Jerry pushed open the iron door leading to the lower level.
Behind the door was a flight of stone stairs extending downward.
Each step was approximately thirty centimeters wide and twenty centimeters high.
The surfaces were paved with grey granite that had been magically hardened.
Every five meters along the walls on both sides, an Eternal Flame wall lamp was embedded.
They emitted a faint, dark orange glow, dyeing the entire staircase in an ambiguous tone between gloom and visibility.
Jerry walked in front.
Hera followed behind.
Hera's right hand was gripping Athena's hair.
The grip was specific: five fingers were thrust into the roots of the hair at the back of Athena's head.
A large clump of ash-blonde long hair was wound between Hera's palm and fingers, then clenched tight.
The grip was strong enough to pull Athena's scalp upward to the point of deformation.
The skin around the hair follicles was stretched white.
Several strands of hair that could not withstand the tension snapped from their follicles, drifting onto the steps.
Athena's body was being dragged behind Hera.
Naked.
Completely naked.
The light-fabric robe she had originally worn had been completely shredded in the previous struggle.
The remaining scraps were scattered on the office floor upstairs.
At this moment, there was no covering on her body whatsoever.
The first step.
Hera's bare foot stepped onto the edge of the step, her center of gravity shifting downward.
The hand pulling Athena's hair did not slow down.
Athena's body was driven by inertia, sliding down from the threshold of the iron door.
Thump.
Athena's back slammed against the edge of the first step.
The corner of the step was a right angle; the hardness of granite far exceeded that of human bone.
That sharp stone ridge jammed exactly between Athena's shoulder blades.
It hit the thinnest area of skin and muscle covering the sides of her spine.
The impact conducted up and down her spine.
It caused Athena's body to arch violently at the moment of impact.
Her abdominal muscles contracted in a spasm, her knees bent, and her bare toes scraped against the floor above the step.
"Ngh!"
A muffled grunt was squeezed from between her gritted teeth.
The second step.
Hera's pace did not stop.
Athena's body slid off the first step, her lower back slamming into the corner of the second.
This time, the impact hit the sides of her lumbar vertebrae.
The muscles there were thicker than at the shoulder blades, but the hardness of the granite corner made the cushioning nearly negligible.
Thud.
A heavier impact.
Athena's buttocks bounced about two centimeters from the recoil of the strike before falling back onto the flat of the step.
Her butt cheeks, having lost the shielding of the divine fabric, were fully exposed in the dark orange light.
A short friction sound—skritch—erupted between the rounded, tight flesh of her ass and the rough granite surface.
A small patch of faint red abrasion was ground onto the skin.
Third step.
Fourth step.
Fifth step.
Every single step left a new mark of impact on Athena's body.
From her shoulder blades to her lumbar spine to her sacrum, her entire back was "printed" with a row of evenly spaced red horizontal lines.
It looked as if a giant comb had been raked across the skin of her back.
Athena's hands clawed haphazardly at the steps, trying to find a point of leverage to resist the dragging force.
Her fingers hooked onto the edge of the sixth step, her nails digging into the tiny crevices of the granite.
Her entire arm was strained into a straight line.
The dragging force and the grip of her fingers reached a brief equilibrium for a fraction of a second.
Hera did not look back.
She simply gave the right hand clutching Athena's hair a sharp downward yank.
Snap.
The nail of Athena's right index finger tore away from the nail bed.
The shard of the broken nail flew out, glinting in the dark orange light before vanishing into the shadows of the stairs.
Her finger lost its grip.
Her body continued to slide down.
The corner of the seventh step slammed into the crease where her buttocks met the root of her thighs.
The skin at that location was far more tender and sensitive than her back.
the pain signals from the impact conducted upward along the sciatic nerve, triggering a violent twitch in her lower abdomen.
Athena's legs splayed open uncontrollably from that strike.
It was only for an instant.
But in that instant, the sight between her legs was fully exposed in the dark orange light.
The skin of her inner thighs was the fairest area on her entire body.
It was so white it almost appeared to be self-luminous in the dim light.
