Hephaestus's Request (2)
"Uweh…?"
Of course, after hearing our story, that was the sound Danae made.
She'd been right in the middle of suspecting my relationship with Achilles — and not content with that, she'd been on the verge of driving the nail home and prying the whole truth out of us. Then those two suddenly announced they were leaving on a trip, and she clearly had no idea how she was supposed to react.
She'd opposed us on pure reflex, wearing an expression that said she didn't understand a thing, so that night I slept with Danae, mixing our bodies together until her mood settled. Once I promised I'd tell her everything after we got back, she finally looked convinced and gave us her blessing. By that point she'd pretty much figured out my relationship with Achilles, but she handled it shrewdly — If clever little you aren't saying anything, there must be a reason — and left it alone.
She really is a woman of remarkable consideration…
If there's a reason I need to conduct myself properly day to day, it's because of people like her…
After securing Danae's permission, the moment morning came I ran straight to the agora and announced that the trials would be postponed for a while. Since I'd also been handling the temple work, people fretted at first — but once I told them we'd be back within half a year, they were greatly relieved.
Leaving Argos at all was rare enough, and going this far was a first outside of when I'd set out with Lord Hermes, so from the moment I took that first step it felt wonderfully good and refreshing. Achilles and Epiphos seemed to feel the same — especially Epiphos, pounding the ground in a wild clatter that looked for all the world like a dog fawning on its master.
"Ahaha~! Feeling good, are you?!"
"Prprprpr!!!!"
"Of course you are! You're running side by side with your father! Haha! Your mother feels great too!"
Kyaa-ha!
Achilles whooped at the top of her lungs as she rode our son Epiphos, practically flying across the ground. I followed behind in my black-horse form, hooves clattering, the scenery whipping past so fast it was pure exhilaration. We were tearing through this brutal terrain at a speed no ordinary person could match — even we were a little stunned by it.
Just because we were running fast didn't mean the land stretched out like some medieval fantasy plain. The terrain of ancient Greece was mostly mountains and hills. Nearly eighty percent of it, in fact, which made it punishing ground for the ancients and modern people alike.
You climbed a gently rolling low mountain, came down the other side, and there was another hill; clear that hill and there was another mountain. Beautiful greenery and thick piles of stone everywhere — looking at Greek statues packed with thigh muscle, you realize it was never an exaggeration. Live in a place like this and building serious muscle is just normal. Even when I first arrived in this child's body, it had been abnormally developed for a kid. Nature's greatness, felt all over again.
"Achilles! I don't know the roads well! Even roughly is fine — just tell me which way we're heading!"
"Ah—! Unlike you, we can't swim! Crossing the sea is the last thing on our minds! We'll swing around toward Thebes and go past the water that way! Out of Thebes, across the Boeotian plain, and you're at Delphi! From there, past Mount Parnassus and straight up, and you're in Thessaly! The mountain sitting right on top of Thessaly is Olympus! Hehe, easy enough, right?!"
No. It was hard.
I only managed to understand after opening the Wisdom Pocket.
Still, if you took "just keep running north from Argos" as your baseline, the location of Mount Olympus itself was simple enough. If I were traveling alone, I could just turn into an eagle and fly the whole way.
"After we reforge the arms on Mount Olympus, we head for Iolcos! That's at the eastern tip of Thessaly!"
Mount Olympus and Iolcos both sat inside the big frame of Thessaly, so that was easy to grasp. Fortunately Achilles wasn't the kind of girl who babbled useless information — she just told me the places we'd pass through, which made it easy to organize. If Tetis had been here, she'd have launched into old myth stories, so leaving her at the temple on the excuse that they were short-handed felt like a genuine blessing.
"Hahaha! Hey — you know what?"
While I was fixing our destinations in my head, Achilles suddenly laughed. The look on her face was as lewd as when we did dirty things together, and sure enough, she dropped a bombshell right out of nowhere.
"Suddenly what?"
"Those residents under Mount Olympus I told you about before! I said the women there are ridiculously lewd, remember?!"
"Ah, right."
"That place is seriously incredible?! I almost think if paradise exists in this world, that's it!"
Hearing a girl call a brothel "incredible" caught me a little off guard. I nearly tripped mid-run, but managed to correct my footing and pull up alongside her.
"You didn't go around screwing there, did you?"
"Hm? Of course not. Until I met you, I had zero interest in men!"
"No interest in men?"
"So I rubbed up against the women instead! Rubbing with them was incredible too, you know?!"
Oh. Ohhh…
Dear gods—!
No — praying to the gods here would be a mistake.
They're even worse bastards than this.
"So you never did it with a man, is that it?"
"Were you the type who cares about that?"
"A lot."
"Don't worry. You know what kind of bitch I am. I only know you."
Wink—♡
Achilles winked at me like some tough guy. Looking at that face, it really did seem she hadn't overlapped bodies with any other man. Thinking back, she'd had Tetis with her at the time, so the scenario I'd been imagining probably never had a chance. The women thing was unexpected, but I could let that slide with a generous heart. By modern standards it was still out of bounds — but unfortunately for the record, I was lesbian-OK.
