198. If pulling doesn't work, let's try pushing.
198. If pulling doesn't work, let's try pushing.
I repeated roughly 15 loops.
At first, I tried to feel 'time' in order to get out quickly, but eventually gave up.
For now, I approached it step by step, taking it one at a time.
As a result...
"What hour and minute?"
"6:32."
"...Correct."
I somehow succeeded in getting it down to the minute.
At first I wondered how to even do this, but as I kept at it, I picked up the knack.
The key was cultivating a 'sense' for 'time' within myself.
While pondering how to create this within me, I gained enlightenment from the sound of a DJ's beat.
Because even though I had no sense for 'time,' I did have a sense for 'rhythm.'
As if to prove that obtaining Ur early on in the possession wasn't just luck, I immediately began mastering it by inserting 'time' into the beat.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. I expanded my senses by keeping the beat to the point my big toe cramped up.
"Our Hero... if you try just a bit more, you'll be able to get the seconds too?"
"I'll have to work at it."
Meanwhile, Hestia kept trying to disturb me, but I didn't budge.
Whether she pushed with her breasts,
rubbed with her butt,
sometimes even kissed my cheek, or went so far as to breathe into my ear—
'This is a 5-person harem, I tell you...!'
Lately, the momentum was building toward 6 or even 7, but anyway, I'd built up a certain tolerance when it came to temptation.
"So, what minute is it now?"
"42 minutes."
"Wrong. 44 minutes."
".........."
...I said I had tolerance, not immunity?
Anyway, it was no exaggeration to say I'd reached a certain level of mastery in grasping 'time.'
In the first place, since 'this body' itself was meant to serve as the apostle of Cronus, it might have been more sensitive regarding 'time.'
Whatever the case, as long as I could end the regression and get out, that was all that mattered.
"Let's do it one more time."
I stared at Hestia, determined to get the seconds right this time.
".....Haaaaaah."
Hestia let out a sigh.
Somehow, her sighs seemed to have increased particularly often these days.
...
..
.
"Is our Hero perhaps impotent?"
10 o'clock sharp. Training ended.
Chrono returned home to secure at least two hours of sleep.
Hestia stared blankly at the ceiling and pondered.
"No matter how I look at it, it seems like he's impotent."
What they commonly call a eunuch.
The important parts not functioning.
'...No. That's not it.'
If he were really a eunuch, he wouldn't have awkwardly pulled his hips back when I approached.
So he was feeling sexual desire fully but kept suppressing it.
On top of that, now he'd gotten a bit used to it and didn't even pull back anymore.
He just took it as it came. Even when stimulated, he didn't cross a certain line.
Like a robot. To use an analogy, like a table clock.
His body was here, but his mind seemed to be winding a clockwork spring somewhere else.
Because of this, Hestia, who approached every loop, could only pile up sighs as she watched her previous-loop self.
"I thought it'd be easy... In the first place, if he's laid hands on six women in less than half a year, the possibility should be overflowing, not just present...!"
Objectively speaking, Chrono was a horndog.
And not just any horndog, but a top-grade country mongrel.
A puppy that, no matter who comes up and offers food, doesn't even know what it is and just shoves it in his mouth.
He himself was vehemently denying it, but his past told the story.
Mars, Yuno, Minerva, Mai, Ur.
On top of that, recently he was showing interest in Hermes' apostle too, and another servant demon didn't seem particularly reluctant either.
Put another way, he'd laid hands on a total of over seven women in less than half a year.
Probably, in his own words, he'd say he didn't want it, but is that the result someone who didn't want it would show?
Just because you refuse doesn't mean you can refuse.
If that's the result even after refusing as much as possible, this was practically something you could consider fate.
So Hestia also had the half-expectation that if she kept approaching, the door would slip open and she'd suffer the female beastly sex of being enthusiastically pounded by the puppy like a dog.
"Ugh... uuu, uugh!"
But when it actually came to it, what was this?
As if even a country mongrel that eats anything had its own palate, he was pushing me away madly, to the point I was getting sick of it.
'...Am I that ugly?'
I don't think that's it.
Judging from how his eyes sometimes wandered to my chest, he was definitely good-looking himself.
But despite that, Chrono didn't lay a hand on me.
Why?
Why on earth?
"It's not like our youngest or something..."
Zeus was exactly like that.
He just pounced endlessly, no one knew where that libido came from.
At least Hera's case was understandable.
After all, she accepted her husband as his wife.
The various other infidelity incidents were also understandable.
Because he was a Greek sex machine crazed with lust.
But that crazy youngest even laid hands on Demeter.
And when she turned into a cow, vowing never to be pounced upon, he was a madman who said 'Actually, that's better' and pounced as a bull.
Yet even that guy didn't touch me.
Of course, I did block him, but later on he didn't come even when I didn't particularly block him.
"What in the world..."
Actually... there were a few women even Zeus filtered out.
For example, Aphrodite.
In his own words, she had a smell similar to his dad so he didn't like her or something, probably a kind of kin-revulsion.