Closing inward from the creases at the roots of her thighs, that triangular area was covered by an extremely sparse layer of light-colored fine hair.
The color of the fuzz was even lighter than her ash-blonde hair, nearly transparent.
Beneath the fuzz, there was a shallow longitudinal crevice in the skin.
The edges on both sides of the crevice were slightly raised, symmetrical folds of pale pink soft tissue.
Due to the previous penetration by the crystal rod and Jerry in the office, that slit was not completely closed.
A gap of about two millimeters remained between the folds on either side.
The wet luster of mixed bodily fluids still lingered within the gap.
Her legs clamped shut immediately after the exposure.
Her knees pressed together with force, and her inner thigh muscles tensed.
However, that single frame of imagery had already fallen into Jerry's line of sight as he looked back from the front.
A deeper sense of humiliation flashed through Athena's grey eyes under Jerry's gaze.
Then she made her move.
The first escape attempt.
Her right hand traced a rapid arc on the step, her finger leaving a faint grey trail of light in the air.
That was the starting gesture for Spatial Displacement.
The principle of the spell was to establish an instantaneous spatial channel between the caster's current location and a target location, then transfer the caster's body to the other end within a Planck time unit.
The grey light coalesced into a spatial rift about fifty centimeters in diameter the moment her finger finished the arc.
The edges of the rift flickered with unstable radiance; inside was a distorted reflection, like a shattered mirror.
Hera's left hand rose slightly.
She gave a flick with her index finger.
Pop.
A crisp sound.
That spatial rift shattered like a soap bubble under the shockwave of Hera's finger flick.
The grey light splattered in all directions, turning into dozens of tiny points of light that hovered above the stairs for two seconds before extinguishing.
"Spatial Displacement. The most basic of basics."
Hera's voice drifted down from above, her tone carrying the boredom of a teacher grading a failing exam paper.
The eleventh step.
Athena's body was dragged down four more steps.
The impact of every step accumulated damage on her body.
Her entire back, from shoulder blades to tailbone, had become a map of alternating red welts and abrasions.
The skin on some impact points had broken.
Minute amounts of divine blood, bearing a golden luster, seeped from the wounds, leaving a string of intermittent golden spots on the grey-white granite steps.
The second escape attempt.
Athena's grey eyes suddenly lost focus.
The pupils dilated sharply, and the color of the entire iris shifted from grey to silver-white.
That was the activation mark of Time Stasis.
Time froze within a one-meter radius around her.
The dust motes floating in the air stopped moving.
The fingers of Hera's hand clutching her hair stopped applying force.
On the stairs, her body stopped sliding.
Even the flickering of the wall lamps' flames paused.
Everything was stationary.
Except for Athena herself.
She struggled within the frozen time, trying to break free from Hera's hand.
Her hands grabbed the fingers of the hand Hera used to hold her hair, attempting to pry them open one by one.
She pried the first finger open by a crack.
The second finger began to loosen.
The third...
Hera's fingers moved.
Within the time solidified by the Time Stasis spell, Hera's fingers moved.
Athena's grey eyes bulged to the limit in that moment.
Hera's five fingers not only tightened again but did so with more force than before.
In the stilled time, Hera's palm moved freely, appearing completely unaffected by the spell.
"Time Stasis."
Hera's voice emerged from the solidified air.
Even the conduction of sound waves was unaffected by the time freeze.
That existence transcending physical laws made Athena's blood run cold in an instant.
"Did you think your time spells could affect me?
Athena, your magic manipulates physical time.
But my existence transcends the boundaries of physical time."
The Time Stasis spell shattered.
It was like a glass wall being struck by a hammer in the center.
Cracks radiated outward from around Athena's body.
Then the entire frozen area thawed within a single second.
Air flowed again, dust fell once more, and flames resumed their dance.
Athena's body continued to slide down.
The fifteenth step.
Her breast was clipped as she passed the corner of this step.
The edge of the step hit exactly against the lower curve of her left orb.
The breast tissue was flattened for an instant under the impact force before bouncing back due to its elasticity.
The entire mound produced a violent wobble, like a jelly being slapped.
"Sss...!"
