The Myth of the Greek Heavenly Demon

Chapter 61 – Fun And Exciting Trouble List

1. Goddess of the Moon Artemis, God of the Sun Apollo – A premonition of orbital bombardment.
2. Hermes’s Riddle – How a child born without a midwife gained divine status.
3. Eris and Nemesis – We said we’d meet again later, but is that really okay?
4. Goddess Hera and Atalanta – Hermes’s tip: Make sure to offer a proper burnt offering to the goddess: Cows or perfumed oils are good as sacrifices, but apparently, poems are trending in Olympus, so take note.
5. Orion – Resolution: The gang left with no corpses. Thanks to Eris’s barrier, there were no witnesses, the perpetrator vanished as punishment, and rumors inside the forest say they were beaten and chased away by me.
6. Atalanta and Nesneria – …

“Is this about it?”

It had been barely a week since leaving the island, and the quests were piling up, with all of them being overwhelmingly daunting.
The only relief was that most of them were either resolved or not too dangerous.
However, the problem was that there was one unresolved issue that was quite dangerous.

Apollo and Artemis.
Sun and Moon.
Reason and Madness.
Day and Night.

The Twin Gods who were opposites yet one and the same.
Even worse, Apollo’s myths were mostly tragic love stories that were a mess.
And Artemis’s myths were mostly punishment dramas filled with human failings.
The fact that these two were targeting me and growling was a headache even for me.

“Man, I need a smoke.”

I wanted to at least have a drink, but unfortunately, I haven’t furnished my house yet, so I didn’t have anything.
There wasn’t even any tobacco around here. Just marijuana.

Anyway, what was important right now wasn’t my smoking situation, but preparing for orbital bombardment.

“The number of countermeasures I can implement right now is about three or four.”

First, a show of force.
Although the last time I witnessed Artemis’s blood was half luck, I’ve experienced a lot in a short time since then.
I’ve awakened a special power called the Twelve Divine Demons, and during the fierce battle with Heracles, I was able to regain much of my martial arts skills.
Moreover, this Forest of Heroes was Chiron’s sanctuary, protected in the name of Zeus.
No god could freely exert their divine power here in the forest without Chiron’s permission, so I had a geographical advantage as well.
However, there was a problem: both Apollo and Artemis were characters who were the original long-distance dealers.
Flying in the sky, shooting sunlight and moonlight as arrows, the brother fired solar beams and plague beams, while the sister fired moonlight beams and curse beams indiscriminately.
Even though this place was Chiron’s sanctuary, if they aimed for my headshot with arrows from the sky, saying, “Oops, my hand slipped,” my ways to counter it were extremely limited.

“If only, if only I could bring the battlefield down to the ground, to the forest…”

There was something that the Twelve Divine Demons always told me in unison.
That is, in a fight, there is no such thing as an absolute.
A third-rate martial artist’s careless move could kill a first-rate martial artist.
And a superhuman who could topple mountains and leap over rivers could fall to the poison of a mere assassin in the murim world.

Even if the opponent was a god with immense power.
With the essence and enlightenment of martial arts that I still possessed, if I had the Divine Weapon that could perfectly reproduce that martial art, I could face the sun or the moon without hesitation.

However, if I were to be sniped from an extreme long range, it would indeed pose several difficulties for me.

Of course, aside from the Divine Weapon, the foundation for continuously practicing the Martial Spirit Cultivation Technique and Demon Arts was also gradually being prepared.
As I approached the age of physical completion, my goal before leaving the Forest of Heroes was to be able to fully wield the martial arts of the Twelve Divine Demons with just my internal qi, without the help of the Divine Weapon.
I had a Divine Weapon that could reproduce even the most challenging techniques of the Twelve Divine Demons, like the Nine Forms Sword and Sword Qi, so I wondered if there was even a need to practice martial arts.
The other day, I had a nosebleed due to internal injuries, and they said that to handle the Twelve Divine Demons’ qi, not only my qi control but also my physical body must support it.
Given that the qi of the Twelve Divine Demons was not entirely my own but was suspected to belong to Nyx, the Primordial Night Mother, it was concluded that my body must transcend to fully digest that intense qi from them.
However, this was not much of a problem for me either.
After the fierce battle with Hercules, the Twelve Divine Demons’ qi, which had become even stronger and more manageable, showed more than three times the efficiency not only in martial arts reproduction but also in martial arts training.
In terms of the size of my dantian, it was almost comparable to that of a peak martial artist.
Moreover, if you add the Twelve Divine Demons’ qi that was evenly distributed throughout my body, I would be able to handle even a super-peak master with ease.
Considering the current use of the Godly Demonic Qi, even reaching the pinnacle would almost place no restrictions on its operation.
Moreover, if I were to reach the Enlightenment Stage, this Godly Demonic Qi would wholly belong to me, further accelerating my achievements.
And I anticipated that just by reaching the pinnacle, I would be able to handle most curses or acts of violence, as long as the gods weren’t playing hardball.

