
Smelly Gabe.
Human scum of the Earth, he was nice for the first 12 seconds I knew him before I saw he was an absolute human bastard. He was fat, lazy, and rude. But he had money, so my mom put up with it to give herself and me a better life.
Just over a year ago, my mom and I went to Montauk after I got expelled from my seventh-grade school and we had a great time. It was a few days after I got back I was woken up my screaming, and found Smelly Gabe beating my mom and yelling at her, no doubt drunk. I wanted to yell out and attack him, but that would have made things worse.
So instead I snuck to the phone and called the cops. They didn't take long to arrive, and Gabe was arrested and later charged with Domestic Violence. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem for him, besides being revealed as a wife beating bastard, but a lawyer popped up from nowhere on mine and my mom's side.
Not only was Gabe charged with Domestic Violence, but a host of other crimes that I didn't even know existed. They were so severe, that the court sentenced him to life in prison, and then processed my mom's divorce from him in no time at all, giving her all of his money and possessions as Gabe wouldn't be needing them back in jail.
From there, life got a bit better. My mom was able to put herself back into college to try and get her degree, and overall, she was way more cheerful than before.
Because my mom was so great, I didn't was to disappoint her by getting kicked out of this school too. So, I was determined to work really hard, keep my nose clean, and stay out of trouble as much as I could.
My cheeks were red as I walked out of Science Class, we'd started Sex Ed, and I shook my head to clear them of those thoughts. My mom had given me the talk already, but sexual education was bringing up the birds and the bees discussion to my mind and made me want to die of embarrassment.
"Hey, Jackson!" A voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I turned around to see Mike Smith. He was a nice guy, from what I'd seem. Pretty average in about everything.
"Smith," I greeted back politely. "Can I help you?" I asked.
"Yeah," he nodded at me. "I had a question about Gym, since that's your best class, and was hoping you could answer it. Um, in private," he added on, and I got the idea it must have been a bit personal.
"Oh, sure," I nodded. "You wanna lead us to a private location?"
"Yeah," he nodded, turning around and walking away. I moved to follow him. He seemed a bit jittery, nervous, but I chalked it up to the nature of the question.
Soon enough, he led us to an area of the school I don't think I'd ever been to. It was dark, almost seemed abandoned in a way, and he opened a door. "Right in here, this will give us privacy," he said. "Nobody ever comes here, it's a great place for some peace and quiet."
I nodded at that, and stepped into the room, hearing the door close behind me, and I turned to face him. "So, what did you want to talk about-?" I froze at the look on Mike's face as I turned to him.
It wasn't the kind smile I'd seen as I passed him in the halls so many times. It wasn't a look of frustration, or anger, or anything like that.
It was a sadistic grin, his eyes staring right at me and promising untold pain.
"You are far too trusting, Jackson," Mike told me.
"W- What are you-?" I began to ask, only to feel a sharp pain hit the back of my head, and I collapsed to the ground.
My body grew weak, and I felt somewhat wet trickling down the back of my head. My vision began to fade and, as I weakly looked up, I saw Mike talking to someone I couldn't see.
I tried to make out what they were saying but the pain overwhelmed me and, soon after, the world faded to black.
~~Gaming Alone~~
Pain!
A scream left my lips as I was awoken, agony coursing through my body, originating from my left arm. My vision was blurry, the light from the full moon blinding me as it shone through a hole in the ceiling and hit me hard.
Blinking a few times, while trying to reach for my left arm, I felt a pair of strong hands yank my right arm down and something stab into it and through whatever I was laying on.
I let out another scream of pain as I felt my blood starting to gush out of the wounds in my pinned down arms, my throat growing hoarse as I writhed in complete agony.
"He's awake," I heard a gruff voice say, it was unfamiliar to me.
"No matter! Continue the ritual," another voice hissed. "He shall raise the Earth Mother, and she shall strike down those Olympians!"
Another sound became apparent as the hissing voice registered. Chanting. All around me, people were chanting as I screamed and writhed in pain. I felt my left leg get pinned down, and another sharp stab of pain as something pierced my leg.
I looked down, forcefully blinking the blurriness away to see what was stabbed through it. It was… A sword? A bronze sword to be exact, and it was completely agonising! I couldn't even say a proper word!
I didn't even have time to comprehend there was a sword through my leg, likely my arms too, before my other leg was stabbed into what I was on. I struggled and screamed from doing so as my limbs were pinned down and tried to focus on what I was laying on.
