The Secret of Hecate (2)
"H-how did you know?"
"...Whoa. You're actually serious."
"What?!"
Hecate shrieked at me. I had been leaning back with a smug, victorious smile, but my sudden, deflating comment had clearly caught her off guard.
To be honest, I couldn't be one hundred percent sure myself. After all, artificial out-of-body experiences were the ultimate taboo among practitioners of the arts. I hadn't expected someone who held the title of "Goddess of Magic" to commit such a transgression, but then again, taboos exist for a reason—usually because someone, somewhere, had already triggered the disaster that necessitated the rule.
Since she was likely the first in Greece to delve into the study of the soul, it was understandable that she wouldn't know the risks.
"Wait, hold on! Are you saying that in my homeland, there were others who researched the separation of body and soul just like you?"
"Not just a few. There were plenty of fools who dug too deep into that path and ended up completely ruined."
Since ancient times, humans have been masters of cutting corners. Among the Taoists who studied the arts rather than martial cultivation, some had reinterpreted the concepts of ascension and shedding the mortal coil to try and bypass the standard path to enlightenment. Their logic was simple: if reaching the peak of martial arts meant transcending humanity to become one with nature by shedding the physical form, why not just skip the hard work, discard the unnecessary flesh, and extract the soul directly?
"To think you'd separate not just your spirit, but your very soul from your vessel. Are you insane?"
"Yeah. It was an insane thing to do."
It’s a bit rich coming from me, but Hecate’s school of thought was considered radical even within the unorthodox sects of my past life. The soul is a realm more profound and unprovable than Qi—a kind of "quantum mechanics" of the Murim world, assumed to exist because of the legends of ascended masters and the divine presence of the few who reached the Realm of Sages. In other words, it was something that might not exist, and if it did, no one knew what would happen if you tried to pull it out of your own body.
And the result?
"...They say the outcome was so wretched and cruel that it wasn't even worth recording."
"What is that supposed to mean? Why are you stopping mid-sentence?"
"Shut up. You wouldn't want to know anyway."
My master, Shin-jae-gwi, had warned me repeatedly. Summon ancient demons, drag the dead from the depths of hell—that was all fine. You could even strip away the spirit or mind of a man or woman if you pleased. But there was one thing: never touch your own soul, and don't even think about it. I had eventually learned what happened when I excavated ruins from the ancient era, but I didn't have the stomach to speak of it aloud.
Regardless, even in the ancient wars between Heaven and Hell where all sorts of mad arts were rampant, a human tampering with their own soul was the ultimate taboo.
"In that sense, you were lucky. It wasn't a human with a mortal body, but a god who used the Soul-Shedding Technique on herself. At least your mind is still intact."
A god is fundamentally a state where heart, Qi, and body are perfectly unified. While they possess a "divinity" that exists as a god, they are defined by the oneness of mind, body, and energy. That was likely why, even after Hecate left her divine vessel and existed only as divinity, she could maintain her existence and remain in the mortal realm in such an alien state.
"Oh... my god. I only reached this field of study myself a short while ago. To think you have such a deep grasp of it... Was it true that the accident Despoina caused in Acrocorinth was because she was trying to imitate you?"
By the time I finished speaking, Hecate looked like a graduate student who had just realized the young man she thought was a peer was actually the most senior expert in the field.
"That should be enough. Now, tell me about the Hydra."
"W-what!? Wait a minute! Do you have any idea what kind of story you just told? This is a monumental discovery that would put Greek magic hundreds of years ahead!"
"So what? Do I look like I have the time to sit here and engage in leisurely academic discourse with you?"
"T-then, just tell me how you knew I lost my physical body! If you tell me that, I'll talk!"
Is this woman... out of her mind?
Trying to strike a bargain with me right now.
"Isn't your sense of priority a bit skewed? I have absolutely no reason to please you right now."
I didn't know—and didn't care to know—what tricks that damn witch used to pull out that face that only I remembered. I just assumed she used some kind of spell, as she was a witch roaming an unpredictable era. I had only been sitting here because of Eris's persistent nagging and the fact that I needed a lead on the Hydra, and there was no way to reach it without her.
"If anything, I should be charging you money for how much I've opened up to you."
"Do you have no sympathy as a fellow mystic?"
"Don't try to lump us together."
Just as I was leaning toward leaving, sensing that our incoherent bickering was about to drag on, Hecate bit her lip and slumped back into her seat, as if giving up.
"Ugh... They say gods treat each other like shards of pottery on the side of the road, but Eris was right about you."
"Hardly. I only show respect to those worthy of it. As for those who need to be killed, I deal with them quickly."
"Tsk, so savage."
I’d been thinking this since earlier, but this goddess Hecate was remarkably perceptive. Aside from our first meeting, she had been walking a fine line, tickling my patience to draw out information, or retreating like a flash the moment I looked ready to leave, gauging my mood.
"Not a cat, are you..."
"What?"
"Stop the chatter and get to the point. The Hydra—what happened to it?"
"...Fine. Fine, I get it."
Hecate growled at me with a sour expression, but at my threat, she finally started talking again.
"Like I said before~ the Hydra was a serpent so wise that it was impossible to believe it was Typhon's child. History, hunting, magic, alchemy, astrology... each of its heads was like a library unto itself."
"Oh ho..."
