Chapter 4 ~ The Growing Fire in the Darkness​

Hades POV

"-OT until you have REPENTED for THE INSULT TO ME you have-"

"Oh my KHAOS!, Hera, LET IT GO, literally the only thing I did was give a playful JOKE about your new hair style when a wave of acid burnt half of your hair off your HEAD!" Hades interrupted with a twitching eye, tired of hearing of this.

"Which by the way, YOU HAVE ALREADY RECOVERED, DAYS AGO!," he roared out his last words, at Hera who was at the moment holding a scowl on her expression but had her arms crossed and wasn't looking at him at the moment.

Demeter looked just as annoyed as Hades though lacking any sort of voicing, while Hestia just gave him a look that said, 'was that comment at the time worth it?,'.

Demeter spoke up calmly, "Honestly, Hera, there is little to no reason to make such a fuss, while hades comment was far from what he should've stated, he is correct to point out that your hair took minutes to recover,".

It seems our little arguments that we had for a few months now have done great wonders for Demeter's Patience Capacity.

Before, she would've exploded just as loudly as me, but apparently she decided to be the mature one alongside Hestia, honestly don't know why, I know for a fact that I will only be able to mess around like this in here or on my off time when we are out.

Oh it's not like he'll stop with the jokes, if the situation is not world-ending serious and he is in the mood he will probably make a sarcastic comment or maybe a witty joke.

Not the Dad Jokes though

He will be damned to a smiling open-armed Tartarus or him being drunk to weeks on end before the conception of the joke in question will ever appear.

During the months he was on this platform of flesh he didn't spend all this time simply talking, now that he wasn't being resolved 24/7, he could now fully focus on his abilities.

So far, Planeswalking was severely difficult, it seems just being in Kronos is making it particularly difficult just creating one a few inches apart.

His best guess was that since Kronos has a domain in Time, he can very easily disrupt his Planeswalking without even realizing that someone was even attempting to do such a thing in the first place.

So his efforts in Planeswalking are very minimal, to the point saying it's barely crawling would be generous on any angle you look at.

Shakti, on the other hand has progressed to the point it might be near mastery, no need to breathe, shit, eat, drink, urinate, sleep, or anything else the body would've needed.

The final step however, is where the issue started, because no matter how much I wiggle my godly form around, I couldn't manipulate the shape.

According to instincts, the instructions left behind by my Angel before she went silent, the mastery of Shakti, would allow me to Shapeshift.

At first, I'll be able to Shapeshift to other humanoids, and then later I'll be able to shift into my Divine Form, which according to my instinctual encyclopedia, will be some sort of Grim Reaper.

Which is badass as hell!

The girls were a little weirded out that I was doing my training montage, apparently they don't particularly practice at…well anything.

Demeter doesn't really have anything TO practice with, as the best she managed to do with her domain was to bloom flowers on her hair, Father's stomach is not exactly eco-friendly.

And All Hera seemed to be capable of was to look fabulous, seriously, though I suppose that's not really being fair, as far as I'm aware, she was the goddess of family (hah), childbirth, beauty, marriage, and women.

As far as family goes, I think it was supposed to be specifically about husband and wife family, because if she was actually the goddess of family that would've included children.

She proceeded to send monsters after monsters after every child Zeus created that wasn't with her, so if that made her the goddess of family that included children in the mix he was calling bull.

Hestia on the other hand,…well I don't know what to say, she doesn't exactly train, but she does constantly use her abilities to give us all the light we want and need, so you can say she is doing the bare minimum for training.

So honestly it wasn't wrong to say that he was the weirdo of the family, as he would probably guess that nobody actually trained, the most they did was when they were fighting wars.

He sighed with frustration as he went back to what he was previously doing before Hera decided to stop glaring at him and force him to "repent".

Uselessly grinding on Planeswalking

As he put his two hands close together, he tended up his muscles on his forehands, which caused his biceps to also tense up as well.

He held his breath, he found that holding his breath did sorta increase his focus, it also helped that he didn't exactly need to breath so he could hold it as much as he wanted.

As he concentrated, a circle of sparking energy started to form, the problem was that it was in constant danger of falling apart as it was severely disbalanced.

