Chapter 195
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 195
Chapter Title: The Madness of the Old Iasos
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Old Iasos hadn't slept peacefully even once in the past month.
The kingdom's decline had begun to show, extending beyond the storehouses of lowly slaves and commoners to the royal treasury itself.
Accordingly, irreverent curses and complaints against their king were spilling over the palace walls.
The luncheon laid out before him consisted of a mere fifteen dishes—far too meager to be called a king's meal—and the robes he wore were already three days old, unchanged for lack of new ones.
Even that was the height of luxury and waste; it meant dozens of his subjects had to go hungry just for a single dish.
Iasos simply flew into a rage at the luncheon table, now reduced by ten courses, and stormed off to the throne room.
But even during his audience hours, the bad news kept pouring in.
"Your Majesty! A report from the checkpoint on Mount Taygetos!"
"Yes?! Has Atalanta returned? She isn't marching on us with an army, is she?"
"Regrettably, there is no information on Princess Atalanta."
They had set up checkpoints on Mount Taygetos in the faint hope that Atalanta might repent her crimes and return on her own. All that came from there were pitiful tolls squeezed from innocent merchants.
"Your Majesty! Thespiai is assembling troops at the eastern border. They're even disguising themselves as bandits to plunder our border folk!"
"Your Majesty! The people's pleas are piercing the heavens. With Demeter's wrath, harvests have dwindled, and beggars line the streets!"
"Enough! Enough! Don't clutter my ears with such trivial nonsense!"
"Your Majesty! But..."
"I said shut your mouth! Stop your whining about a few dead peasants!"
Instead of the news he awaited, Iasos bellowed at his ministers for troubling him with useless complaints.
"Damn it, once that thing returns, it'll all be over...!"
Atalanta.
The irreverent name he had cast away with his own hands, now strangling him from the shadows.
That cursed daughter he had abandoned in his youth had stubbornly survived, entered Chiron's forest, and was now dragging his kingdom to ruin.
Any woman, no matter how much she roamed the wilds, owed a debt to the father who gave her life. Shouldn't she heed his call to repay that grace and fulfill her royal duties?
Even after he, a king of a nation, had personally dispatched envoys and royal decrees, that lowly half-human beast and foolish girl had ignored him completely.
Whose fault was it that Arcadia's mighty army had been swept away by the gods' wrath and slaughtered to the last?
"A proper daughter should obey her father's words without question!"
The ministers exchanged glances and rolled their eyes at Iasos's insistence on playing ignorant of his own sins, blaming only Chiron and Atalanta.
Blinded by rage, Iasos could only rage and rant at visions of his wronged self and that cursed daughter driving him to this.
"Your Majesty, mind your words. Princess Atalanta is Aura's great warrior who awakened Prometheus's spark!"
"The general speaks true. We must offer her half the kingdom if need be, summon Princess Atalanta back to Arcadia, and have her inherit the throne!"
"Moreover, the great hero Dianes, with whom she has allied, wields power rivaling a vast army. If we reinstate Princess Atalanta and let her claim Arcadia's throne, not only the gods' wrath but even Thespiai will dare not covet our lands!"
Apostle of Aura.
The divine manifestation that only chosen heroes could awaken.
It was the coveted realm of all warriors, the mark of a great warrior guaranteed ascension to Olympus.
Its power could rival Ares himself and stand unshaken against five thousand troops—a superhuman incarnation!
Not even a king could treat such a paragon of warriors as mere offspring. The grand general offered earnest counsel.
Emboldened, the assembled ministers chimed in unison, listing reasons to reinstate Atalanta and generous terms she might accept. But Iasos exploded in fury.
"Why should I beg that thing to come by handing over my kingdom?! No matter her title as Aura's warrior, she's still my daughter and must obey my command!"
"Your Majesty...!"
"Enough! I've already taken every measure, on my wise advisor's word, to punish that insolent wretch!"
The general paled at the king's delirious ravings, but another minister beside him quietly held him back.
'Let it go, General.'
'But...!'
'The king's ears are filled with Momus's whispers. Our counsel no longer reaches him...'
Their advice fell on deaf ears, the king lost in his own grandiose delusions.
"Yes... No matter how she struts, that thing is still my flesh and blood, born of my seed.
She's simply too ignorant to act like a proper woman. Once she learns her place and sheds her arrogance, she'll kneel before me and repent her sins...!"
Iasos's persecutory delusions grew with each passing day.
Those gathered around the king, who had locked himself in his private world and rejected all counsel, could only close their eyes in despair.
And what fueled this madness was Atalanta's declaration, delivered by messenger bird to the palace just days ago.