Athena sucked in a breath of cold air through her teeth.
A red indentation appeared on the skin of the lower breast, perfectly matching the width of the step's corner.
The third escape attempt.
Athena's body suddenly became two.
Mirror Self.
A completely identical Athena—equally naked, equally bruised, with the same ash-blonde hair being gripped by Hera's hand—split from her body.
The duplicate was indistinguishable from the original in appearance, right down to the wounds and the traces of bodily fluids.
The duplicate remained in Hera's hand, continuing to be dragged.
Meanwhile, the original attempted to slip away from Hera's reach the moment of the split, rolling toward the side of the stairs.
Hera did not even look.
She simply slammed the head of the "Athena" she was holding against the stone wall.
Crack.
the body of the Athena that was hit shattered like a broken mirror.
The shards turned into countless microscopic points of light reflecting the lamps.
The light points circled once in the air, then all flew toward the real Athena who was rolling to the side.
The light points recoalesced into physical hair the moment they touched Athena's body.
And Hera's hand, as if "following" them through some method transcending space while the points were in flight, was already clenching Athena's hair roots again when the hair reformed.
The entire process took less than a second.
Athena's escape was terminated the very instant it began.
"Mirror Self. Petty cleverness."
A trace of impatience entered Hera's voice.
The twentieth step.
Jerry walked in front, occasionally glancing back at this one-sided "chase."
His expression carried the interest of a spectator watching a mouse pinned to the floor by a cat making futile struggles.
He noticed the changes occurring on Athena's body.
Her skin was changing.
Previously, even though she was naked and bruised, her skin maintained a luster belonging to a god, transcending humanity.
That glow did not come from the reflection of external light sources, but from the self-luminous effect produced by the divine energy within her body seeping out through the skin.
But now, that luster was receding.
Starting from the extremities of her limbs—her fingertips, her toes—the glow retracted toward her torso like an ebbing tide.
The skin that lost its divine luster turned into an ordinary complexion, closer to a human's, non-luminous and bearing fine pores and vascular patterns.
Simultaneously...
Tattoos appeared.
The first location to appear was on the left side of her ribs.
A row of patterns composed of fine, extremely minute symbols surfaced at the level of her seventh rib.
It was as if an invisible hand were writing on the inside of her skin with a gilded pen.
The symbols seeped from the deep layers of the skin to the surface, becoming clear one by one.
Those symbols were not any known human script.
They were closer to primitive, conceptual pictograms.
Each symbol did not represent a "word" but a "concept": chains, obedience, subordination, binding, belonging.
These concepts were compressed into tiny patterns using an encoding method Jerry had never seen, arranged along the line of Athena's ribs.
The second location appeared on her spine.
From the cervical to the coccygeal vertebrae, along the entire length of her spine, a tattoo line composed of continuous symbols surfaced.
This line was thicker, deeper, and darker than the one on the ribs, presenting a dark gold hue, like a brand burned into the inner layer of the skin.
The symbols on the spine were different from those on the ribs.
The symbols on the spine represented concepts of being created, being granted, being permitted to exist, the conditions of existence, and the price of existence.
The third location appeared on her lower abdomen.
Starting about three centimeters below her navel, a circular pattern approximately ten centimeters in diameter slowly surfaced.
The pattern was extremely complex: concentric circles, intersecting lines, and radiating sequences of symbols, nested layer upon layer.
It looked like a miniature version of a magical array, but Jerry could feel that the nature of this "array" was different from any he was familiar with.
It was a seal.
A seal etched onto Athena's abdomen.
Jerry was unsure of the exact function of the seal, but judging from the concepts represented by those symbols—"Reproduction," "Forbidden," "Eternal"—it was a reproductive seal Zeus had etched into Athena's body when he created her.
It forbade her from producing offspring.
Permanently.
The fourth location appeared on her inner thighs.
On the insides of both her left and right thighs, extending from the groin to just above the knee, a winding, serpentine tattooed trail appeared on each side.
The scales of the serpentine trail were composed of even smaller symbols.
Each "scale" was an independent concept: "Loyalty," "Inviolable Betrayal," "Punishment Clauses," "Price of Breach."
