CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-SIX

Monster Envy, Part 1

Sam froze. He couldn’t help it. The thought that he was facing a monster straight from myth and legend—the queen B herself—caused his limbs to feel like they were made of stone even though the Gorgon was too far away to catch him in her malignant gaze. His mind required a reboot that cost him precious seconds. Seconds Sam didn’t have because Medusa was already slithering toward the bridge that separated her island from his.

WARNING! You will be within range of Medusa’s petrification beam within fifteen seconds… It is recommended that you activate the [Shades] feature of the [Mask of the Argonaut] to increase your chances of repelling the ocular curse.

The notification popping up between Sam and the Gorgon might have saved his life. It certainly worked to push his mind into gear so that his limbs stopped feeling like they were already made of stone.

“Okay… I like that idea.” Sam pressed the node on the side of his mask, causing tinted shades to close over the eyes. “I just hope this works…”

ALERT! [Shades] greatly increases your resistance to ocular effects. It is still recommended that you avoid direct eye contact with the alpha-level horror.

“Right.” Sam kept his enemy in his peripheral while he moved deeper into the island that he was in. Sweat dripped down his brow, and he was sure it wasn’t because of the intense heat caused by the lava below. “Didn’t you say I knew one of these statues?”

An Argo crew member’s life signature has been found three statues behind you.

“Who is it?” Sam asked as he ducked away from Medusa’s line of sight.

Triple-A didn’t need to tell him whom it had found as Sam could see her for himself. The raven mask on her face was a dead giveaway.

“Raven Knight?” his eyebrow hitched upward. “What are you doing here?”

It was indeed a stone replica of the Argo VII’s newest crew member, but Sam also noticed a stark difference between Raven Knight and the surrounding statues. It was her face. It wasn’t fear that dominated Raven Knight’s expression, but resistance. Indeed, the heroine’s eyes had yet to fully turn to stone, and those dark irises were looking right at Sam with urgency.

“How are you resisting Medusa’s power…?”

The answer to that was clear enough once Sam noticed the shadows that clung to the edges of her eyes like a layer of protection against petrification. Triple-A then explained that Raven Knight had cleverly wrapped herself in shadow to slow down the curse’s progression.

Unfortunately, the alpha-grade [Petrification] is too strong, and Raven Knight is about to fully succumb to its curse. You must help her before that happens as [Healing Hand (Γ)] is not strong enough to counteract a completed [Petrification] curse.

Sam dashed forward, his hand reaching out to cup Raven Knight’s cheeks. At the same time, he heard the sound of something heavy crashing behind him. As if a stone statue had been thrown aside by something with enough strength to push it.

“Healing Hand!” Sam willed as much of his life force as he could pull out into the tips of his fingers and then pumped it into Raven Knight’s stone-cold face, but the petrification did not abate and was already beginning to cover her left eye. “Why isn’t it working?”

Although possible, your power hasn’t adapted to removing curses. It will take time to work.

“Gods, I don’t have time… Apollo!” Sam prayed to the god of healing, his patron, and the only god Sam could imagine would hear his prayer from the underworld. “Please help me fix her!”

Maybe you should pray in verse. The creator once explained that Apollo likes it when people pray to him in verse.

“Now’s not the time to quote Chiron, Triple-A!”

While Sam attempted to rescue Raven Knight from her prison of stone, he could hear the sound of something heavy slithering closer and closer toward him.

“How far away is she?” Sam asked. He couldn’t tear his concentration away from his patient.

Nearly close enough to reach for your back…

“Godsdammit…” Sam gazed apologetically at Raven Knight’s face. “I’ll be back… I promise.”

For obvious reasons, the memory of him healing Thunder while an alpha-level horror threatened him from behind flitted across the surface of his mind. Surprisingly, this was a fear that failed to take root because Sam had grown since then, and he had more options in his repertoire now than the simple meat-shield strategy he used to employ.

He coaxed a bundle of life force into the tips of his fingers and zapped them into Raven Knight’s statue while hoping he’d given her enough of his healing energy to stave off her curse. Perhaps even helping her gift to overcome the hurdle of a gorgon’s petrification.

Either way, Sam had run out of time. He ducked away just as sharp claws raked across his back. Luckily, the Armor of the Odyssey’s two special traits, Impenetrable and Uncuttable, worked as advertised, and Sam avoided a far worse injury than the bruises he was feeling now. Despite his great defense, however, it took a huge effort for Sam to grit his teeth and not scream from the pain of the Gorgon’s powerful attack.

