The boisterous laughter and clinking of crystal glasses filled the 30th-floor hall of the Tower of Babel. The post-Denatus banquet had begun, drowning the tension that had previously gripped the room. In the corners of the hall, gods and goddesses exchanged casual gossip, momentarily forgetting the threat of world anomalies.
However, at one of the round tables slightly away from the center of the crowd, Hermes sat transfixed like a marble statue.
His beloved feathered hat lay carelessly on the table. The Messenger God's fingers gripped the edge of the oak table so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Cold sweat rolled slowly from his temples, past his jaw, and dripped onto his shirt collar.
He paid no attention to Loki, who was laughing uproariously across the room, or Freya, who was sipping wine with an enigmatic stare. Hermes's attention was entirely focused inward.
Something is wrong, Hermes thought, his breathing slightly ragged. There is something very, very wrong with my mind.
It was as if a giant dam inside his head had just cracked and was now slowly piecing itself back together. Hermes could feel his filter of caution—the multi-layered wall of paranoia he had built over thousands of years—just reactivating after having been completely paralyzed.
The blonde god closed his eyes, dissecting the confrontation he had just carried out five minutes ago. Why did he do it? Why did he stand in front of dozens of Orario's major gods and blurt out his crude speculations just like that?
That was not his style. Showing his cards at the start of the game, warning his prey that they were being hunted, and exposing his deductions on the front stage was absolute foolishness that a trickster god like him would never do.
I lost control of my own tongue, Hermes concluded with horror creeping up his neck. Something forced me to voice what was spinning in my head without being able to hide it.
Hermes let out a long, trembling sigh. Amidst that horror, there was a spark of immense gratitude. Even though he was in a semi-conscious state—like a drunkard whose honesty was forcibly squeezed out—the core of his consciousness as a divine entity still managed to put up passive resistance. He successfully held back the deepest secrets belonging to his own Familia from spilling out in public. He only vomited his deductive theories about Venti and Alfia.
Even so, the damage was done. He had openly beaten the drum of suspicion with the Barbatos Familia.
Hermes opened his eyes, looking straight at the empty crystal glass in front of him. His brilliant brain immediately went back to work, rewinding the memory tape of the past week to reconstruct the basis of his suspicions, which other gods considered nonsensical.
A week ago, right when the roar of the One-Eyed Black Dragon tore the sky from the northern end of the world. While other gods were busy gossiping and trying to find the source of the sound from the comfort of their headquarters, Hermes instead moved quickly. He immediately gathered the veteran members of his Familia—senior scouts who had been operating in the shadows for a long time.
"Watch all gates and movements at the city borders. Do not miss a single anomaly," ordered Hermes at that time.
The results from his intelligence network were very surprising. Amidst an uncertain situation, his spies reported that Venti, the bard god who had just established a Familia, had left Orario. There was no official registration at the gate, no announcement. The god slipped away secretly.
To Hermes, that was a very brightly waving red flag. Why would a god who had just arrived in Orario dare to leave the protection of the city walls right when the strongest monster in the world was roaring?
That suspicion crystallized even more when Venti returned to Orario. Not long after his return, a new anomaly appeared within the Barbatos Familia. Hermes's scout children reported the presence of a new member, a beautiful, cheerful-looking human girl registered as a Level 1 rookie adventurer named Sylphie.
The presence of a new member was normal, but what happened next made Hermes's instincts scream.
Many eyewitnesses at Babel saw Alfia—Silence, the former Hera familia member rumored to be severely ill—come down from the mountain. The silver-haired woman personally took Sylphie into the Dungeon. Alfia, a former Hera Familia executive, becoming a bodyguard for a Level 1 girl? That was a very bizarre sight.
And that strangeness reached its peak on the very same night.
Exactly on the day Alfia entered the labyrinth with Sylphie, an earthquake of an unprecedented destructive scale shook Orario. The earthquake was so devastating it caused mass panic throughout the city and forced the labyrinth to stop its monster production on the upper floors because it had to repair extremely severe structural damage on the Lower Floors.
Was this all just a mere cosmic coincidence? A god leaves secretly, then a dragon roars. The god returns. A new member named Sylphie appears. Alfia enters the labyrinth. An earthquake destroys the bottom of the Dungeon on the same day.
Hermes leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face with both hands.
All those pieces formed a highly plausible conspiracy theory in his head. However, when he accused Venti earlier, the green-clad bard god deflected it brilliantly.
Venti wasn't angry, didn't panic, and didn't stutter. He instead used Alfia's sickly physical condition as his rhetorical shield. Venti twisted Hermes's logic, making the accusation sound like the ridiculous imagination of a god hallucinating too much. The laughter of all the gods in the hall earlier was proof of Venti's absolute victory on the stage of public opinion.
Venti's alibi was so perfect. His logic was flawless.
However, therein lay his biggest mistake in Hermes's eyes.
Hermes was a master trickster. He knew very well the anatomy of a lie. A hastily fabricated lie was bound to have flaws. A real alibi usually possessed imperfections, a small detail that didn't fit or was slightly embarrassing for the perpetrator.