That was the physical manifestation of the loyalty contract Zeus had imposed upon Athena.
Tattoos.
Not decorative tattoos.
They were contracts, seals, chains, and ownership marks left by a creator on its creation.
All were etched deep into Athena's being, usually shielded by her own divine energy.
But when her divine power dropped below a certain threshold, these marks etched into her very marrow would surface like hidden reefs appearing when the tide recedes.
Athena felt the appearance of those tattoos.
She looked down at her own abdomen, seeing the circular seal pattern surfacing.
A fear and shame far deeper than being stripped of her clothes—one concerning the very essence of her existence—flashed through her grey eyes.
The appearance of those tattoos meant her divine energy had dropped below the danger threshold.
She was regressing from a "God" to an existence "Akin to Human."
The fourth escape attempt.
Athena's hands rapidly traced a gesture in the air that Jerry had never seen before.
Her ten fingers interlaced into a complex, three-dimensional structure, like weaving an invisible knot.
Phase Shift.
Her body began to turn transparent starting from her toes, like a block of ice melting into water.
The texture of her physical form was receding.
She attempted to transform her body from a material state to a non-material state, intended to pass through Hera's fingers, through the steps, and through the walls like a ghost.
Her right foot was already completely transparent. Her calf was changing too.
The area below her knee already allowed the surface of the step behind it to be seen.
Hera tightened her grip on the hair.
Then she did something incredibly simple.
A wisp of golden divine power flowed from her fingers, conducting down Athena's hair strands like an electric current.
It passed through the hair, entered the scalp, penetrated the skull, and reached the brain.
Athena's Phase Shift collapsed in that instant.
Her right foot and calf, which had already turned transparent, snapped back to a solid state.
The process of being forcibly reversed from a non-material state back to material produced a surge of agony.
The muscles of her calf cramped the moment they resolidified.
Her toes curled, and her entire leg gave an uncontrollable kick, her bare heel slamming into the step with a dull thud.
"Phase Shift," Hera's voice came from above. "You turned yourself into a ghost state.
Interesting.
But you forgot one thing: your hair is material. As long as my hand is gripping your hair, you will never be able to transform completely.
To escape using Phase Shift, you must first make your hair non-material as well.
But your hair is covered by my divine power, and my power does not permit it to change phase."
Athena lay on the steps, gasping.
The tattoos on her naked body continued to spread.
A fifth tattoo appeared on her neck—a ring-like collar composed of extremely dense, tiny symbols.
It looked like a tattooed version of a slave collar: "Possession," "Property," "Daughter of Zeus," "Sixth Sequence."
A sixth appeared on the backs of both her hands.
From her wrists to her fingertips, a spiraling line of symbols surfaced on every finger: "War," "Wisdom," "Weaving," "Scope of Authority," "Authorization Level."
The more tattoos appeared, the more Athena's skin approached that of a human.
That divine, flawless, perfect skin quality that transcended physical laws was being replaced bit by bit by these marks etched into her marrow.
Her body was transforming from a "statue" into a "marked vessel."
The fifth escape attempt.
This time, she didn't even have time to complete the opening gesture.
Her right hand had just risen, her fingers had just formed a new gesture, and grey mana had just begun to coalesce at her fingertips.
Hera used the hand pulling her hair to slam her head downward.
Crack.
Athena's face hit the step.
The bridge of her nose.
A dull thud.
the grey mana dissipated from her fingertips. The gesture broke. The spell miscarried.
When her nose lifted from the step, two streams of golden divine blood flowed from her nostrils.
The golden liquid ran down the curve of her upper lip to the tip of her chin, dripping onto the step.
"Mmh..."
She let out a blurred, muffled grunt, her airway blocked by the nosebleed.
Hera continued dragging her downward.
The stairs went on.
Athena's body continued to be struck by the corners of the steps, level by level.
Her back, waist, buttocks, and thighs—every area of skin that had been struck bore red marks.
In some places, the marks had turned from red to a bruised purple-blue.
Those were bruises caused by the rupture of subcutaneous capillaries.
