Chapter 208
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 208
Chapter Title: Does Coincidence Truly Exist?
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Does coincidence truly exist?
I have to do it.
'...Really?'
I have to.
'Are you serious?'
Damn it, what are you gonna do if I don't? Right now!
'Even so, this is a bit too much!'
This was the Mythic Era, a mad world where a single footprint or a single branch could turn into a flagpost leading straight to fate.
The divine karma that had shown no reaction no matter how I'd poked it with all sorts of energies was now shaking violently like an alarm blaring at wake-up time.
The aura with liquidity far surpassing even Cloud Spirit Oil or Millennium River Sediment.
And various other factors.
After calculating them all, this was the most optimal conclusion I'd reached.
But even so, actually going through with it was incredibly difficult.
"Dianes. Did you think of some method?"
"Hm..."
Perhaps reading my expression, Atalanta looked at me with worry, but my lips still wouldn't part easily.
Just from that, she seemed to sense something was off, so she quietly reached out her hand, and I clasped it, pressing our foreheads together for a moment.
Her hand was nice and warm, probably from running hard, and it gave a bit of strength to my chilled body amid the long-overdue tension and anxiety.
"Did you eat something bad? You don't look well."
"It's not so much that I ate something bad... more like I'm about to eat something I shouldn't."
"What are you talking about? Spouting Delphi oracle nonsense again."
Heracles grumbled while chewing jerky from who-knows-where, his face full of suspicion that I was thinking something weird again.
"Aw, come on, Heracles-siiim~ Even your iron-munching beef bones wouldn't hurt~ Don't worry, have a special glass of wine I saved just for you..."
"Hey, baldy."
"M-me!?"
The baldy goddess, who had been slyly cozying up to Heracles again, jolted like she'd seen a ghost when I called her.
I wondered if I'd gone too hard on her, but it was self-inflicted anyway.
"One question."
"W-what is it...?"
"This jar, the aura contained in it—I mean the energy. Is containing or sealing auras in objects like this common here?"
The jar sealing the Heavenly Calamity I'd found in Despoina's lab, and from what she'd said so far.
This technique or tool for containing energy wasn't mainstream, but it seemed fairly common.
"Pardon? Ah, oh, you mean cloud-sealing?"
"Cloud-sealing?"
This was another unfamiliar term.
The natural image was pure white clouds being sucked into a jar or pouch, something straight out of an Eastern tale, but Despoina wasn't talking about that sort.
Seeing my confused face, Despoina perked up instantly and jumped to her feet to explain.
"You heroes might not know, but everything—from stones and grasses to humans, spirits, even gods—is made up of auras large and small. They take all sorts of forms, but depending on their purity, alignment, and quantity, the power and effects they show vary wildly."
"Among them, mages and gods like me often transfer their own auras elsewhere to share or exchange them. For example, they say even Aphrodite, whom I serve, envies Queen Persephone of the underworld's radiant beauty and borrows it sometimes for divine banquets. Not to mention the wind pouches of the Anemoi that sailors borrowed via Poseidon's intermediary, or Zeus's thunderbolt quiver—they're similar concepts."
"And the most famous example has to be Pandora's calamity, which ended the first human age, right? Everyone knows about the millions of curses Zeus sealed in the jar that the woman crafted by the gods brought with her."
"For spells like those, the auras take a form like clouds, so mages call it cloud-sealing, or Synnephra Perieko."
"Come to think of it, this situation's similar? A peerless beauty unleashes a sealed disaster in a moment of mistake, then sheds blood, sweat, and tears trying to fix it, but in the end, it's all for naught."
"...Thanks for the kind explanation."
Was she always this talkative? Or was she thrilled to show off in front of Heracles?
My ears were ringing from her machine-gun explanations laced with natural bragging.
Even so, I heard the evidence that solidified my grim premonition.
Auras—or energy—were substances in this Greece that could freely shift between tangible and intangible forms, unlike the inner energy of murim folk.
The very idea of transferring, containing, giving, and receiving pure energy itself—not some elixir or spirit item—was shocking even to me.
'Well, in a way, tangible gang qi is a similar dimension.'
From the perspective of manifesting intangible energy into tangible form based on enlightenment and an awakened body, martial arts and divine power shared similarities.
