Chapter 27
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: The Hero's Fury, the Heroes' Astonishment, and the Goddess's Cheers
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“Ah...?”
Why could he see the sky?
Alkmene's Son, heir to Zeus's blood, the one destined for a path of glory.
The young hero known as Alkmene's Son—and soon to be called Heracles—was utterly bewildered by the vast blue sky suddenly unfolding before his eyes.
“Wha...?”
That wasn't all.
Why were his limbs, always brimming with vitality and vigor, so unbearably heavy?
Why were his eyelids, which hadn't even fluttered during his three days and nights of battle against the lion of Cithaeron, now so leaden?
How could breathing be this difficult, this agonizing?
He couldn't gather his wits amid this utterly unfamiliar and bizarre sensation, one he'd never experienced in his life.
He barely managed to lift his limp hand to wipe the liquid trickling from his nose, only to find it smeared with something red—something red that he was certain his body could never produce.
“Uh... cough?! Cough?!”
That wasn't all.
Even the slightest exertion stabbed his lungs with hellish pain, and the hot surge of gastric acid and blood rising up felt like it was scorching his esophagus.
“Guhhhh...”
Had he ever felt this much agony since the day he was born?
Had death ever loomed so close?
Heracles trembled in fear for the first time in his life, his mind seared by pain that felt like death itself.
“Hey.”
“Huuuh...”
Beyond his blurry vision stretched the blue sky.
A pitch-black silhouette blotted it out, gazing down at him.
“Tha... Tha-na... tos...?”
Had the god of death finally come to claim him?
Even amid the torment scorching his entire body, Heracles couldn't hide his dismay.
As he clutched his chest, death whispered softly.
“Hey, snap out of it.”
“...Huh!?”
It was like magic.
At death's slight touch, the pain that had felt like being branded by the Erinyes began to fade,
and his foggy mind gradually cleared.
His sharpened vision now took in the face of the man he'd mistaken for death, standing with the light at his back.
Jet-black hair gleaming like the night sky sliced open.
A face so beautiful even Apollo would envy it.
Yet overshadowing it all was an inexplicable, eerie dignity in those star-like obsidian eyes.
It was Dianes, the one he'd been sparring with just moments ago.
“Di, Dianes? Wh-what happened?”
Had the Heroes' Grove been invaded during their morning jog or something?
Who was the enemy? Monsters? Beasts?
As he anxiously scanned around, worried the others might have fallen to the foe,
Dianes, who had been staring down at him impassively, let out a scoffing chuckle.
“Ha, you idiot. Don't tell me you forgot already?”
“Wh-what do you mean...? Ah!”
Bewildered by Dianes's sneer at first, Heracles's eyes widened as the memory sharpened into focus.
“Ah, looks like you remember now.”
“You... youuuu... how did you do it...!!”
Five fingers extended toward his chest like encroaching shadows.
He had sensed something ominous gathering at their tips against his chest and tried to say something.
But before he could, a colossal force erupted from those fingertips, reminiscent of Poseidon's wrath,
rampaging through his body.
That energy was scorching like hellfire, chilling like the breath of Cithaeron,
fierce as an avalanche, unyielding as tempered steel.
That torrent of agony burrowed into his every fiber like tree roots tearing up the earth,
and before he knew it, he had collapsed to the ground, vomiting blood in disgrace.
“Calm down and regulate your breathing first. Want to cough up more blood and pass out again?”
“You... bastaaaaard!!”
For the first time, he had truly felt death's grip, writhing in hellish torment.
For the first time, he had lost consciousness before someone else, a humiliation that overheated his mind.
A rage surpassing the lingering pain now engulfed Heracles entirely.
“I'll kill youuuu!!!”
-Boom!!
Heracles exploded upward like lightning, swinging his fist.
Each punch made the air scream,
and each stomp shattered the earth, kicking up clouds of dust.
He had never unleashed his full power before—not against the lion of Cithaeron, not in the 1-vs-100 melee with the other young heroes in the Heroes' Grove, not even against Chiron.
Bleeding from every orifice as he lashed out savagely, his form was enough to chill the spines of the young heroes gathered in the Colosseum.