Another example, Athena.
The bastard who'd happily do a mother-daughter bowl wouldn't touch Athena, feeling reluctant.
Probably his own sort of sense of guilt, but does a guy with a sense of guilt engage in cow & bull bestiality furry sex with his own sister?
"Anyway, what that ultimately means is..."
Aphrodite, Athena == Hestia.
Couldn't that formula be established?
'...No way.'
Even so, that's way too much speculation.
It was just that our Hero was unnecessarily stubborn, definitely not that I myself had some kind of flaw.
If there really were a flaw, he wouldn't have reacted in the first place.
So this was solely a problem that time would solve...
".........Tsk."
If time passed, the probability that Chrono would escape on his own grew higher.
Even if that weren't the case, the world itself would collapse and he would escape.
Ultimately, whether you looked right or left, the one without time and pressed for it was Hestia herself.
"I need something, something definite."
Hestia agonized.
What that one sure blow could be, that could topple Chrono.
After agonizing and agonizing.
"Today, we will practice on the training ground."
"...Hestia?"
"Call me Instructor during training."
"Huh?"
"Responses will be unified to 'Ack'."
"............"
"Respond."
".....Ack."
If pulling doesn't work, let's try pushing.
**********************
"Louder! Your voice is too quiet!"
"Aaaaaaack!!!"
Unlike usual, an undisturbed, flawless outfit.
Stiff speech and sharp eyes.
A clever stratagem to make him feel the so-called 'gap.'
And as a result...
"What hour and minute is it now!"
"8:37, sir!"
"Wrong! I told you to respond with Ack!"
"Ya, you crazy bitchaaaaaaaack!!!!"
The two of them were truly doing proper training.
At first it was a concept, but for Hestia, who had lived as an old maid for dozens of centuries, the word 'moderate' might as well not have existed.
Now that a whip was in her hand, telling her not to swing it was asking the impossible.
"...He got it right?"
As a result, Chrono reached the state of accurately guessing the hour and minute.
Time gradually grew more urgent, and Chrono grew.
Just how should she handle this?
At this rate, with the spiderweb of dozens of centuries on the verge of extending beyond that, Hestia's future grew bleak...
"Hwooooo..."
...And around this time. In Chrono's case.
"I'm... growing."
His affection for Hestia was steadily building up.
'I thought she was just interfering at first.'
Chrono recalled.
On the first day, Hestia who just giggled while looking at him.
The days when, under the name of training, she dragged him to a club and kept stalling with weird acts, making him feel nothing but impatient.
But reaching today, she made him participate in training more seriously, and he couldn't help but be glad.
Especially these days when he felt the state that had been expanded by blessings slowly reaching its limit. Just when he felt growth was hard through childish games anymore, it was Spartan education.
"...Grk, gup... huuue...!"
It was so hard a sweet taste came up from his mouth, but that was all the better for it.
The feeling of growing more definitely was palpable.
Moreover, since Hestia also shed her usual playfulness and dealt with him seriously, he felt she was putting in all her effort to sincerely make him grow.
'Perhaps.'
Perhaps, Hestia had been testing and waiting all along.
Whether he had the confidence to walk a difficult and arduous path rather than choosing the easy road right in front of him.
Whether he was prepared to sacrifice himself rather than sacrificing the person beside him.
In fact, the method to stop the regression itself was simple.
As Hestia said before, it was a matter that would end if he pounced on Theia.
But she had subtly tempted him, asking if he would bother walking the hard path when the easy path was available, that she could topple him if he just laid a hand on her right now.
However, reaching today, Hestia stopped tempting him.
It must mean he passed the test. As proof, she gave him training so intense it could make him vomit at any moment.
"10 o'clock... today's training ends with this."
"G...ood... worrrk....!"
After the long training ended, I lay on the training ground floor and let out breaths.
My joints throbbed and my lungs felt so heavy they were climbing up to my chin.
Just when it seemed hard to even go home right now.
"Want to drink this?"
".....Instructor.."
Hestia came beside me and handed over a cold can.
I barely managed to sit up and opened the can to drink, and Hestia sat beside me, patting me soothingly.
"I'm sorry... it was really hard today, right...?"
"..........."
The worried expression.
That touch, far more than when she simply approached physically, made my heart pound.
"Ah. There's a leaf in your hair."
I'll take it off for you.
The hand that slowly approached me.
And then, when she plucked the small leaf stuck in my hair.
"....Hero, was it truly hard? Your face is so red?"
"Huh??! Uh, uuh, wha?"
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
"..............."
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
".....Ah."
Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump.
The sound of my heart pounding against my eardrums.
"Hero?"
"..............."
"Wai... Hero? Hero! Chrono! Where are you going all of a sudden!"
"U... waaaaaaaack!!!"
Chrono ran off without looking back.
As an aside.
"This works?"
Because Hestia wasn't so dense as to mistake 'not looking back' for being dumped or rejected.
"Pherhaps...?"
Maybe, it might become extremely easy.
Hestia's two eyes sparkled.