When people think of the Hydra, they think of poison. It was said that even gods feared its agony, and no matter how strong a hero was, if they were struck by that venom, even their soul would melt away. I had been worried about whether I should make Heracles learn the poison arts of the Sichuan Tang Clan, assuming he wouldn't have survived the venom if not for the Nemean Lion's hide. Hearing about the Hydra from a perspective other than that of a huntable monster was quite refreshing.
"Did you hear how the Hydra ended up in Lerna?"
"From what I heard from Chiron, it was a gift from Poseidon to Amymone, one of the daughters of Danaus. Didn't the daughters of Danaus cut off their husbands' heads on their wedding night and dump them there?"
I remembered the circumstances behind that tragedy as a rather hardcore event involving complex power struggles. Regardless of the reasons, fifty daughters had decapitated their husbands on their wedding night and tossed them into a blessed spring as a way to destroy evidence. Naturally, Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, had been furious. She had ordered the Hydra, which was looking for a place to settle, to wipe the place clean and devour all 49 of the daughters—excluding the eldest, who hadn't participated—so that their souls would fall into Tartarus.
And when the Hydra faithfully carried out that order, Hera blessed it, telling it to settle in Lerna and make humans realize the fear of Hera and the sanctity of marriage.
"That spring, Lerna, is an entrance to the underworld. Hades was already having a headache because of the living trespassing, and since Cerberus's 'older sister' was taking charge of the place, he even blessed it as a guardian. Dionysus also opened a path for her in exchange for a drop of wine when he went to meet his mother, Semele, and blessed her for protecting him."
"I thought everyone would shun it for being Typhon's child. Surprisingly, it got along well with the gods?"
"I told you. It was a serpent of unparalleled wisdom. It didn't have any particular regrets about the father who went out to fight and died when it was young."
Come to think of it, Typhon's rebellion was an event from the very early days of Olympus, and the children of Typhon born around that time were only hunted down after Heracles was born. If they had relied on Hera's influence and their own power to run wild, Zeus would have struck them down with a thunderbolt long ago, regardless of what Hera said. Or, if not that, the hot-tempered Hera would have personally thrown them into Tartarus herself.
"I met her when I was guiding Demeter."
"Is this about the Persephone kidnapping incident?"
"That's right~ Chiron taught you well."
The story of Hades and Persephone was a major event that everyone in Greece knew. It was the story of Hades, who had been filling the gaps between the surface and the underworld created by the war with Typhon, falling in love with Persephone while she was picking flowers and kidnapping her. Demeter had wandered the surface looking for her, and it was said that Hecate had guided her, holding a torch.
"At that time, it was the Hydra that accurately pinpointed Persephone's whereabouts. It said that there was no place on this earth that the Goddess of the Earth could not find, and if even the Olympus of the heavens hadn't heard her screams, there was only one culprit. The Lord who leaned into the darkness."
At those words, Demeter called Hermes and asked him to find out if the Lord of the Underworld had Persephone. Shortly after, Hermes, who had gone to the underworld to guide the dead, discovered Persephone, confirming the Hydra's deduction.
"You actually went to a nine-headed giant serpent for advice."
"What's wrong with that? Seeking advice from the wisest being when gathering information on the surface. Zeus wasn't pleased, of course."
Demeter, not forgetting that favor, blessed the place where the Hydra resided with abundance. Thanks to that, Lerna, where the Hydra lived, was a hidden paradise of Argos, green all year round and filled with all kinds of fruits and medicinal herbs.
"I also stayed in Lerna for a long time, debating and researching with the Hydra. She was very interested in my magic and alchemy. Her nine heads would always spit out directions I hadn't even considered."
Hecate smiled as if she truly missed those days, but she soon dropped her head.
"...It's all in the past, though."
"By any chance, is that related to you losing your body?"
"Huh? How did you know?"
No matter how unpleasant or murderous I found her, a goddess is still a goddess. If a goddess who had been recognized by the three great gods and had been active in the Titanomachy was driven to such an extreme situation, it couldn't be a minor incident.
'If she had been that close to the Hydra while all that was happening...'
What crossed my mind was the frenzy of Orthrus, which had driven Geryon to the brink of death last time. Orthrus, left with only its instincts after the worship of humans faded and the spiritual energy of the surface weakened, leaving its divinity and spirituality depleted, was truly a monster in its own right.
'Orthrus was weak enough that even Hera was wary of it, but the Hydra is on a different level.'
Aside from having two heads, Orthrus was just a big sheepdog. Even when that thing went wild, its ultimate move was just a Lion's Roar x2, yet Geryon and the Laestrygonian giants had coughed up blood and been knocked out, and the monsters swarming the Sea of Tribulation were just its snacks. If Orthrus, which was considered weak, was like that, what would happen if the Hydra, which even the gods feared in mythology, went on a rampage?
'A powerful monster starving for the hunger of divinity, and a witch-goddess of the old divinity lingering nearby.'
The picture was obvious by now.
"Did the Hydra eat your body?"
"Hic?! H-how did you...?"
"Hmph..."
Of course, I knew it wouldn't be easy as I set out, but I hadn't expected things to get this complicated. Why Hecate had been waiting for me on this island right on cue, and why she had provoked me using such extreme measures—the full picture was slowly beginning to reveal itself.