If Venti had given a slightly flawed excuse earlier, or looked nervous maintaining the narrative of his departure, Hermes might have dropped his suspicions and concluded that the Barbatos Familia indeed had nothing to do with this string of anomalies.
But Venti's alibi was too neat. Too solid. His rhetorical defense was designed in such a way to capitalize on the audience's sympathy and instantly discredit his attacker.
For the Messenger God, an absolute philosophy applied: The more perfect an alibi is, the closer it is to the truth being hidden.
The simultaneity of the earthquake and Alfia's entry into the labyrinth was no coincidence. Venti coming in and out of Orario during a crisis was also not just a stroll looking for rare wine from outside the city. The Barbatos Familia was hiding a very dark secret, a secret that might intersect directly with the fate of the world.
The main problem was: Hermes didn't have a single piece of evidence.
The depths of the labyrinth were not a place his spy network could infiltrate. The Lower Floors were an absolute death zone that could only be trodden by a handful of top-tier elite adventurers. Of course, not a single ordinary scout could survive there to be an eyewitness to what was actually happening.
Send his troops to investigate that old church directly? Hermes snorted softly, laughing at the ridiculous idea. He clearly wasn't crazy enough to confront Alfia. Silence might be sick, but the woman was a walking disaster. Approaching the perimeter of that old church with ill intent was tantamount to sending his foster children to the slaughterhouse. Alfia would detect the slightest murderous intent and finish them off before they could even cross the fence.
Relying on wild deductions without pure evidence would only make him a laughingstock, just like what had happened.
Hermes clicked his tongue in annoyance. He tilted his head, and his gaze fell back on the crystal glass resting right in front of him.
The liquid inside the glass was gone, leaving only a few drops of deep purple stain at the bottom of the glass.
Hermes's intelligent brain worked like a fast-ticking clockwork machine. He connected the loss of his mental control a few moments ago with his sensory memory. The aroma that was slightly too sweet, the thick taste that burned his throat, and the floating sensation that instantly breached his mind's defenses right after he sipped the drink.
Hermes's eyes widened. He just realized what weapon had taken him down.
It was wine. But not just any wine.
Hermes shuddered. As a god who often traveled around, he knew exactly how terrifying the effects of God Soma's concoction were. Soma's wine could break the common sense of ordinary humans, turning even great adventurers into blind worshippers willing to do anything for a drop of the drink.
But this drink he had just downed... was in an entirely different dimension of horror.
This wine did not target the minds of ordinary humans. This wine was specifically designed to penetrate and dismantle the mental defenses of fellow heavenly entities. This drink didn't damage consciousness or turn the drinker into a mindless slave. Instead, it stripped away walls of secrecy, uprooted the anchors of paranoia, and forced the drinker's deepest ego to vomit out every thought they were hiding.
Terrifying, thought Hermes, his fingertips touching the bottom of the cold glass. What kind of wine is this? Even Soma, with all his genius in brewing fermentation, would not be able to create a mental poison this scary.
Hermes stared intently at the purple drops. He was a god who gathered information, yet he never knew a drink with such terrifying specifications circulated in Orario. If this wine were served amidst political negotiations between major Familias, or at the table of high-ranking Guild officials, the deepest secrets of this city could be shattered overnight.
Who made this wine? Who deliberately placed it near him, or served it right when he was drowning in his suspicions towards Venti?
Someone had used him. Someone who understood the anatomy of his mind very well, realized that Hermes harbored a wild theory, and provided this wine as a trigger to forcibly fire it in public.
Hermes smiled faintly. A cold smile that did not radiate his signature playfulness at all.
Instead of feeling humiliated or angry for being made a puppet, the Messenger God's blood boiled with dark enthusiasm. The game in this city turned out to be much deeper and dirtier than he had anticipated.
On one side of the chessboard, there was Venti. The newcomer bard god hiding behind the mask of a cheerful and indifferent bard, with an alibi too perfect to cover up Alfia's movement activities, and the Black Dragon anomaly.
On the other side of the chessboard, there was an invisible figure. A mysterious wine brewer possessing the ability to hack a god's mind, who for some reason had a vested interest in testing Venti using Hermes's hands.
"Interesting," muttered Hermes softly, his voice almost a whisper swallowed by the boisterous laughter of the gods and goddesses around him. "Very interesting."
Hermes took his feathered hat, twirling it slowly with his finger before putting it back on his head, hiding the glint in his eyes behind thick shadows. He would not be reckless again. The brightly lit front stage was indeed not his place.
Starting tonight, he would return to his natural habitat. Since approaching that old church was a suicidal act, Hermes would use other means. He would summon his oldest veteran scouts, spreading them around the city's northern gates and main routes. Venti claimed that he went out of town to find rare wine and pick up new children. Hermes would monitor the god's movements from afar, waiting for the moment Venti stepped out of his safe zone.
He would verify every inch of the alibi spoken by the bard god. And at the same time, he would begin tracking the trail of the terrifying purple wine that had just silently controlled his tongue.
The game had just begun, and the Messenger God had no intention of losing for a second time.
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