18. Feats and Divinity

"Good afternoon, class, and welcome to your first lecture at Olympus Academy."

Seeing the eager look on the hundreds of students, the lecturer lightly chuckled.

He could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn't want to waste time on simple introductions, so he wouldn't torture them with boring details either.

Clearing his throat, the professor spoke up.

"The first lecture will be on the most important thing you will learn here: your strength and where it comes from. Of course, this includes how to grow stronger."

The second the professor said this, the trainees couldn't control themselves and broke out into chatter, but how could you blame them?

This was the thing that had drawn them here to struggle and train.

This was their path to true power!

Fortunately, the chatter only lasted for a brief moment before the students controlled themselves.

Seeing this, the professor smiled before continuing his lecture.

"All of you here have the blood of the gods flowing in your bodies and must realize that you are different from regular mortals. This feeling would have only become more evident after awakening your divine bloodline through the awakening ceremony.

The blood of the gods grants us a special advantage that regular mortals don't have. Any training we do would be at an accelerated rate and magnified, but if it was simply that, then descendants of the gods wouldn't be anything special. At best, we would be slightly stronger mortals.

And in fact, for a period of time, this was how descendants of the gods lived. The further and further you were born from your first demigod ancestor, the weaker you would become.

The gods, in their infinite grace and mercy, saw this problem and thought about how to fix it.

But this wasn't a simple problem. The gods, like the predecessors before them—the primordials and titans—were born with their power, but in addition to this power, they were born with something else that helped separate them.

Divinity.

Inside the gods lay a burning flame of divinity, allowing them to accept the worship and praise of all beings, enabling them to claim their rightful positions as rulers of the universe!

As descendants of the gods, although we don't possess a divine true fire, our blood is still able to gain and contain fragments of divinity, and this was enough.

The gods discovered this and would grant their descendants some of their purified divinity, allowing them to grow and strengthen themselves beyond their mortal limits at an alarmingly fast rate."

As the professor spoke, he brought out a fist-sized see-through bottle, but inside lay a swirling deep golden liquid that enchanted anyone who laid eyes on it.

Instantly, every student present felt their thoughts grow itchy as a strange sense of hunger started to well up from within them, but this hunger didn't come from their stomachs but instead their own blood!

"Ambrosia—the food of the gods."

"It is divinity condensed and made into physical form for the consumption of divine descendants. Without the formation of ambrosia, simply accepting divinity would lead to a whole host of problems.

Ambrosia is helpful, but simply accepting divinity can only take you so far.

Divinity in itself is not something destined to be controlled by mortals. If you want to continue mindlessly accepting divinity, your body will reach a limit, and if you continue past it, your body will burst and explode.

To continue to accept divinity and tread the path to the gods, you must shed your mortal coil and transform your being.

Divine descendants are classified into Heroic Ranks, and each time you ascend a rank, you must break past a mortal limiter known as a divine shackle.

The power of divine descendants and plain divinity alone is not enough to break a divine shackle, so a theory was proposed: What if divine descendants generated their own divinity with the reaction between their own divinity and the gods'? Would it be enough to generate a transformation strong enough to break the divine shackle?

Divine descendants don't have a divine flame to accept the worship of countless beings, so the gods came up with an alternative.

The gods grant each of their descendants an ember of the fire of creation, a fragment of the eternal flame burning in the hearth located at the center of Mount Olympus.

With the flame of creation acting as a nexus, all divine descendants are linked to a pseudo fire of divinity, but instead of accepting the worship and faith of countless beings, they must do something similar.

Spread renown!

Spread your tale through the world, accomplishing heroic feats of renown worth admiration and awe amongst the endless masses. Only then would you be allowed to take steps to become heroes, demigods, and even the gods themselves!

Why do you think the powerful heroes of legend were always adventuring, slaying beasts, fighting and starting massive wars, and even risking their lives saving beauties?

It was all for Renown!

As soon as you complete a feat of renown, you can instantly break your divine shackles, and from then on, there are no limits to the levels your strength can reach.

If you have the talent and ambition, the realm of the gods is no longer a ridiculous dream!

If you don't believe what I am saying, then you can just look at one of the greatest alumni of Olympus Academy, one of the few men to ascend to godhood!

Like every other Divine Descendant, he completed 12 feats of renown, spreading his name throughout the world with many of you knowing them right now.

You may know them as the 12 Labors.

As you can guess, this man is none other than Lord Hercules, the god of strength and power!"