999,999+ Max Stat: Even the Gods Can't Stop Me

Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Golden Shadows in the Jungle

The world was starting to wake up, with the thinning of the barrier around the underworld and the world in between.

In Tokyo, salarymen running late for the train looked up to see skyscraper-sized centipedes crawling out of the bay. The creatures smashed through piers and docks, their segmented bodies scraping against concrete as they dragged themselves inland.

Emergency sirens blared while helicopters circled overhead, but the centipedes kept moving, crushing cars and knocking over streetlights like they owned the place.

In the Alps, ski resorts shut down after avalanches tore open the mountainside and revealed burrowing trolls. The things were huge, gray-skinned, and hungry.

They treated cable cars like snacks, ripping them off their lines and shaking out the passengers before eating the metal frames. Rescue teams pulled back fast once they saw what they were dealing with.

In the Amazon, entire logging camps vanished overnight. When search parties arrived, they found vine-covered ruins instead of tents and machinery.

Locals swore the area was now guarded by jaguar-headed warriors who moved like shadows and killed without making a sound. The reports flooded every news channel and forum.

Governments blamed climate change. Conspiracy sites called it the end times. Amon would have known exactly what it was. But Amon was half a world away, probably punching something while drunk.

Cheering did not have time to worry about any of that. He was knee-deep in mud in the Darién Gap, swatting mosquitoes the size of his thumb, and wondering why he ever left the Himalayas.

The Gap did not care about passports, plans, or prayers. It was a lawless stretch of jungle where the only rules were "don’t die" and "if you do die, do it quietly so the smugglers don’t have to bury you." Cheering had joined a ragtag group of migrants three days earlier.

They moved in a loose column, sharing water and watching for snakes and bandits. Nobody asked too many questions. Everyone just wanted to get through.

On the second night, around a tiny fire that barely kept the bugs away, the old woman joined them.

She called herself Mama Lira. Short, wrinkled, with eyes sharp as broken glass. She carried a woven bag full of bones and feathers. From the moment she sat down, she would not stop staring at Cheering’s hair.

"Golden one," she whispered when the others had fallen asleep. "The prophecy spoke of the golden immortal who would free the old gods. The one with hair like sunlight and eyes that remember Eden.

You have come at last..."

Cheering nearly choked on his ration bar. "Lady, I’m just a guy from a village. Maybe you’re talking about my friend Amon. He’s the golden one. I’m... Cheering. I color my hair sometimes." He argued, but it didn’t work.

Mama Lira ignored him. She grabbed his face with surprising strength and stared into his eyes. They had turned a faint golden after that incident, another weird side effect nobody had warned him about.

"You carry the scent," she hissed. "The locked gods stir. They need the keys you will bring. Free them, free them all. The monsters will turn quiet. The world will not end."

Cheering gently pried her hands off. "Look, I just need to reach America. My friend needs me. So I’m not freeing any gods. I don’t even have a key to my own house half the time."

But Mama Lira was already packing her bag. "We are near... The jungle knows. They know, and they will test you."

She was right.

The first test came at dawn.

A spear whistled out of the trees and buried itself in the ground right between Cheering’s legs. The shaft vibrated from the impact, and right after, a booming voice followed.

"Golden whelp! The traitor who chained us!"

A man dropped from the canopy like he owned gravity itself. Tall, muscular, wearing modern tactical gear mixed with ancient Greek armor. A glowing lightning bolt tattoo pulsed on his forearm.

"I am Darius, son of Zeus! You, with the jailer’s stench! You will die here, and your essence will feed my father’s return!"

Cheering stared. "Zeus? Like... thunder guy? I thought you people were myths."

Darius roared and charged, spear crackling with electricity. The air around the tip popped and sparked.

Cheering had zero training in fighting demigods, but he had months of surviving yeti breeding season next to the strongest man alive.

He dodged the spear thrust by a few inches, grabbed Darius by the wrist, and slammed him into the nearest tree hard enough to crack the trunk, the bark exploding outward.

To his surprise, something popped up in his vision—the same faint System Amon mumbled about.

It seemed he was telling the truth after all.

[Strength +3]

[You have stunned a minor demigod. Experience gained.]

Cheering ignored it all. For now.

Darius got up faster than he should have. Blood trickled from his nose, but he grinned like a maniac. "Not bad. The legends about you are indeed true!"

What followed was less an epic duel and more a jungle bar brawl. Darius kept charging his fists with crackling lightning and throwing punches that left burn marks on the air.

Cheering kept throwing him around, into mud, into vines, into a very angry nest of hornets that swarmed the demigod for a solid thirty seconds.

