WebNovels

Chapter 8 - The Second Coming Of The Sun (2)

I woke to sunlight.

The shutters of the cabin were cracked, thin beams of gold spilling through them and warming the wooden floor. I groaned as I pushed myself up from the fur blankets, blinking against the brightness. For a second, I half expected the pod, the fluid, the suffocating glass. Instead, I had a roof, a bed, and the smell of smoke still lingering from last night's fire.

And, unfortunately, I was still buck naked.

I caught my reflection in a warped mirror propped against the wall. I froze.

My body wasn't the same. The thin, bony frame I'd dragged through the snow was gone. In its place was a form… leaner. My shoulders broader, muscles taut under pale skin, faint lines of abs actually showing. My first abs. Ever. In both of my lives. 

My face… still androgynous, delicate, almost doll-like. But my blue eyes had changed—gold glowed faintly in their depths, like a spark hiding behind ice. My hair, once just a pale blue cascade, now shimmered with streaks of red threaded through the blue. Fire bleeding into water.

I was alive. 

I felt alive. The most I've actually felt alive since I got into this world, as I felt like any of the sleeping drugs that had still been in my system, had been flushed out completely. 

Damn, it felt great. 

I ran my hand down, frowned, and sighed. Yeah, still no johnny down there. Probably for the best since with the events that were to come, I wouldn't really even have enough time to use it. 

But still, as a man, what were you if you didn't have a johnny? This was something I'd have to fix maybe after I get that thing from the northern area of this forest. 

Problem for later. For now, I was alive. Alive, and—

I leaned against the wall, forcing myself to remember. Last night. The chest. The orb of light. The system prompt.

[The Heritage of the Sun God, Helios].

I took a deep breath, and felt something inside my chest, where my heart or incomplete core had been, rise as I took my breath, invigorating me with newfound strength. 

Well, looks like Helios's Core settled in pretty nicely inside me. Good, I was a little worried that it'd have adverse effects since I wasn't really a human, and Helios was well known to disdain most races other than humans, despite being the Sun God - a being literally responsible to shine light upon everything and everyone in the world. 

Anyways, this heritage was something I'd written it as a three-part inheritance: the Sun God's Core, the Sun God's Third Eye, and finally the Sun itself. No one had ever claimed it in canon. Not Leon. Not his party. I'd dropped it in as world flavor, forgot to track it, and when a reader comment pointed out the loose thread, I'd quietly deleted it. Out of sight, out of mind.

But luckily for me, it hadn't been deleted in this world. And, thank god for that. 

It was real. And it was mine.

There were three "forgotten power-ups" like this scattered through the story, all things I abandoned midway. Loose treasures waiting to be found. They wouldn't butterfly effect canon because no one had ever reached them anyway. Which meant I could grab them all. No guilt. No consequences.

Helios's Heritage was something that would greatly help me offensively, especially since I had already possessed great affinity for the fire element, and as for my lightning element, it'd be quite a while still before I could boost it like this, but once I did, I should be able to unlock one of the rarest secondary elements after fusion, but that was all still far into the future. 

Helios, the Sun God had been an old god, one of the titans before the current pantheon. Dead, defeated, abandoned by the world. But even dead gods left dangerous toys behind. If I could collect all three pieces, I wouldn't just survive—I'd break into the world's top 50, guaranteed. The "Sun" of Helios alone was absurd, if I remembered my own damn notes correctly.

I muttered the word that mattered:

"Status."

The window appeared, glowing faintly before my eyes.

Name: Adam Godwin

Race: Homunculus

Title: [Interdimensional Wanderer] / [The Second Coming of the Sun] (Switch Y/N?)

Occupation: None

Attributes

Strength: IX

Endurance: IX

Vitality: IX

Agility: IX

Wisdom: IX

Intellect: IX

Mana: IX

Aura: IX

Core: Helios's Core [Divine Ranked] 

Titles: 

-[Interdimensional Wanderer] [In Effect]

-[The Second Coming of the Sun] [NEW!] [Switch Y/N?]

Skills:

- [Helios's Stars] [NEW!]

My breath caught. Every stat had jumped from X to IX. From weakest to apprentice-level, overnight. Aura, too. My core was still incomplete, but I wasn't crawling anymore—I was standing.

Two new gifts blinked below the attributes.

Title: [The Second Coming of the Sun] [New!]

Boon: While under the sun, gain minor increases to stats and regenerative healing.

Skill: [Helios's Stars] [NEW!]

Manifest a condensed orb of Helios's flame. Size, number, and power scale with rank.

I switched titles immediately. The Interdimensional Wanderer gave me sensitivity to energy, but this… this gave me strength I could feel. The sunlight streaming through the window poured into me like fuel. Muscles tightened. Wounds I hadn't noticed knitting faster.

I raised my hand and whispered, "[Helios's Stars]!"

Mana drained immediately. Before me, a baseball-sized orb of flame and light spun into existence, wisps of fire arcing off its surface. It hummed with power, heat brushing against my face, warming my skin.

In canon, a character who got this skill had eventually conjured hundreds of these suns, each the size of a car, and incinerated entire armies. Me? I could only manage one baseball for a few seconds before my knees wobbled.

Small steps.

I canceled it with a thought, panting softly. Then I stood.

Or tried to. The first thing I noticed was how much lighter I felt. Yesterday, walking had been like dragging concrete blocks. Today, my body moved like I was wearing springs. I tested it, flexing, bouncing on my toes.

Then I jumped.

"FUCK!"

I hadn't meant to jump that high. My head smashed straight through the cabin roof, wood splintering as my body dangled stupidly from the ceiling.

For a long moment, I just hung there, staring at the sky. The sun stared back, smug as hell. I could almost hear it laughing.

Somewhere below, a rock deer froze, staring at me with blank stone eyes before galloping away.

Perfect. Now even the local wildlife thought I was an idiot.

Groaning, I wriggled free and landed back on the floor, looking up at the jagged hole in the roof. Another problem to fix.

Then my stomach growled, loud and insistent. I remembered the deer, remembered the toughness of earth-element beasts, and grimaced. Hunting wasn't optional anymore.

I turned to the wall. An old spear hung there, plain wood tipped with steel. Next to it, a rack of clothes: rough breeches, fur-lined boots, a thick winter jacket. Someone had left this cabin for a reason, but that was a mystery for another day.

I pulled on the clothes, tied the laces, hefted the spear in my hand. Not perfect, but better than running around bare-assed in the snow.

I opened the door. Cold air rushed in. The stone forest stretched before me, as the cold wind breezed by me. "I'm so glad for my natural resistance to cold."

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