"Did you learn the scented-oil rubbing from there too?"
"That's right~! Those girls have nothing on their minds but filling their lust. Like I said before, Hephaestus's descendants are all premature ejaculators who only focus on blacksmithing — but the women are the complete opposite. They inherited Aphrodite's blood thick and deep, so every last one of them is a beauty, and they're all sex-crazed."
How sex-crazed could they possibly be, I wondered, feeling uneasy. Danae and Achilles already counted as women with abnormal libidos by my standards — was this supposed to mean something beyond even that?
"For example?"
"It's a place every hero's descendant drops by at least once. Even if only for the arms, you can't not go. But hero's descendants live up to the name with strong sex drives too, so they swagger around like, 'If you've got confidence in your lower half, come at me' — and they always end up getting wrecked."
Now I was even more curious. Achilles suddenly cleared her throat, loosened up, and started acting in a thin little voice. She was going to reenact a scene she'd witnessed herself, just for me.
"Oh~! Gallant hero! Welcome to Phlox! Climbing this harsh mountain — you must have a reason worthy of the effort, yes?"
"But of course! Naturally! I am of the bloodline of Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan War! Unlike the feeble descendant of Achilles beside me, I am a true hero among heroes! The moment I was recognized as an adult, I received a prophecy to show the world my great purpose, and so I have arrived here! I hear Hephaestus's descendants gather in this place and forge mighty arms for the descendants of heroes — where do I go?!"
"Future splendid hero, this village is composed solely of our family, and those descendants you speak of are us. Our older and younger brothers are always hammering out arms here, so please, do not rush — why not come to our home, rest from your journey, and shake the rust from your body?"
"I have heard the women of this place inherited Aphrodite's blood very thickly, and are exceedingly beautiful! Looking at your consideration and your form, you are surely of Aphrodite's line!"
"Yes. We spare nothing for heroes. We sustain the village by receiving the affection of strong men like you — so if you wish to meet our family and have arms forged, we humbly ask for one night."
"Oho?! Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! Ha-ha-ha-hak!!!"
Achilles laughed greedily as she faithfully recreated the scene she'd witnessed. With our clever son Epiphos running so well, she had no fear of falling and freely showed me the filthiest expressions. I could feel vividly just how disgusting that man's face must have been at the time.
"So what happened?"
"What do you think happened! The very next day I ran into the guy by chance in Phlox's square!"
This time her face went pale and hollow. The self-proclaimed descendant of Agamemnon had been reduced to something like a mummy, being half-dragged along by the women stuck to either side of him.
"S-save me. Nothing more is coming out…"
"My, it's still standing just fine."
"Stop… don't touch me there… I told you nothing's coming ouuut…"
"This one's bloodline isn't very thick, is it? The hero who came last time could at least still stand on two feet."
"Blood's started coming from the hole, so let's stop now."
"Shall we?"
"I had high hopes. What a disappointment."
And then, she said, they flung him onto the square floor. Seduced by women, spending what was supposed to be one night together — only to have every drop of affection sucked out of him, get scolded for being inadequate, and get dumped in the square.
"A man who bragged about being a hero's descendant. No matter how I look at it, you don't seem mature enough as a hero to receive arms from our family. We won't take your life, so go home and drink some more goat's milk."
With that as the final line, Achilles finished the story, snickering. "I'm a woman, so I didn't get that kind of test," she laughed — but given that she'd ended up overlapping bodies with Aphrodite's descendants herself, she must have scored a full passing grade without even realizing it.
"Before I left the village, there was even a girl who died from a snakebite. Apparently the snake's head looked like a cock, so she stuck it in her hole. It felt so perfectly good she climaxed — and the snake, startled by the vaginal spasms, bit her womb and killed her."
"You're joking."
"Would I say something like this as a joke? And on top of that, the girls who saw her die tried the snake-masturbation method themselves and died too. Only then did Phlox pass a law that you must not masturbate with snakes. When you have to regulate it by actual law, you get a sense of how lewd those girls are, right?"
I nodded over and over, thinking this really was lewdness beyond imagination. Even if you offered me the world, I didn't think I could follow that kind of stunt.
"So I'm warning you in advance — try not to walk around in your adult form. If they catch your true identity by accident, there's no way those girls will sit still. They'll come at you drooling from their mouths and their lower holes. Guaranteed."
"Got it. I'll keep that in mind. ……But you're not jealous, are you?"
"Your horse cock is for my exclusive use! You already know that and you're still asking?!"
"Ugh. So there was one more idiot bitch over here."
"Ufufufu… Ah, right! There was this other story too—!"
Listening to the Phlox stories pouring out of Achilles in a steady stream, we kept pressing on. The more I heard, the more I realized what a spectacle of a village it was, and I couldn't stop marveling the whole way there.
To think a pussy getting bitten to death by a snake was only the beginning…
That place fully deserved to be called a village of abnormal lust…