The Goddess of Hatred
"...."
"Aww~ why so scary? I told you, it was just a light prank, right?"
"....."
As the witch, looking anxious, swallowed hard, her pale throat twitched minutely.
'Decapitation?'
Even cutting off a head requires technique. Personally, I believe it's more accurate to call it "severing" rather than "cutting," because you don't slice through the neck bone, but rather cut through the joints between the vertebrae to make the head come off cleanly. If you strike the neck bone with a blade, it’s not a cut—it’s crushing or sawing. At least the neck has spinal joints tucked in every gap, so if you aim for those, severing it is easy. Conversely, limbs that are essentially solid bone are difficult for even the finest blades to cut through unless you use immense strength or internal energy.
"Hahaha! That’s why I told you to stop playing around with weird potions! I got a good show out of it, but Lady Hecate, you’re in big trouble!"
"By Gaia. Please, someone shut that mouth! That appearance earlier wasn't something I intended; it was a form you summoned upon yourself! It is not my fault!"
"....."
She swept her snow-white hand over her exposed chest, as if trying to soothe her startled heart while feigning composure.
'Piercing?'
Piercing the heart is even more difficult. In dramas or movies, if an arrow or a sword is driven into the chest, the victim spits blood and dies nine times out of ten. But in reality, to penetrate the chest and pierce the heart requires considerable force and skill. The ribs, which protect the heart, lungs, and trachea, stand more densely than one might think, shielding the vital organs essential for life, and their strength is solid enough that even a master-grade sword would struggle to pierce them. If the muscles of the entire body twist to block a foreign object that has entered through an abnormal path, the resistance becomes akin to an iron trap or tanned leather armor.
"...."
"....Excuse me?"
That is why the Nine-Nether Sword Demon used to say that in a chaotic battlefield where confirming a kill is difficult, it is better to stir the area around the belly than the chest. It is relatively soft, and since the digestive organs, bladder, and large intestine are located there, one good stir or even just a slash to the outer skin would cause the entrails to spill out, leaving the opponent incapacitated and unable to focus. They might survive if they are lucky, but in the Ming Dynasty, to survive after spilling your guts, you’d have to be on first-name terms with the legendary physician Hua Tuo.
"...Plus, the external infection, sepsis, and infection from excrement are just bonuses."
What should I do? How can I make this thing lament that it committed a death-worthy act and die quietly?
"Look, it’s certain that my body is as beautiful as Aphrodite’s, but the way you’re looking at me is strange...? I’m a goddess, you know?"
"Didn't you hear that I fought that guy Poseidon after trying to take the heads of his twin sons?"
"Ch, Chiron couldn't have taught theology without including me! I have several of my own children currently learning from Chiron, you know?!"
"I know the Goddess of the Three Faces well."
Hecate. A high-ranking goddess known as the Goddess of the Three Faces. The origin of all magic, the first alchemist and occultist. A goddess who contributed greatly by joining Olympus in the Titanomachy, whose power extends everywhere—the sky, the earth, the sea, and the underworld of Greece—and who holds the honor of being the first to receive offerings among the three great gods. Furthermore, she was a priestess whom Zeus himself granted the authority to grant absolution to sinners who had broken taboos.
"He, hee... You know me well? And yet you still glare at me like that?"
"...."
"Huhu...♥"
Crucially, it was that attitude that made me decide I absolutely had to kill her. She was packaging her words and face as if she were scared or trying to calm me down, but an unmistakable ecstasy was seeping through her eyes and voice. As if she were wondering what kind of trick I would show her this time. She was throwing out an obvious provocation, as if telling me to hurry up and kill her, to show her a new trick.
'On top of that... this damn troublemaker goddess is expecting it too.'
"Hehe~? What's wrong?"
She stuck to my side without a word, grinning. She was stimulating me, subtly egging me on while piggybacking on Hecate.
'You certainly live up to your name in a place like this. You damn goddess.'
What "older sister"? You’re more than enough as just a "troublemaker goddess."
"Tsk."
In this situation, getting excited and drawing my sword would be a loss. It would just be satisfying the troublemaker goddess beside me and the insane goddess in front of me at the same time. Besides, considering the body that had been shredded earlier and what Eris said, I was in a situation where I couldn't "immediately" do anything to this goddess named Hecate.
"The hospitality is a mess. To think the one who calls herself the master wouldn't come herself and instead sent out a doll."
"...Eh?"