He could feel eyes on him, more specifically at his failing attempt to create a portal/tunnel, he almost smirked as he could practically taste their astonishment, though at the lesser extent then the first time he tried to do it.

If a mortal were to look at the circle of colors they would of course find it amazing and and worthy of worship, but all they would think of it was a bunch of sparkly colors.

No, the source of their amazement was not of how it looked,…but the fact that he was literally attempting to rip space apart to create an opening for his quantum tunnel.

Normally the only ones who would be capable of such a feat were the gods with domains of space or at least something similar to it, or gods whose power is simply strong enough to forcibly do so.

I was obviously the latter

A few seconds have passed as I managed to find the right ratio of space:time in the mix that the circular start of a tunnel which was wobbling all over the place was seemingly starting to stabilize.

I started to feel excited, though a side of me was already having doubts forming.

When I mentioned that I had to find the right ratio, I wasn't talking about one specific amount to balance the time aspect, if that was the case I would've already found it weeks into my training.

No

No…

Not at ALL

The problem was the fact that every time he came close to the right ratio, the time aspect would suddenly change its course, tripping me up.

If I catch up to it, suddenly it's a lot slower, slow it down? It's now leaving me in the dust, at one point it actually started doing patterns that made me give for the day.

As I started to come close to the right ratio, as I kept jumping the space up and down a notch, as I basically made assumptions where exactly it was going.

It actually worked, with a few minor stumbles and fix ups that I needed fixing real quick, but it WAS stabilizing as the circle was now creating the start of an ACTUAL tunnel.

I was smiling really widely at this point, the excitement was rising very up

It didn't last long

Suddenly the time aspect decided to go an entirely different direction, seriously!, it went backwards!

What. the. FUCK!

As soon as the change occurred, meaning time was slowly going back seconds a few inches around him the portal collapsed entirely on itself.

I stood there for a moment before a rage-inducing snarl appeared on my face, as I let out a loud yell as I turned around and rammed my fist at the wall of my FATHER's fleshy walls of the stomach.

I could very much feel the sympathy of my sisters targeted right at me, it was annoying, but it did make me a little happy knowing that they are least cared.

"…at the very least there was progress," Hestia voiced out to me, as she tried to make me feel better.

And to be fair…this was progress, for the first time for literal months, for the longest time, it was just the outermost edge of the quantum tunnel, the literal first inch of it that I couldn't get past.

Even if it was just an inch or two…it was still massive progress that I have made, and this was just the start of my million step journey.

…but the fact is, this is just gonna take a very long time, a long time to just extend it to a proper tunnel, let alone one that will allow us to escape.

Let us not even begin to speak about the fact that it needed to be far enough away that the waste of space of a father didn't notice us leaving in the first place.

I sighed tiredly, as I turned back around and sat down with crossed legs, as I once more faced the family that was in the stomach with me.

Hestia was giving me an awkward smile that I was gonna assume was trying to relieve me of my frustration about my failure.

Demeter and Hera on the other hand just sat down kneeling in general awkwardness, I don't believe they are comfortable trying to try what hestia is trying to do.

It would probably be because they would be too prideful to do so, they didn't exactly know how to do so, or it just felt generally embarrassing…which is the same thing as being prideful now that I think about it.

"…maybe you should take a break with what you are doing," Hestia finally said after sighing when she finished her awkward smile, seeing as it didn't work.

I raised an eyebrow at that, "stop?, what for, it's not like I could drop down in exhaustion by doing this, you do still remember why I am doing this you know?," I answered back, though I did let slip the fact I was frustrated.

She narrowed her eyes in annoyance at my answer, "it's not the fact that I'm worried that you will overwork yourself, it's the fact that you have been doing this day in and day out, and I can tell that you are just bottling up all the stress and frustration,…you made progress, it is now time for you to rest and unwind, I am aware that your are trying to get us out of here, but it is clear you aren't gonna do this in meer days, so please as your eldest sister hear out my request…take a break," she asks, and I could tell she was worried.

Probably not for my physical health, I could continue doing this for days at the very least, but she wasn't wrong about bottling my feelings thing that was going on.

I though about it for a minute, before nodding at her request, receiving a relieved sigh.

It's like she said, it is not possible for me to achieve this in days, weeks, and if this is going the way it is going then it will probably take years if not decades, to reach my goal.