“Going straight to the Enlightenment Stage… would be quite difficult now.”

No matter how much I had glimpsed the realm beyond the heavens, the Enlightenment Stage was a rather high wall for me to cross.
The beginning of superhuman-like strength and the first step towards reaching the level of a god.
That was precisely what the Enlightenment Stage was.
No matter how complete my understanding was or how powerful the divine technique was, ascending to the Enlightenment Stage again would likely require considerable effort and time.
If I could surpass the pinnacle and ascend to the Enlightenment Stage, there would be no need to worry about such troubles.

“Anyway, that’s how the matter of force is settled.”

Secondly, I would make an appeal to the gods.
The principle of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a god for a god’ might seem harsh coming from me, but my devotion to the gods had deep roots.
My memories stretch back to the colorful comic books about gods that filled the shelves of my childhood orphanage’s library.
Those myths, brought to life through elegant illustrations and captivating stories, left a lasting impression on me. Though the quality dipped near the end when the illustrator changed and the stories lost some of their charm, I couldn’t quite recall how they concluded.
Anyway, the Greek gods were an innocent admiration from my cherished memories.
But now, in a world where such gods actually existed, I was living my third life.
Without needing to establish pride as a warrior or dignity as a ruler, they were my old admiration and memories, friends I parted ways with long ago, and the protagonists who made me cry and laugh in my imagination.
In the orphanage, I would often indulge in a sense of joy and longing, offering faith to the gods of my old memories as a fairly devout believer.
As a result, though it wasn’t intentional, Hermes mentioned that Ares and Poseidon had taken quite a liking to me.
My calculation was that they wouldn’t ignore a young devotee, whom they had been sending pocket money and personally picking up offerings for, when threatened by another god.
Moreover, a poem I spontaneously dedicated to the Temple of Zeus reached Hera’s ears beyond Zeus.
As a result of that butterfly effect, even the Goddess Hera showed affection towards me, and took care of me with a precious elixir through Atalanta.
Whether this would be a disadvantage or a benefit in the future, I didn’t know, but for now, knowing that the gods from the myths I frequently looked up in my previous life were standing by as a countermeasure to the twin maniacs was quite reassuring.
Moreover, if I asked my self-proclaimed sister Eris and real sister Nemesis, who had been quite friendly to me, they would cover me to some extent.

“It’s quite humiliating that I have to rely on connections to fight off assassins targeting me, but…”

Realistically, considering that I was still far from being able to face a god head-on, it was only right to utilize all possible measures.

“In that sense, this riddle Hermes threw at me…”

[Seek the tale of the child born without the aid of a midwife, who gained divine calling. In this forest where heroes are nurtured, show the answer to the sons of Hephaestus who reside deep within, and the path will open.]

The riddle with this kind of nuance kept tickling my intuition.

“If only I could solve this, it feels like the answer would be revealed right away…”

It was as if I almost knew it, but the answer on the test paper I had skimmed with my eyes remained strangely blurry, as if it had been whited out.

“Ughhh…”

A child born without a midwife, the process of obtaining divine calling…

“Since it mentions obtaining divine calling, it must be a story about a god…”

As expected of the god whose only strong suit was his eloquence. He had a knack for twisting stories around.
In case the twin lunatics’ madness would later target innocent people, it was a cautious situation to ask others, so I had to solve it alone.

Hey, it’s just asking about a riddle. Would they really try to kill me, even if they were lunatics?
It’s not like I didn’t think about it.
But seeing Asclepius sitting across from me last night, it reminded me.
His son was killed by his own father’s hands, and instead of confronting his father, he aimed a headshot at the Cyclopes who made the thunderbolts. That lunatic, Apollo, was my current opponent.

“Yeah, a lunatic is a lunatic for a reason…”

Yet, Apollo was the most popular god in Greece.
It proved that being handsome was everything.

“Sigh. For now, I should visit the temples tomorrow, offer some sacrifices, and think about strategies.”

I roughly rolled up my trouble list and tossed it away, then collapsed back onto my bed and pulled the blanket over me.
Let’s solve tomorrow’s problems tomorrow. There is no need to stress about it now.

“Tomorrow’s first class is… pottery class?”

What kind of class is it?
I chuckled, thinking it was a strange class, and casually extinguished the fire with a gust of wind using the Crazy Wind Spear technique before going to bed.

…Little did I know that I would make an unexpected discovery in that very pottery class.