The remains that were shattered earlier and the goddess who appeared immediately after. Plus, Eris’s words that I could never kill her. Synthesizing all of this was the conclusion I reached. Which great detective said it? That no matter how unbelievable the truth is, if it remains after all the lies are cleared away, that is the truth.
The goddess named Hecate in front of me—from her divine power to her expressions, reactions, and even the pupils of her eyes and blood circulation—was acting perfectly as a goddess disguised as a human, but she was by no means the goddess Hecate herself.
"Goddess of Magic. You’re living up to your name just as much as this annoying goddess beside me."
"...If it's alright, could I hear why you think that?"
"Why should I?"
"Eng...?"
A divine profession related to the academic fields of magic, sorcery, and alchemy. And that madness, reaching out as if merely ecstatic even while staring directly at the Nine-Nether Sword, which even Athena had flinched at for a moment. She was truly a supreme madwoman who would throw away money, her body, and even her life for the sake of her curiosity. I already knew well how to deal with this type of person. Because there was one such intense madwoman in my past life whom I could never forget.
The peerless medical saint, called the reincarnation of Hua Tuo, who would constantly pounce on me, claiming she had to explore my body. It’s a bit funny to talk about the propriety of a woman in the Demonic Cult, but she would pierce through the tight security and the thin gaps in my senses to hide in my bed. Even the Demonic Master, who feared nothing in the world, was terrified by her madness, claiming she would find the secrets of my body by bearing my child.
'....It’s a strange day.'
It was unpleasant to have the past, which I had buried as a life already passed, forcibly dragged out—a past that still hadn't been settled—but to have it brought up twice like this.
It was a very strange feeling.
"Ughhh..."
Whether my answer hit the mark or was the correct one, Hecate was chewing her lips and rolling her eyes.
"Strange... The calculations were definitely perfect. It was a body so precise that even gods and my own children couldn't recognize it!"
Where did the coquettish witch from earlier go? Hecate began to mutter gloomily like a graduate student facing a thesis deadline. Seeing her turn on a dime after just one word, despite trying to steal a peek at someone else's martial arts earlier, made me crave a drink.
"I told the kids to bring a glass of wine. Want one?"
"You really like things like this, don't you?"
The Goddess of Discord seemed to be in high spirits again at the sight of Hecate, who had eyes that were both intellectual and insane, shrinking into a gloomy graduate student in an instant. I wonder when she ordered it. The Empusas, who looked exactly like the one I had ground into pieces earlier, were pouring wine into Eris’s glass with faces turned deathly pale.
"Give me a glass."
"Ye, yes!"
And it was the same for me; the taste of alcohol was calling. It would be a drop in the bucket compared to the shock I received, but there would be no greater shock for someone of that type than having their results completely seen through.
"Hehehe. As expected, we click, don't we?"
-Clink!
As Empusa No. 3 filled the glass with wine with hands shaking like an aspen leaf, Eris clinked her glass against mine with her characteristic mischievous laugh.
"But really, how did you know? Tell me secretly, just to me!"
In fact, it was simple for me to realize that neither that body nor this one was Hecate’s true form.
'It was too perfect to be a human body, and too ambiguous to be a god's avatar.'
No matter how well you manage a human body, traces of time are bound to appear. But Hecate in front of me, and the body that tried to provoke me earlier, were both too clean. Like a newborn baby. Or an artificial object. However, it was too natural and incomplete to be a god's avatar. Divine power is about skipping the process and creating a result. Even for a god's body manifested that way, Hecate's body showed a strange asymmetry.
'A perfect god trying to imitate an incomplete human.'
It was natural that I would be able to notice this. I had cut and stabbed so many people that I couldn't help but know that subtle difference.
'Well, it’s not something to brag about.'
However, there was no reason to tell that to this troublemaker goddess.
"You’re quite the eyesore yourself right now, you know?"
"Aww~ I was born this way from my mother's hands, so what can I do when I love being like this? And..."
-Flap!
Suddenly, Eris spread her wings and wrapped them around herself and me. The dragon's membrane blocked the surrounding attention, and Eris, who naturally leaned her body against me, had a strange atmosphere about her.
Her face was strangely flushed, and her breath was strangely filled with heat. If a stranger saw this, they might think she was aroused. But her eyes, sparkling with a muddy, blood-red hue, seemed filled with an inexplicable, cruel ecstasy.
"That woman earlier. She tried to kill you, didn't she? Even though you loved her."
Eris trembled with cruel pleasure, excited. More than any time I had seen her, she was truly the "Goddess of Hatred" right now.