This Is a Fucking Stupid Idea, But Let's Do It
Hera. Goddess of marriage and family, queen of the gods, and wife to the supreme deity Zeus. From the moment she realized she was pregnant, she had harbored towering expectations for her first child. Every parent holds dreams for their offspring, but in Hera’s case those dreams were on another scale entirely. This was, after all, the first child to carry the combined blood of both her and Zeus. A baby born from the lineage of the greatest god and the greatest goddess could only be perfect in every conceivable way. That was what she believed.
Declaring that the goddess of family had no need for a lowly midwife, Hera boldly shut herself inside her chamber and began labor alone. Yet the instant she laid eyes on the face of the child born at the end of that agonizing first delivery, her greatest expectation curdled into her greatest despair.
How… how is this possible? This… this thing is my child? An existence this hideous… the first child I gave birth to?
A crude, brutally rough appearance that carried not a trace of divine beauty. The baby had inherited neither her own looks nor Zeus’s. The sight slammed into Hera’s heart with crushing shock, then swiftly planted a seed of pure terror.
This cannot be… I am Hera, queen of the gods and goddess of motherhood! How could my firstborn be such a monster…?
This was no simple matter of bearing an ugly child. Producing an outstanding offspring was both a woman’s greatest pride and her supreme duty. As the goddess who embodied all women, as the one seated at the very pinnacle, if her first child possessed such a worthless appearance, how would the world look at her? The authority and prestige she had spent eons building would be irreparably tarnished. It would become an indelible stain among the gods and even among the mortals below.
To escape that horrifying future, she had only one option.
I must erase it… for my own sake… for the future of this Hera… this abomination must vanish from the world forever, right now…
The cause of disgrace had to be removed. The moment she reached that conclusion, the goddess Hera lifted the infant and walked to the window. Her chamber sat at the highest point in all of Olympus, level with Zeus’s own quarters. Gazing down at the distant earth far below, she hurled the seed of misfortune from her hands—
-THUD!
“…Ugh?”
Intense pain exploded from the bridge of her nose. The sudden impact to her face sent the goddess Hera sprawling to the floor.
“Wh-what… what is this? What the hell…?”
Bewildered beyond comprehension, Hera looked up. There stood the baby who had been born mere moments ago—already balanced confidently on two legs. The very son she had labored to bring into existence was staring at her with the same expression one might give a cockroach.
Though he was a god born of divine blood, only minutes had passed since his birth. Yet the infant already seemed to understand his own power; flames roared around both his tiny fists. He pointed one flaming fist at the collapsed goddess and spoke in a cold, blunt voice.
“Shut your mouth, you bitch.”
*
“Hoo…”
“Cough!”
After getting the living shit beaten out of her, the goddess Hera vomited blood and collapsed. I’d pounded her without a shred of hesitation for a full thirty minutes. Sure, I was technically a newborn baby, but thanks to retaining every memory from my previous life—or maybe just because the woman in front of me had tried to do something no mother, no, no human being should ever do—I felt zero pity and not even the faintest trace of familial affection as I looked down at her battered form.
Besides, pity is an emotion reserved for fellow people. If I could feel something like that toward a woman who acted worse than a beast, god or not, I’d be a saint. And since I’m an Alpha Male, not a saint, I naturally beat her until she was a pulpy mess.
Now that my rage had cooled and reason had returned, I realized this situation was completely unacceptable. I had just delivered some well-deserved self-defense against that bitch, but knowing exactly how fucked this Greek mythology world I’d reincarnated into truly was, I had zero interest in quietly living out the fate of the original blacksmith, Mr. H.
Starting with this bitch’s husband Zeus, a notorious piece of shit. His brothers and children were all bastards who treated murder and rape like light hobbies. Even the relatively sane ones, as gods who ruled the world—in other words, beings who sat on thrones like monarchs—viewed humans as nothing more than disposable tools lower than livestock. The moment anyone annoyed them even slightly, they’d toss them straight into the abyss. That was the default setting of this world.