On her skin, which was gradually losing its divine luster and approaching that of a human, these bruises appeared exceptionally jarring.
And those tattoos, those ownership marks belonging to Zeus, continued to emerge from the depths of her body.
Each appearance of a new tattoo meant her divine energy had dropped another level.
She was growing weaker.
Continuously.
Irreversibly.
Weakening.
Jerry stood at the landing of the stairs, leaning against the wall.
He watched as Hera dragged this naked goddess, covered in golden tattoos, down the steps from above.
The dark orange light of the wall lamps shone on Athena's body.
It caused the emerging golden tattoos to interweave with the red and purple-blue impact marks on her skin, forming a bizarre, beautiful, and cruel pattern.
Athena's grey eyes looked at Jerry.
Her eye sockets were red. The nosebleed was still flowing.
Her long ash-blonde hair was clenched in Hera's hand like a leash being held.
Her lips trembled. In those grey pupils that once represented the very concept of "Wisdom," only two things remained.
Jerry pulled something from the pocket of his hoodie.
Palm-sized. Crystal-textured. A semi-transparent amber color.
The shape was a humanoid figure in a squatting posture, hands hugging its knees, head bowed low.
The face had no features, only a smooth, egg-shaped plane.
Embedded in the chest cavity of the crystal golem was a grain-sized silver metal bead.
The surface of the bead was covered in microscopic runes nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The positioning device.
Jerry's thumb pressed down on the position of the metal bead.
The ice-blue ring on his index finger flickered, and an incredibly fine line of mana seeped from his fingertip into the internal structure of the crystal golem, injecting into the metal bead.
The metal bead lit up.
Silver light diffused from the chest of the crystal golem, projecting through the amber, semi-transparent crystal body onto Jerry's palm—a constantly rotating three-dimensional coordinate grid composed of countless tiny points of light.
At the center of the grid was a pulsating bright spot, flashing at an extremely unique frequency, each flash sending out a mana pulse carrying spatial coordinate information.
The pulses penetrated the walls of the Alchemy Workshop.
They pierced through the dimensional barriers between real space and folded space.
They flew all the way toward the location where Mount Olympus once stood, now hidden by the Eternal Seal.
Hera closed her eyes.
She stood mid-way down the stairs, her bare feet on the cold granite, her right hand still clutching Athena's hair.
Her golden lashes cast two fine shadows over her closed eyelids.
Her facial expression shifted from indifference to focus, like a hunter listening for an incredibly faint sound in the distance.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
After fifteen seconds, Hera opened her eyes.
The silver vortices in her golden pupils spun at the highest speed since her appearance, like two miniature galaxies whirling frantically within her eyeballs.
"Received."
Her voice was very soft.
"The signal has penetrated the first layer of the Eternal Seal's folding walls.
The intensity has decayed by about forty percent, but it is enough for me to lock onto the spatial coordinates of the Pantheon."
The corner of her mouth quirked up.
"The material of that crystal golem is indeed special. What did you use?"
Jerry tucked the crystal golem back into his pocket.
"Fragments of World Crystals.
Mixed with an artificial soul core synthesized through alchemy, then cast into the golem's skeleton. A World Crystal is itself the condensation of a miniature world; its spatial attributes are absolute. No external spatial laws can overwrite or expel it. The Pantheon's Eternal Seal can fold space and hide coordinates, but it lacks the power to repel an object that 'possesses its own spatial attributes' from its domain."
"Mmh."
Hera gave a slight nod.
She looked down at Athena, who was pinned to the steps by her grip on the goddess's hair.
Athena lay prone on the steps. Her naked body was covered in red and purple-blue impact marks. Golden tattoos emerged from her ribs, spine, lower abdomen, inner thighs, neck, and the backs of her hands, presenting an ancient and eerie beauty in the dark orange glow of the wall lamps. Golden divine blood still seeped from her nostrils, staining her upper lip and chin in a golden vertical line. Her grey eyes were half-closed, her breathing rapid and disordered.
Hera's golden pupils gazed down at her.
"Athena."
Hera's voice sounded like an echo rising from a deep well.
