Athena's True Intentions
After thoroughly draining myself at the Temple of the Hearth, I felt a good deal fresher.
I gently brushed aside the hair covering High Priestess Lynotea's once-innocent face.
Her expression, still drunk on pleasure, came into view.
Tongue lolling, eyes rolled back — she'd fainted clean away.
I smiled and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
Then I changed clothes and left the room.
Ah, that hit the spot.
And I'd gotten some useful information out of her, too.
"Th-the womb of a goddess… a human can't just impregnate it as they please… O-only when the goddess truly accepts and acknowledges it… Nngh♥"
That was probably what the Status Window message had meant.
Hestia's avatar has been completely conquered.
The Review you assign now will be permanently etched into her body.
That message had ultimately been about whether pregnancy was possible.
Even setting aside what the review score itself meant — still a mystery — this was critically important information.
Did Phylotera get pregnant from the seed I poured into her, even after she merged with Hestia?
Still no idea.
I'd have to wait a little longer to find out.
But Hestia still hadn't submitted, and she wasn't pregnant.
She screamed about wanting to get pregnant when she was in my arms…
Knowing that hadn't actually been the case only stoked my competitive fire further.
Swearing I'd make her submit the next time we met, I left the Temple of the Hearth.
Unidentified gazes are watching you.
That feeling again.
No matter how much I scanned my surroundings, I couldn't find the source.
Athena, of course.
No human could hide their presence this thoroughly. And in this city, only one being could watch me from every direction like this.
I need to get out of here.
I left the Temple of the Hearth and walked out into the middle of the street.
I casually surveyed my surroundings, checking whether the gaze was still following.
Sure enough.
This'll keep up until I reach Odysseia.
I looked down at the divine relic. That sharp light was still there.
I'd realized something when I ran into Aphrodite.
Even the gods of Olympus couldn't recognize a divine relic unless it was a famous one.
If she shows herself, I'll have no choice but to cut her down with this.
If she turned hostile, that is.
But given that she'd only been watching so far, Athena wasn't making any moves.
Zeus is targeting you.
Probability of Zeus attacking:51.2%
Except for the steadily climbing probability, that is.
"Tch!"
I'd thought it through enough.
I pushed through the crowd.
"Hey!"
That was when someone called out to me.
"If you're going to bump into people, you should apologize! What the hell do you think you're doing!"
Getting hassled when I was already in a hurry put me in a foul mood.
"What?"
I snapped back sharply. A burly, muscular man stomped toward me.
Scars all over him — the kind of guy people would scramble to avoid.
"What? What did you just say, you brat!"
"Mind your own business. I don't have time to play with the likes of you."
"What the hell, you little—"
The murmuring around us grew louder.
Dangerous.
Too many eyes on me.
I sighed.
"I'm sorry."
I bowed my head in apology, and that only made him smugger.
Wham!
He grabbed me by the hair and ran his hand over my waist.
"Ooh, this kid. You're pretty good-looking, aren't you?"
That oily gaze held a glint of lecherous desire.
"And this sword of yours looks pretty nice too…"
Slash!
"Kyaaaaah!"
Ah, I couldn't take any more of that.
Anything else, fine — but not Hestia's divine relic.
That was a gift from my mother.
"Aaaaargh! My nose! My nose! This bastard cut off my nose!"
I stomped hard on his gut once and walked right on out.
The crowd stopped murmuring and parted to either side.
"Hoo…"
No one else stopped me. I pushed through the throng and left Athens.
The moment I left, the gaze vanished.
But that only made me more uneasy.
She didn't make a single move, right to the end.
What the hell was Athena thinking?
She was the Goddess of Wisdom.
And as Aphrodite had boasted, she was also Zeus's most favored child.
And a being like that was just leaving me alone — me, the one Zeus was after?
"What's your game?"
I asked it out loud, but no answer came.
I shook my head once.
And left.
For Odysseia.
