Monster? No, I'm a Cultivator! (Percy Jackson)

Ocean Song stood there heroically.

The building creaked and groaned as half of it had been severed from its foundation. Of course, before he made a move, Ocean Song swept his Divine Sense out to make sure that he wasn't just accidentally killing a bunch of random people.

Sure, many cultivators wouldn't care about collateral damage or bystanders.

But Ocean Song was many things; most of all, he was not an asshole.

However, to Ocean Song's surprise, the manager wasn't dead. He put a good deal of strength in that slash in hopes of settling things easily.

The manager's body twitched and shifted; half of it had been cut off, but with a jerk, both sides of it had wiggling masses shoot out and pull together.

They were vines, thorny, wiggling vines.

Ocean Song was thankful in this moment that he wasn't Japanese, because technically, it was the Manager's turn next.

The Lotus Eaters from the myths and legends were specifically not any sort of monsters or immortal beings. In fact, they were basically just described as normal humans, certain people off the principal of Greece.

Sure, they had a spot in myths with a supernatural element, but they were decidedly human.

Perhaps he should have expected that a 'people' who were basically human, having lived this long, had given up their humanity.

Of course he knew that the manager and his ilk weren't normal anymore. But he didn't give much thought to what they were.

Plant Monsters was a new one for Ocean Song.

The two halves of the Manager were fully rejoined and he looked non too pleased.

His right arm burst open; a gigantic tentacle of thorny vines emerged in the most grotesque way imaginable, and Ocean Song braced himself as it came right at him.

Like a whip, it cracked, and the air shattered, sending Ocean Song flying backward through many different walls and obstacles until he came to a stop on the other side of the building.

Thankfully, the debris, stone, and metal that held the building together had crumbled to finally stop him.

He got up, rotating his arm and cracking his neck. There was a clean hole from one end of the hotel and casino to the other end where the two monsters could see one another. Only the occasional pipe bursted with flowing water or rebar support to disrupt the view.

Ocean Song, standing up, brushed himself off. "Alright, that was a good hit; I felt that one." He acknowledged his opponent at a minimum. "Truly, the world is filled with crouching tigers and hidden dragons." Frankly, he didn't know there were any monsters that could actually body him like just happened.

Sure, he wasn't going to block or prevent it as per the rules, but even so.

The manager's face split open, and a lotus not dissimilar to the ones that people have been eating had popped out, and the combination of screeching and a jumbled mess somehow formed words as he spoke. "You destroyed my hotel!!!" It roared as the writhing tentacles launched out again en masse.

Each one of them tore through concrete and steel like it were paper, and Ocean Song's vision was filled with nothing but the thorny and consuming vines.

They wrapped around him and slammed him into the ground multiple times until he was pushed through the floors, tons of concrete and debris crashing down on him.

Ocean Song quickly burst through it, soaring upward and slashing through several dozen of the vines. "Fellow Daoist, it was my turn to attack. Are you breaking the rules?" His eyes narrowed.

It roared something incoherent and continued to attack, as the building around them. The manager seemed to lose all rationality, or perhaps he was just overcome with anger as he continuously laid an onslaught onto Ocean Song, uncaring for everything else.

Ocean Song carefully navigated the writhing vines, avoiding them with quick and precise movements, deflecting them where necessary. Eventually, he returned to the original spot as the manager rampaged through the building, chasing after him.

There, Ocean Song found the goddess who had not yet moved; however, her fury was about to erupt.

"Am I so irrelevant that I am ignored when I am standing here?" The Goddess spoke; her words were not loud; they didn't reverberate through reality; she didn't display her divine might, but they carried a certain weight to them as her projection trembled.

Ocean Song cast his gaze towards her and nearly took a step back out of instinct. 

The manager was lost, his rationality seemingly depleted; his mass of vines began to bore through the building, and Ocean Song's Divine Sense could follow them. He was grabbing at the other Lotus Eaters and seemingly subsuming or taking hold of their own bodies and adding the mass onto his own.

"Are my words simply nonsense?" She spoke again, seemingly completely uncaring about the situation around her as the building continued to creak and groan with every movement each of the monsters made.

Yet, Ocean Song's Divine Sense could pick up that every non-involved person in the vicinity had a sort of bubble of water around them that protected them from the fight.

And it wasn't by his hand.

"When was it that I became a joke?" She asked as a gigantic mass of tentacles burst through every corner of the room, grabbing Ocean Song and swallowing him up. They clenched tightly, slamming him into every wall, until they took him and continuously slammed him into the ground.

They were relatively high up, and he had already destroyed a few floors, but now, Ocean Song was sent all the way downward. With each pounding of the mass of tentacles, Ocean Song burst through another concrete and stone flooring until he found himself hitting the ground floor.