It was concrete, solid. Flat, like a table, and it felt strange to lay on… The only hole in the ceiling was above me, shining down, my blood glistening lightly in the light… My eyes widened as I realised something through the agonizing pain.
An Alter.
I was laying on an alter! I was being sacrificed by some… Some kind of cult, to resurrect their 'Earth Mother!'
And the worst part was I could do nothing. All I could do was scream as my blood poured out of me and the chanting grew louder, and louder. I suddenly felt like the Earth was trembling beneath me.
"Good…" I heard a female voice, but this one was different. Woozy, almost, as if she were just waking up from a long nap. "Good… This blood, this delicious blood, shall help me wake. And with just one more, I shall rise…!"
I could only keep screaming, unable to really comprehend the voice was pain flooded my senses, and a roaring was all I could hear in my ears.
And then, my senses began to dull and fade. The sounds around me started to fade away until I could hear nothing, not even my own screaming. My arms and legs going completely limp, unable to move even a single part of my body.
I stared up at the moon was tears streaked down my cheeks from the pain. I could feel it; my death was coming… And why?
Why?
For some crazy cult?
To raise some crazy 'Earth Mother' who demanded a sacrifice?
Why the hell was I being killed, for something like this?
My eyes slowly closed, and the world around me slowly faded away into nothing.
.
.
.
No!
My eyes snapped open as new life breathed into me, a second wind.
I wasn't going to die! I had so much to live for! My mother! Nico, and Bianca! I was going to overcome my Dyslexia and ADHD, and I was going to make my mother proud of me god damn it!
Slowly, despite the pain, my feet stomped on the alter and I began to push myself up. My palms pressed down and I slowly rose, limbs agonising and blood pouring from them as I rose despite the blades stuck in them, hearing them coming out of the concrete as I finally stood up.
My vision was blurry, and I couldn't really see anything, but I slowly turned to where I remembered the chanting coming from, and I saw looks of shock and horror on the eyes of everyone present.
One of them opened their mouths to speak, but all I could hear was blood roaring in my ears as I stared at them.
Then I felt a tug behind my naval.
It was strong, fierce, and different than anything I'd experienced before. I saw them back up from me with looks of horror, though I couldn't see what it was they saw. All I saw were the looks of my would-be murderers, and how scared they look.
It wasn't enough. They tried to kill me. I had to pay them back. Even at the cost of my life.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
… And death for death.
I threw my head back and let out a blood curling scream, my vision swimming in red, the world around me enveloped in a crimson vortex- blood?- and I saw the various people being torn apart within it. No, not people… They looked different, inhuman.
The tug behind my navel was strong, the vortex churning around me and ripping up all of the members of the crazed cult.
'No!' I heard the sleepy woman's voice in my mind. 'What are you doing!? How are you doing this!? G- Getting… So… S- Sleepy…' She slowly began snoring, and then her voice faded away entirely.
After what felt like an eternity, pain surged into my limbs and I screamed again, the crimson vortex stopping as I fell back on the alter, laying face down with swords sticking out of my four limbs. The floor was stained crimson red, though I couldn't tell what it was any more. Tomato sauce? Blood?
I began to realise it didn't matter, as my vision began to fade again. This time, for sure, I knew I was dying. There was no question about it.
I had my revenge… But it was so unfair. I was still dying. I should have been allowed to live, to keep fighting and living my life the way I pleased. The world… It was so cruel.
'If I had another chance…' I thought. 'I would do things right. I would tear my way through this world, and I would live. I would be smart, and strong… All on my own.'
That was when I saw it. A blue text box appearing in front of my eyes, along with a 'Ding!' sound.
[Alarm!]
[You have completed all the necessary requirements of the Secret Quest: 'A Weakling's Will!']
'What?' I thought, as my sight was dulling, staring at the text box. 'What… Is this?'
The box didn't fade, simply existing in front of my eyes despite the impossibility of it… Was I hallucinating from blood loss? Secret Quest? Completed all requirements? What?
[Alarm!]
[You have earned the right to become a player. Will you accept?]
'Earned? Accept? What in the world am I looking at, what the hell is happening?'
[You do not have much time remaining. If you refuse, your heart will stop approximately 0.02 seconds later. Will you accept?]
'If I accept… I don't have to die?' That stuck out to me. I wouldn't die. I could still make my mom proud, still talk to Bianca and Nico every day, and keep that promise I made. To tear my way through the world… And live. To be smart and strong, all on my own.
'This chance… I'll take it!'
[Alarm!]
[Welcome, Player.]
I felt something surge through my body, a bright light clouding my vision… And then everything faded away as I finally let myself go.
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13474531/1/
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