As an Alpha Male who protects what deserves protecting and calls out what doesn’t, I couldn’t possibly allow a world run by the offspring of such heartless thieves to continue on its merry way.
That said, heroic spirit aside, my current body was still that of a baby who had literally just been born. I’d caught Hera half by surprise and beaten her half to death, but my power was still laughably weak compared to the likes of Zeus.
In a situation like this, there was only one thing an Alpha Male needed: endless training. At the very least, I had to reach a level where I could wield power beyond the original Hephaestus before I could even think about changing anything. And according to the original myth, that meant I had to leave Olympus and descend to the earth below.
Hephaestus learned blacksmithing at a volcano on the ground, right?
I did possess the authority to control fire, but I knew I was still clumsy with it. Even though I’d been a blacksmith in my previous life, harmonizing that experience with actual divine power would require training. Still, since I was a god whose growth rate was ridiculous enough that I could already walk perfectly just seconds after birth, it probably wouldn’t take long. In any case, I needed to head down to the surface—no, to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber—and train for a while.
The moment I reached that conclusion, my gaze turned to the ground visible far below the window behind me. In the original story, the impact of this fall was what left Hephaestus crippled. But I was confident. I was sure I could land safely with all limbs intact.
I might have been a newborn god, but my fists already carried enough power to beat the goddess Hera into submission when I put my mind to it. And inside this body was not the mind of an infant, but the disciplined spirit of an Alpha Male who had trained through every kind of exercise and knowledge in his previous life.
The Alpha Male special: This is a fucking stupid idea, but let’s do it anyway. I could commit to that kind of insanity with a grin. There was no way I’d pull some pathetic Beta Male move and try to avoid the “free fall” from mythology when I had a body this incredible.
Decision made, I immediately leaped toward the ground without hesitation.
“! N-no… don’t!”
I thought I heard some strange noise from behind me at the last second, but I ignored it completely. My body shot through the clouds, plummeting straight toward the earth.
The refreshing sensation of wind slicing across my skin. The weightless feeling of soaring through the sky was so exhilarating it completely blew away the shitty mood I’d been in moments before. The bitter memory of flying all the way abroad to try wingsuiting only to be forced back by bad weather vanished in an instant. This was true freedom, and I savored every second of it.
While enjoying that rush, my eyes turned toward the ground that had finally come into view. From the shape of the land, I recognized the location immediately—the Aegean Sea, between what my previous life had called Turkey and Greece. One particular island was growing rapidly larger. I began preparing to land.
From what I remembered, the original Hephaestus had supposedly fallen for several days. In reality, the ground was rushing up after only a few minutes. Greeks really love to exaggerate, I thought, then began executing a proper landing using the familiar sensations from my previous life.
And then—
-TAP!
The impact was shockingly light considering the height. Unlike the original Hephaestus who flailed helplessly and ended up crippled, I naturally performed a soul-deep landing technique that minimized the burden on my body. Even so, slamming into bare ground still carried force; I had no choice but to roll across the dirt and end up covered in dust.
“Not bad.”
Fortunately, I had succeeded in a clean landing without becoming the lame god from the original story. A rush of dopamine surged up from my core, and a wide grin spread across my face.
With that, the single biggest obstacle in Hephaestus’s life—no, in my new life as a god—had been cleared without a hitch. That was surprisingly fun. Maybe I’ll try it again sometime when I have time.
With that thought, I started examining my surroundings. There was an ocean right in front of me, and the island itself seemed to be an active volcano—smoke was rising from its peak. The original myth said Hephaestus fell on an island called Lemnos, but I couldn’t be sure if this was the same place yet.
Well, I figured I’d find out more if I looked around, so I started walking. That’s when it happened.
“What the hell is this kid?”
“Oh my… why is there a newborn baby in a place like this…?”
“Hm?”
Voices came from behind me. They were refreshingly beautiful, like a sea breeze. I turned around.
What filled my vision were enormous… breasts? So large I had to look up at them, casting shadows over me.