His body broke a blackjack table where hundreds of guests, both mundane mortals and various steps of supernatural beings, gathered, some hiding, some unconcerned, but many trembling in fear.

An earthquake, a natural disaster? Many of them didn't know what was going on before their eyes, only that the building was being destroyed around them.

It started with the screams, as many of the thrones present had mundane backgrounds but could peer through the mists with enough trauma.

The vines broke through the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. They all shot out randomly; perhaps it was intentional, and the manager was writing everything off.

Surprisingly, Ocean Song, in that moment, noticed something that made his eyes widen. The original goal of his, the two children of Hades, was on the ground floor not far away. They were hiding under a table and completely aware of what they were seeing, even if they couldn't quite understand the context.

He held his blade aloft, and the faint sound of the ocean had drowned out the destruction. "Ocean Sword, Second Form—Chaotic Tides." Hundreds of precise slashes filled the room, and thousands of pieces of the vines went soaring through the air.

There was a strange silence that followed. It was as if, for everyone watching, all sound had been replaced by the ocean's waves before returning to normal.

"Cyclops." The Goddess Styx spoke from her original spot many floors upwards, yet hearable by Ocean Song. "You owe me a debt."

Head Song's attention was taken by her, even as the mass of vines reemerged, focusing solely on Ocean Song as they burst out from above and slammed into him, each with the strength to tear through steel.

"I am tired of my presence being ignored. What I want…is punishment. No more will oaths being taken on my name go ignored. No more will promises and debts go unsettled." Her words still reached him despite being completely surrounded and assaulted by the manager. 

Styx wasn't doing this out of a bout of anger. This had been something weighing on her for many years. And she finally reached the tipping point where a monster who made an oath in front of her had completely gone back on his words and treated her as if she were ignorable.

She, of course, had more than enough capability to immediately smite this uppity monster with a snap of her fingers. But at this moment, she had another thought that festered within her mind.

"You are an idiot, but you are genuine and trustworthy." It was the conclusion she came to after the short time they spent together. "So I offer this to you. Be my champion; administer punishment to those who break their oaths in my name."

Styx was able to see through the monster with ease. Of course, that didn't mean she understood everything about him, nor did she understand what exactly he was doing to himself. But she could understand him as a thinking and living entity.

Not to mention, she needed someone strong enough to enforce her punishments. He may not be strong enough now to threaten the gods, but just from the time he first jumped into her waters and now, how long had passed, and how much stronger had he become?

A wager on his future potential?

She wouldn't agree with the term; it was more an expectation of what he could become.

"Do you accept?"

Ocean Song was a Cultivator.

Swearing oaths on the Heavenly Dao wasn't anything strange to him. What was strange was swearing an oath on a concept like the River Styx and it not being enforced. Perhaps the vast majority of beings would suffer if they broke an oath in her name, but if there was even one entity that could escape punishment, that rendered the concept moot.

Ocean Song wasn't oblivious to what she was asking.

To Ocean Song, this was something that needed to be corrected.

If you make a promise, you should follow through.

If you make an oath, the oathbreaker should be punished.

To him, it was common sense.

"I accept." He spoke, and the mass of vines around him turned into thousands and thousands of tiny pieces, scattering all around the hall again. "With conditions." He added, because he wasn't going to enter into an agreement with the Goddess of Oaths unless everything was properly flushed out.

He may be an idiot, but he wasn't stupid.

And since the Goddess had finally made her stance clear as the Manager was the one to break her oath, Ocean Song stopped holding back.

His back leg slid back, and he grabbed his sword into a proper stance as his Qi erupted.

The manager came at him with the same reckless abandon as before, its face split open and the tendrils of the lotus reaching for him as if wanting to consume him.

A dragon's roar reverberated through the building, its ethereal body coiled around the room until it wrapped around Ocean Song's blade.

"Flood Dragon Soars to the Sky!" He roared heroically; the dragon was released from his blade along with a wave from his sword, and everything above the bottom floor of the hotel disappeared.

Quite a few 'bubbles' came slowly floating down, and they popped, releasing all the people that had been staying on the upper floors that weren't part of the casino.

The sun shined down on them because the ceiling no longer existed. The hotel and casino barely existed as well at this point; you couldn't even point at four complete sets of walls.

The wind that blew into the room made his robes billow heroically, and the slight bit of water that came drizzling back down from the destroyed plumbing only further exacerbated his image.

Yes, Ocean Song was pleased with himself.

Truly, if he weren't a proper cultivator, then there wouldn't be so many traumatized eyes staring at him.