He used every dirty trick Amon had taught him back in the mountains: eye gouges, knee strikes, and one solid headbutt that made both of them see stars.

Darius tried to call down a bolt of lightning.

"Father, heed my call!" he shouted.

The sky rumbled but nothing came. The humidity was too thick, or maybe the jungle itself did not like him.

"Well, that was kind of lame."

Cheering took the opening, tackled him into the dirt, and wrapped the demigod’s own spear shaft around his arms and torso like a makeshift rope. Darius struggled but could not break free.

"You are indeed worthy and powerful," Darius growled, still tied up. "You are indeed the one who locked my father, and his father, and his father before him."

"Yeah, not really," Cheering said, wiping sweat and mud from his face. "I told you, not him. Just a normal guy. Now tell your cousins to leave us alone. I’m on a strict schedule. I can feel them all around the jungle."

Darius laughed, low and bitter. "They will not listen. The blood calls."

They came anyway.

Over the next two days, more demigods hunted them through the Gap. The first was someone who called herself daughter of Athena, who set traps made of living roots that burst from the ground and tried to drag people underground. No powers like the one before, but cool traps.

Cheering stepped on one and it wrapped around his ankle. He ripped it apart with his bare hands, the golden tint in his hair catching the sunlight as he did it. The woman stepped out from behind a tree, shield raised, and they fought among the roots.

She was smart, feinting, using the terrain, but Cheering was simply stronger. He broke her shield with a single punch and pinned her against a rock until she yielded.

Next came twins, who named themselves sons of Hermes. They moved quick, but that was it. Stealing supplies and taunting the group with their mediocre speed.

Now Cheering was sure these people were not the so-called demigods. They were just crackheads, it seemed, giving themselves titles and names.

Roleplay, is that it? Some of them look like hunters, but that’s it. Most of them are just... humans.

One would snatch a water bottle while the other kicked dirt in Cheering’s face. It was annoying as hell.

But he finally caught one by waiting for the predictable pattern.

He grabbed him mid-sprint and used him as a club to hit his brother. Both twins ended up hogtied and complaining loudly.

The quiet kid who claimed to be a son of Hades was the strangest. He kept trying to summon skeletons from the mud, but...

Most of them just fell apart in the humidity, bones clattering uselessly.

The few that stood shambled forward slowly. Cheering walked up, punched them to pieces, and then sat the kid down for a talk.

"Aren’t you just a weak necromancer?"

"No! I’m the son of the king of the under—"

"Yeah, shut up. Look, kid, you’re what, sixteen? Go home. This isn’t worth it."

The boy looked at the broken bones and shrugged. "My dad said this was important."

"Your dad sounds like a pretend asshole," Cheering replied. "Who lets his son dwell in his chunibyo."

Each fight was messy, ridiculous, and strangely funny. Cheering was not elegant. He punched, grappled, headbutted, and once used a live caiman as an improvised weapon, swinging the thrashing reptile into a charging demigod’s chest.

The caiman did not appreciate it and bit both of them before escaping back into the water. But every victory made him stronger. The System notices grew clearer.

[Agility +2]

[Endurance +4]

[You have defeated a minor demigod. Minor lightning resistance unlocked.]

[Golden Mark intensifies. Allies within range gain minor morale boost.]

His golden hair practically glowed after the fifth fight. Mama Lira kept muttering prayers and collecting "blessed" teeth from the defeated demigods. She stored them in her bag like trophies.

The original migrants and the traffickers watched all of this with wide eyes. By the end of the second day, a couple of the ones who called themselves demigods switched sides.

One of the Hermes twins rubbed his bruised jaw and said, "Better to follow him than Darius. I’d be spared his ass-kicking." The Athena daughter joined too, though she kept complaining about Cheering’s lack of tactics.

They reached the edge of the Gap battered, exhausted, and now officially wanted by several gangs with different mythological names.

Cheering’s clothes were torn, his arms covered in scratches and electrical burns that were already healing faster than they should.

He looked at the small but growing group behind him: migrants, the traffickers, two switched demigods, and Mama Lira, who would not stop smiling like she had won the lottery.

"Why," Cheering muttered as they crossed into Central America under cover of night, "why did he leave his mark on me? I just wanted to get to America. Now I’ve got these losers at my throat and people following me like I know what I’m doing."

Mama Lira walked beside him, her bag of bones rattling. "The jungle tested you. You passed. The old ones stir close. When you reach your friend, the keys will turn."

Cheering sighed. "I don’t have keys. I have a friend who probably needs bail money and a stiff drink. Let’s just keep moving.

Haaaa! Why won’t anybody listen to me!!"