“Evacuate! Get out now!! You'll die if you're caught in that!!”
“Get out of the Colosseum! No, just get as far away from here as possible!!”
Indiscriminate between friend and foe, Heracles pursued only Dianes like a walking calamity.
Anyone swept up in it wouldn't even leave bones behind—they'd be shattered to pieces.
“What the hell did Dianes even do?”
“No idea... but what trick did he pull to make Heracles cough blood and collapse like that?”
Dianes had slipped into Heracles's guard in the blink of an eye, extending his hand toward his chest.
The movement was astonishing, but he had only closed in—no more.
How could he damage that body, impervious to martial arts, magic, even Asclepius's poisons, without a weapon?
Everyone was shaking their heads, deeming it Dianes's fatal mistake, a lapse in excitement—when it happened.
No eruption of immense power, no thunderous explosion.
Heracles, who had loomed over them like an eternal wall, suddenly spewed blood and crumpled on the spot.
“Herald! Herald!”
“What?! Run already!”
The twin golden-winged heralds of the Great Heracles Brigade, Zetes and Calais.
Sons of the North Wind god Boreas, they could soar the skies like the wind on wings inherited from their father.
“Go get Master Chiron and Asclepius right now! This is a disaster!”
“Not the time for that!”
“No, that's exactly what I'm ordering you to—Mommy!”
-Whoosh!
As they bickered with Theseus, who had called them while fleeing urgently, the wind twins yelped and ducked a flying stone slab hurtling toward them.
“Raaaaagh! Die, I'll kill youuuu!!”
The stone's origin was, predictably, Heracles—out of his mind, hurling anything he could grab.
Yet even in his frenzy, his target remained solely Dianes.
So why were they caught in the fallout...?
“...Gods, to think a human could do that.”
“Is that really human movement?”
Did Pluto look like that, helmeted in the Cap of Shadows, tearing through Titan legions?
Dianes evaded every one of Heracles's strikes with movements too uncanny for any young hero present to track.
“Is... is that even possible?”
“That's... a human?”
The storm twins cried out in unison, aghast.
“Zeus preserve us...”
“He's... getting even faster?”
Even the two radiant heroes of divine lineage and brilliant wisdom could only stare, struck dumb by the chills racking their minds.
And behind them, Atalanta—who had evacuated all the female heroes—alone bit her lip, her eyes fixed on Dianes's back.
Meanwhile.
A goddess atop the soft clouds over the Heroes' Grove let out a triumphant cheer.
“Yes!”
Clapping her hands and stomping her feet in utter satisfaction, her inherent grace and elegance remained utterly unshaken.
“Hohohoho! That damned thunder god's bastard daughter has finally met her match!”
The goddess gazed down fondly at the black-haired hero, laughing heartily with relish.
Eyes so beautiful the morning star would bow in shame, soft brown hair elegantly pinned up and veiled in golden silk, a refined beauty that commanded universal praise—anyone beholding her would hear her name whispered in their ear.
Hera.
Queen of all goddesses, the loftiest of them all, guardian of hearth and marriage, sovereign of Olympus.
A wife whose days were marred endlessly by her husband's infidelities.
“You're delivering the divine punishment I've long craved right to that insolent child in my stead!”
Hera glared with fury blazing in her lovely eyes, clutching her breast that still throbbed from when the infant Heracles had latched on, grinding her teeth.
Heracles.
The hero who bore the name of Hera's glory despite his blasphemous birth from Zeus's affair.
He who had stolen her milk, unwittingly making the guardian of hearth and marriage his godmother—a demigod she wanted to tear apart.
Even as a child, he had strangled the snakes she sent and even throttled the lion of Cithaeron she had unleashed on his foster father Amphytrion to punish him instead—deeds that only fanned her rage higher.
Zeus, oblivious, boasted of Heracles's exploits at every divine assembly...
She had scoured the earth with one burning intent: to seize and wring that wretch herself.
But Zeus, anticipating her, had hidden him early in Chiron's sanctuary.
For ages, she endured clutching her neck at Zeus's son-bragging during gatherings.
But time passed, and her keen eyes finally spotted Alkmene's son growing in Chiron's forest.
Heracles, a bloody mess collapsed on the ground.