(Line Break)

The Goddess Styx, for the first time in a very long time, marched up to Olympus.

Of course, she couldn't actually leave the Underworld. She was bound to it in more ways than one. But sending an image out was rather easy, as shown by the earlier mess.

The bellboy that connected Olympus with the Empire State Building, the operator of the 'elevator,' nearly peed himself as the irate goddess walked into his elevator and told him to take her up.

Could she more easily appear on the mountain? Of course, but she was here to make a point.

And at no moment did she hide herself. Quite the opposite, in fact; she made sure everyone knew she was there.

The bellboy made a small prayer when the elevator finally reached its destination, and she got off.

And she walked the entire way, step by step, even as dozens of godly eyes turned to her.

No one barred her path the entire way. In fact, many didn't even know who she was; rarely did she ever leave the confines of the underworld.

She barged right into the throne room of Olympus, the gods staring at her with mixes of confusion and surprise.

"Styx?" Zeus called out to her, offering a much softer tone than he normally uses to address the others.

"Zeus." She greeted him back.

They had a…complicated relationship.

When Zeus began his campaign against the Titans, even before his siblings were freed, Styx was the very first one to pledge herself to his side.

That earned her his goodwill beyond what words could say.

"I have been wronged."

The others were silent, as if to watch a good show. 

"Tell me who wronged you; they will be punished." Zeus said righteously, completely oblivious to the various looks being sent his way.

The funny thing was that he fully and genuinely meant it.

"How many times must I suffer an oath made on my name that comes with no punishment when it is broken, Zeus?" She ignored him, asking.

Zeus realized immediately what she was talking about, and the entire room tensed up.

"Styx, be careful with what you say. Some things can't be taken back." It was a not-so-subtle warning.

"Not counting myself, there are only four of you who have not broken an oath sworn on my name." She continued.

Many of the deities in the room looked a bit uncomfortable by that. Some of them were unconcerned; some had the presence of mind to look a bit sheepish.

"Love is whimsical." Aphrodite defended herself, knowing which were directed at her. There may have been one or two occasions where she persuaded Zeus to get out of a punishment for an oath she made.

Styx's head snapped towards Aphrodite. "How wholesome." She drawled with clear sarcasm. "From this day forward, any child of love will not be crossing my waters, forever barred from entering the realms beyond."

Every deity froze at her proclamation.

Even Aphrodite had her eyes widen at her words. It was common knowledge that every soul needed to cross the River Styx to reach the proper afterlife. To deny that was to deny the souls a proper rest, a torture that was hard to describe.

Aphrodite was the goddess of love.

Aphrodite loved her children.

Anger flashed across her face. "You can't do that." She said sternly.

"I believe I just did." Styx didn't back down from the Goddess of Love's pressure emanating out. "Do remember, I am a goddess of the underworld; your words have no power over me, Olympian."

In truth, there were only two gods that she answered to; one of them was Hades, and the other was Zeus. 

No one said a word, many of them wanted to throw their weight around at a perceived 'lesser goddess', but the threat of none of their children passing on properly was….daunting.

Despite their actions, despite everything, the gods here loved their children in their own way.

Even Artemis, the goddess without any real children feared what would happen to her hunters if she said the wrong words right now.

It was a peculiar situation that any of them were 'stronger' than Styx in an objective way, yet none of them had the courage to rebuke her.

She served a very important role that couldn't be replaced.

Her silence up to this point was all because she just accepted the status quo. It was an 'obvious' conclusion, wasn't it? She had to answer to Zeus, so she very well couldn't punish him. And by extension, it was exceedingly difficult to punish any of the Olympian gods without his express and direct permission.

Effectively, she had no real teeth.

Then comes along a stupid Cyclops who throws the idea of the 'status quo' right out the window and then proceeds to dance on it.

If that foolish mortal monster was willing to defy Zeus, to stand up to him, why was she just wallowing in her own self-pity for so many centuries?

However, Styx wasn't done.

"I am no longer acknowledging oaths made in my name." She hit the final nail into the proverbial coffin.

It may seem like a much less disastrous statement compared to barring their children from a proper afterlife. But this one in particular was aimed directly at all the gods here.

It's an oddly contradictory belief.

Oaths on the River Styx were absolute and inviolable. Yet at the same time, there were known cases where it was completely ignored.

The gods often used an oath on the Styx to settle grievances, misunderstandings, and conflicts. If that was suddenly taken away, a lot of 'trust' between them would unravel.

Hestia, who had been tending the Heart, nearly crushed a few coals. 

She was more than aware of the role an Oath on the Styx played when ensuring that her home remained standing.

"You overstep, Styx." Zeus's voice didn't boom like when he raged, but it still carried a thunderous tone.