This bolstered my hypothesis that martial enlightenment and its pinnacle were divine karma or divinity.
Despoina was shocked that a non-god like me had extracted Oedipus's fate-killing aura—the energy commanding him to live his doom—using mere human sorcery, not divine authority or miracles.
And Despoina herself...
"You, what were you planning to do with this?"
"...Gulp!"
...had planned to convert it into power to restore her divinity.
And that method was no doubt consuming it herself, meaning even this immense Heavenly Calamity could be handled to some degree by this era's mages or gods.
"...."
"...."
No wonder.
I'd thought it odd how she kept hovering near the jar even while flirting with Heracles.
"...Guess I gotta take back calling you baldy."
Acting like an airhead, spilling words as a bluff while eyeing a chance to snag the Heavenly Calamity?
"Eek!"
Both Despoina and I thought fast, and our actions were nearly simultaneous.
But there was no way I'd be slower than a mage who'd barely returned to human form, not even a full goddess yet.
"Kyat!"
Despoina lunged like a fox pouncing on prey, but the jar had long been in my hands.
Her mother-earth-like hair tumbled to the ground once more.
'With things flowing this far, and thinking back now, it was weird how the earth trembled yet the darkness remained pitch-black.'
Only then did the current situation come into sharp focus.
At this astronomical coincidence upon coincidence—impossible to chalk up to mere chance—we'd arrived here, right before the trial.
A sky devoid of stars, shrouded in darkness, and greedy hungry ghosts from my memories starting to appear from somewhere.
The situation I'd glossed over as natural, familiar, perhaps divine intervention—now sorted itself into one certainty.
Fate, inevitability, destiny.
In this world where all that wasn't mere concepts or philosophy but tangible realms and beings even gods could touch, did coincidence even exist?
Perhaps from the moment this divine karma struck my heart, or even earlier, back to the hazy start of my life in this world—it might all have been some god's arrangement.
Just like this very moment.
Jet-black darkness enveloping everything, under a sky where the supreme murder weapon writhes in the bottle, calling to me.
-Thung! Thung! Thung!
And the old divinity pounding my heart fiercely, as if urging me to gulp it down quick, claim it.
A bizarre sensation that every movement, current, and thought had led me precisely here—indescribable.
"Atalanta, Heracles. I'm about to enter deep meditation. If things don't change even after a while once I'm in..."
A quick glance up revealed Aphrodite's main temple.
The heart of the great leyline encompassing the area's veins.
"Destroy that, and there'll be some reaction. Use the opening to escape."
"W-what about you? What'll you do?"
Her words implied I wouldn't make it, and Atalanta asked with trembling eyes.
But ahead lay an unknown path even I couldn't predict.
Like any realm-crossing breakthrough, any hint of doubt or hesitation, and I knew better than anyone what the result would be.
"Me... I can't say for sure."
"Then why do it?!"
"...."
She'd sensed my resolve and raised her voice, but still, I couldn't turn back.
"Atalanta. You saw it last time too, right? That realm you just ascended to. If you glimpsed the path beyond, could you stop?"
"....!"
She had seen it already.
That fantastical moment blooming from our hands.
The wondrous instant when the primordial egg shattered and all creation bloomed—and the path awaiting her beyond.
As a warrior who'd tasted transcendent, superhuman heights and begun the journey to godhood, she'd understand what I meant.
"...You really have to?"
"I do. No second chance like this."
I hugged Atalanta, who was starting to tear up.
She didn't want to let go, but as a warrior who'd tasted realm potential, she knew she couldn't stop my resolve.
"Then, Heracles. See you later."
"...Yeah. Come back alive."
With a brief farewell, I left them behind and entered Despoina's lab, closing the door.
No matter how perilous the journey, migratory birds cross oceans and continents, salmon swim upriver from afar to fulfill their destiny.
As one warrior, one fiend.
And above all, one demigod.
Pursuing the realms beyond was instinct itself.
Even if the end meant death.
I quietly closed my eyes and untied the jar's stopper.
-Shaaaa!
"Kuh...!"
A grotesque pain crept up my hand gripping the jar and pierced my brain, but I gritted my teeth, lifted it, and drank straight down.
And when I came to.
Nothing but massive eyes staring down at me filled the world around.