"Lady Athena."
"Hm?"
"Why are you just leaving him be?"
The black eyes that had been watching Homeron turned. The figure beside her bowed his head.
Beside Athena — Goddess of War as well as Wisdom — there always traveled a demigod who had attained divinity.
Unlike Artemis, she didn't exclusively keep women around. Under her conviction that male strength was sometimes necessary, he had always been Athena's eternal adjutant.
"Odysseus."
The age of the first heroes.
Countless heroes had led that golden age.
And Odysseus was counted among them as the "last hero."
Heracles, who had become a god directly within the myths. Aside from him — Achilles, Agamemnon, and the rest.
The many heroes born from the great war of Troy each received divinity and rose as demigods, even without domains of their own to govern.
And Odysseus was the demigod Athena favored most.
"Have you forgotten what came of it after Lord Zeus took Ganymede?"
Odysseus bowed his head.
Of course he knew.
Over Ganymede, Zeus and Hera had quarreled. Zeus had argued that love between men was the most ideal form of affection.
Hera, on the other hand, had snapped that it contradicted his usual excuse of siring many children and spreading the seed of heroes across the world.
But in the end, Hera was the Goddess of the Family.
There were limits to how far she could defy Zeus.
Affairs with women were one thing — affairs with men fell outside her jurisdiction.
In the end Zeus had won, and from that day on Hera grew even more vicious.
"We've already been through this once. That's why Lady Hera separated him in advance, to avoid a fight."
In a way, it was a wise choice.
The rift between Zeus and Hera over the Ganymede affair had grown irreparably deep.
Indeed, even within Olympus, factions had split between Zeus's side and Hera's.
After that, the Trojan War had broken out and the factions had realigned again, and only after a long dark age — when the second age of divine heroes returned — had stability been restored.
But everyone on Olympus knew.
Though it hadn't surfaced, the power struggle between Zeus and Hera was still ongoing.
"No need to stick our necks out, I suppose."
Athena was a goddess who looked after her own survival first.
She had no desire to take either side.
The golden apple?
Back then her goddess's pride had been on the line, so she'd had no choice.
And through the Trojan War that started from that incident, she'd actually grown close to Hera — two birds with one stone.
"But we should keep watching."
"Why is that?"
"That boy."
Athena pointed at Homeron. She fixed her gaze on the divine relic hanging at his waist as he gradually grew more distant.
"That sword he's carrying — I've seen it before."
"Pardon?"
"It's Hestia's divine relic."
"H-how could you…"
Odysseus looked back at Homeron.
He hadn't noticed at first glance, but looking carefully, something like flickering flames seemed to shimmer before his eyes.
"I did see him enter the Temple of the Hearth, but…"
Athena quietly raised a hand and cut him off.
"He clearly showed a blessing when he entered the temple. That, too, would have been Hestia's blessing."
"Th-that can't be!"
Odysseus couldn't believe it.
And rightly so.
Across two ages of heroes spanning thousands of years.
In those ages, heroes who had received the blessings of countless Olympian gods had been plentiful.
But never once had a man appeared who received the blessing of Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth.
She was benevolent to all.
Gentle to everyone, not the type to play favorites with any one person.
Fair, quiet, and pure — the first virgin goddess.
And such a being had bestowed a blessing on someone?
"As expected of Lady Athena."
Odysseus nodded.
Even now as a demigod, he followed Athena without change.
"Hmm…"
But Athena didn't look at him. She simply furrowed her brow, staring at Homeron.
Just what kind of scheme did you pull?
She watched the receding Homeron and asked herself.
How on earth did you capture her heart?
Athena made her decision.
"I'll follow him."
"Pardon?"
"Odysseus, you look after Athens. I need to keep an eye on that boy."
"L-Lady Athena?"
"It won't be long."
Athena smiled faintly.
"Just handle things for a little while."
And she left.
It was the beginning of a journey from which she would not return for some time.