"Am I not deserving of this, Zeus?" She looked at him, unwavering. 

Zeus silently studied her.

There were very few that received any sort of…gentleness from the King of Gods. His mother was one such exception, and it would be extremely difficult for her to do anything to elicit anger from him. The second were the Dryads that raised him as step-parents.

Styx, she wasn't on that level, but she was the very first that pledged loyalty to him. He was a young god back then; he was ignorant about a lot of things, more humble, and more naive. And Styx taught him a lot; she gave him counsel, and she pointed in certain directions that helped him with the beginnings of his rebellion against his father.

And all of that was when he had nothing to offer but promises.

Zeus couldn't help but feel nostalgic for how young he was back then.

Would he be king without her? He believed that it would have still happened if she never existed. But she held a special sentiment in his heart that was hard to voice.

"What do you want?" He kept his anger in check for the sentiment he still had for her. If it were someone else making these kinds of demands, perhaps he would have already introduced them to his lightning.

"Either my oaths are upheld by all, or they are upheld by none." Styx said firmly. "That includes you as well, Zeus." The blasphemous words that made the King of God's fingers crackle with lightning, even if he didn't immediately voice his displeasure.

The fact that she hadn't been rebuked or smote by him was already telling by everyone there. All the gods realized, that there were going to be some changes going forward.

"From this moment on, I will be upholding any oaths made upon my name." Styx could see Zeus's slight hesitation, so to assuage his ego, she offered a middle ground and would…overlook certain past grievances. 

Essentially, the board was wiped clean, but any further breaking of oaths would be met with immediate reprisal.

Yes, no one there was an idiot; they understood explicitly what she meant and how she was doing it to smooth things over.

"And I have chosen a Champion to dispatch punishment should the need arise." She couldn't constantly be coming and going from the Underworld. 

There were no protests.

A rare occurrence of the gods being cowed by a threat and no one having the desire to speak up against it.

Styx was one of the very few that held a position capable of leveraging it against all of them. For if they wanted to try and take revenge against her for her own threats, well, they would have to ask Hades for permission.

For perhaps the first time, the Olympian gods have been strong-armed into compliance. 

And they were completely oblivious to the fact that the source of this was all because of a singular Cyclops.

(Line Break)

"Uncle!" Ocean Song's words came through a makeshift altar.

Hades sat upon his throne; he had been waiting for either his nephew's return or a call. He immediately perked up. "Do you have them?"

"Yes." Ocean Song replied.

"Good." Hades, while having some faith in his nephew, was relieved to hear everything went well. "And there were no problems?"

".....There were one or two hiccups along the way."

Hades could accept that. He just cared that his children were now safe. "Where are you now? I can help you bring them back or give you directions." He was still being paranoid, but it's best to err on the side of caution.

"Las Vegas."

"Are you still in the casino?"

"...No."

"Where are you at then?" Well, perhaps it was best to get his children away from there as fast as possible. But as a parent, he didn't want his underaged children running around Las Vegas; there were many dirty places they could find themselves.

"I'm…at the place the casino used to be." Ocean Song replied.

Hades' eye twitched. "Are my children unharmed?"

"Yes." Ocean Song replied immediately. "They are completely unharmed and unhurt."

Okay, Hades calmed himself.

The important thing was that his children were safe; he would give his nephew a beating later depending on what he hears, but at the very least, he's thankful that it all worked out.

"Uncle." Ocean Song spoke up again. "What do I do with the other 25 demigods?"

".....What?"

(Line Break)

A/N

Ocean Song: Mission failed successfully!

Hades: Internal groaning.

A couple of things since I did a few things this chapter, and I wanted to just express my thoughts. Lotus Eaters, it seems really weird that they had an entire sort of 'thing' in modern day if they weren't some weird type of creature or immortal being. The myths just described them as a type of people, nothing more. So in my mind, it stand to reason that if they persisted to modern day doing the whole Lotus eating thing, they had to have become something more. Obviously, the books were just reproducing the myths and legends in a modern setting, but I couldn't just point at that as proper in-story reasoning.

Second, Oaths on the Styx. In the very first book, we see two instances of it being broken. Both Poseidon and Zeus broke the oath without any proper punishment. And the other gods seemed so apathetic towards it. Even Chiron didn't treat it like a big deal, as if it happens from time to time that they just break an oath on the Styx for whatever reason. Which contradicts the sort of reverence of how they talk about how sacred an oath on the Styx is. It's a weird contradiction that I don't recall ever really being addressed. So Styx finally had a little push when she got fed up and decided to do something about it. 

Anyways, that's just my thoughts on the two things in case people were confused with the takes I had.

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