The insolent proclamation that Arcadia's rightful princess would reclaim her due.
Since then, Iasos had been tormented by nightmares.
Over the towering Taygetos range came a massive red bear, smashing Tegea's walls and storming the palace.
Untouched by swords or arrows, that bear toppled the palace—with Iasos inside—in a single enraged paw strike, leaving no trace.
This was an omen.
Prepare, for that cursed bloodkin would cross the mountains and raze his palace!
Honoring the omen, even if Atalanta led an army over Taygetos, his forces encircling the range would force that insolent girl to her knees at his command.
"Aura's warrior or not, she'll be captured before three thousand troops and dragged before me to submit!"
-Kuhahaha!
King Iasos blithely uttered words impossible for anyone with even passing knowledge of heroes and Chiron's disciples.
The ministers bowed their heads in despair.
Iasos dismissed Messenia's Heroic Tournament as mere ceremony, but they had cross-verified envoys' reports of the heroes' divine feats that very day.
Yet even they struggled to believe such exploits.
No matter the army's size, who could charge headlong through a landslide like a tsunami?
And now, the very warrior who triggered that landslide—and the one who pierced it—were invading Arcadia?
Iasos's boasted three thousand would prove as useless as scarecrows.
Tegea's sturdy walls, in which he placed such faith, would crumble like dry stone.
If even half those feats were true, how long could a mere three thousand hold?
As all sighed in uncertainty, one voice alone echoed the king's ravings.
"Oh, Your Majesty, you speak wisely. No matter how great the warrior or hero, she was born a woman. She must obey her father and follow the marriage he arranges, serving her husband dutifully."
"Oh! As expected of Corinth's rightful heir, such wisdom! Phleios!"
The slyly grinning man, the only one flattering Iasos.
Phleios, brother to the king of the northern port-state Corinth.
Exiled for framing Prince Oedipus, he now sheltered under Iasos's regime.
'To trust a foreign sycophant over his own ministers...'
'Arcadia's fate lies in the dust...'
As Iasos's mad laughter filled the throne room, urgent footsteps echoed from without.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Urgent news from Mount Taygetos!"
Urgent news from Taygetos!
The throne room froze in shock at tidings no one expected. King Iasos slipped from his throne in alarm.
-Thud!
"Wh-what?! What is it!?"
"Three travelers appeared at the great cliff of the Taygetos range. They complied with the checkpoint at first, but when we tried to bind one matching Your Majesty's description, they defied the order and broke through!"
"Wh-what?! Their appearance—what did they look like!?"
"Well..."
"Speak, damn you!"
The messenger hesitated, as if stunned by what he'd seen.
"Two men and one woman, but..."
One man was massive, evoking a giant.
Another moved like a black gale, his form near divine.
And the woman...
They said she was a female warrior wreathed in crimson flames like a blazing meteor, flames clutched in both hands.
The throne room fell silent as the messenger, prodded by the king, finally spoke.
"Kuhuhu... Kuhahaha! See?! The fool is finally returning to her place of her own accord!"
He had drilled Atalanta's description into his loyal soldiers posted across the range.
No matter her efforts, before three thousand troops, Atalanta would kneel.
"Your Majesty! Urgent news!"
"Yes! Atalanta's finally caught! Or did she come begging forgiveness on her knees?"
"Th-that is..."
The expectant king faced a frantic messenger proffering a scroll.
"After breaking through the scouts head-on, the garrison spotted the signal fire and moved to intercept, but..."
Two thousand troops, camped ready to march at a beacon's call, excluding the thousand holding the range.
They moved in perfect order to encircle Atalanta and her band, but as everyone except Iasos foresaw, the report continued.
"They smashed through the entire force head-on. Even the pursuers were felled by the radiance they scattered. Your Majesty! It was as if the power of gods themselves..."
"Silence! How dare you lecture me!"
Iasos bellowed at the terror and awe in the messenger's eyes, the report the polar opposite of his hopes.
"I'll have your head this instant for defying the king's authority and..."
"Your Majesty!!"
This time, before Iasos could finish, another messenger burst in.
"What now! Has Atalanta knelt before the capital...?"
"Their companions have been identified! The great hero Heracles and the Black Gale Dianes!"
-Gasp!
All swallowed hard at the news that Greece's famed luminaries marched with Atalanta.
But the true shock was yet to come...
"Their destination is none other than Tegea! Your Majesty, they advance on Tegea now!!"
.....
The throne room plunged into silence, as if word had come of a tidal wave crashing down or a meteor plummeting to earth.