He rolled forward and away from his attacker, and when he got up, Gram flashed in his hands, its blade swinging in an arc to threaten his pursuer. But once again, Sam hit only air.

“How is she so damn stealthy…” he complained.

She’s right on top of you.

Sam didn’t need Triple-A to tell him that because he could sense the monster looming over him. It was like an ice cube was dripping down his back, and not in a fun way. Instinct made him jump to the side and avoid the serpent’s tail that slapped the ground he’d just vacated.

“Holy—”

Sam raised his sword and saw Medusa’s face reflected in the shiny metal.

“—freaking—”

The beautiful face that had captivated him earlier was nowhere in sight. In its place was the visage of a monster straight from the pits of Tartarus.

“—gods!”

With his left hand raised, Sam launched his grappling hook up at the basement’s stone ceiling and then propelled himself upward and away from the horrifying monster’s clutches.

“New plan!” he yelled as he swung forward like a certain spider-themed hero from the comic books he used to read as a teenager. “Hit and run!”

Sam’s hit-and-run strategy was a little different from the conventional style. Yes, he did run around the interconnected islands trying to avoid the gorgon’s wrath using the statues around him like footholds to jump out of Medusa’s reach while also using them as shields to repel the arrows that the gorgon fired at him. But, while he played cat and mouse with Medusa, he also kept coming back to Raven Knight’s statue to drop several more helpings of his healing energy into her. This was the ‘hit’ part of his plan.

Admittedly, Sam felt a little bad that he was causing irreparable damage to Medusa’s home décor, but he didn’t feel any life force emanating from them so he assumed they were already dead and wouldn’t mind.

“They are dead, right?” he asked.

Raven Knight’s life force signature is the only one the system can sense. You may also be interested to know that the ball of life force you pumped into her seems to have worked in strengthening Raven Knight’s life force enough that her shadow has managed to force the petrification to recede from her face.

Sam had gotten the idea of bombarding Raven Knight with a bundle of condensed life force from the life gel that Crow-Man had shown him a while back. He was glad this Hail Mary worked too because he had no plan B.

“How many more—”

Sam kicked off the chest of what he assumed was an ogre statue—it was big and ugly enough to be one after all—to summersault over to a land bridge that would send him back to the island where Raven Knight’s statue was.

“—times do we have to—”

He channeled life force into his feet and used a weaker version of Burst to propel him forward along the bridge much faster than his usual pace.

“—heal her for the curse to fail?”

Twice more should free her arm, allowing Raven Knight to assist you in fighting the alpha-level horror. The system would also like to point out that you seem to have developed a new skill in all your running around.

“What are you talking about?”

Sam didn’t know this, but in his effort to avoid Medusa’s attacks, he’d continuously wrapped Herculean’s energy around his feet and used its power to boost his athletics so that traversing his surroundings had been quite easy for him. A casual observer might even have thought Sam was enjoying himself inside a parkour park, something Triple-A gladly pointed out to him.

Perhaps you can call it Herculean Parkour.

“No…” Sam slid underneath the legs of a lanky female Amazon statue to avoid another one of Medusa’s arrows. “And we’ve got bigger problems than your naming sense right now.”

You were just thinking of a name yourself.

“No, I wasn’t.”

You called it [Stride] in your mind.

“Um, okay… let’s go with that.”

Sam jumped onto the next statue and vaulted himself over the head of another one to land in front of Raven Knight. He glanced up, and to his surprise, her unpetrified face was looking back at him with a curious expression superseding her panic.

“Who are you talking to?” Raven Knight asked.

“I talk to myself when I’m stressed.” Sam’s gaze drifted to her body which he now noticed was showing zero petrification up to her upper waist. Shadows clung to her suit like an extra layer of armor. Her arms were free now too, although the tips of Raven Knight’s fingers were still coated in stone. “Holy Zeus… it’s working.”

Almost automatically, his hands reached out for hers, and that’s when it happened. As if in response to his commitment to the healing arts, a switch inside Sam flipped on and the power inside him swelled. Warmth, the kind one felt when sitting beside the hearth during a cold winter night, spread out to his entire body, from his chest and his brain down to the tips of his fingers and toes. They flowed into Raven Knight’s fingers and instantly dissolved the curse that kept them imprisoned while moving on to the rest of her body and gradually freeing her of Petrification.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have unlocked the potential hidden inside you. [Healing Hand (Γ) has leveled up to [Healing Hand (β)!

“About damn time…” Sam’s grin was as wide as it had ever been. “I’m a freaking beta now!”