"Do you know how Zeus activated the Eternal Seal?"
Athena's body shuddered.
"He sacrificed a part of you.
He used a portion of your Divine Persona as fuel to drive the seal's operation.
You should remember that feeling, shouldn't you?
The moment your godhood core was forced into a state of combustion; the moment your body shattered into countless sealing runes."
Hera squatted down, her left hand braced on her knee, her right hand still clutching Athena's hair.
She leaned her face close to Athena's ear.
"Zeus used a part of your godhood to reinforce the seal. Therefore, what I intend to do now is use your godhood to weaken it."
Athena's grey eyes snapped wide open in that instant.
"The residual godhood energy you have left is weak, but it is still the godhood of 'Athena.' It shares a homologous resonance with the Eternal Seal. If I burn your godhood again, but this time in a reverse-combustion manner, the energy waves produced will create resonance interference with the seal's structure, punching cracks into its surface."
Hera's lips were almost brushing Athena's auricle.
"If the cracks are large enough, I can enter from the outside."
She paused.
"And then, kill the sleeping Zeus."
Athena's body suffered a visible, full-body spasm at the words "kill Zeus." The two serpentine loyalty contract tattoos on her inner thighs flared violently, golden light flashing from deep within the skin before rapidly receding. This was the automatic response of the contract tattoos to the information of "Zeus being threatened."
"No..."
Athena's voice squeezed out from the depths of her throat—hoarseness, broken, and muffled by the nosebleed blocking her airway.
"Don't..."
"Don't what? Don't sacrifice you? Or don't kill Zeus?"
Hera's tone was cold to the point of cruelty.
"You have no right to refuse either."
Hera stood up.
She looked at Jerry. Her golden eyes carried a query of "ready to begin."
Jerry leaned against the wall at the staircase corner, hands in his hoodie pockets. That massive meat-root, exposed from the waistband of his sweatpants, cast a thick shadow in the dark orange light. He watched Athena sprawled on the steps, his expression one of calm assessment.
Just as Hera was about to begin the sacrifice procedure.
"Wait."
Athena's voice changed suddenly.
From broken, hoarse, and muffled, it became a clearer, urgent sharpness that concentrated all her remaining willpower.
"I can lift the blood curse on Cho Chang!"
Jerry's fingers paused in his pocket.
Hera's hand clutching Athena's hair loosened slightly.
Jerry straightened up from the wall.
His gaze shifted from casual to razor-sharp, like a blade newly drawn from its sheath.
"What did you say?"
Athena struggled to lift her upper body from the steps.
Her arms braced against the stone, her chest leaving the ground. Two breasts, which had taken on a more human texture due to the loss of divine luster, hung naturally under gravity, the tips nearly touching the cold granite.
Her grey eyes stared at Jerry. Amidst the fear and despair in those eyes, a sudden, shrewd light of "finding a life-saving straw" flickered.
"Cho Chang. That Oriental witch of yours. She carries a blood curse. Hereditary. It activates at a specific age, turning her blood into a toxin that erodes her own organs."
Jerry's eyes narrowed.
"Where did you get this information?"
His voice was very soft, but every syllable felt as if it were carved into the air.
Athena swallowed a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood.
"Cho Chang's mother. She is a follower of mine."
Jerry tilted his head slightly.
"Cho Chang's mother?"
"Yes. When she was young, in order to cure the blood curse on her daughter, Cho Chang's mother visited every healing avenue in the East and West.
Witch doctors, apothecaries, Dark Arts scholars, even illegal curse-breakers in dark alleys.
All of them failed. Finally, she found me."
Athena's voice carried a trace of the weak, divine arrogance that belonged to a god—an arrogance that seemed exceptionally ironic given her current naked, battered state pinned to the stairs.
"She offered her prayers to me. She became my follower.
She transmitted all the information she knew regarding that blood curse to me in the form of prayers. The structure of the curse, the conditions for its activation, the records of symptoms in every generation of victims, and all the failed treatment plans she and her husband had researched for twenty years."
Hera let out a cold snort from the side.
"Follower."
Her voice carried undisguised mockery.
"Athena, stop romanticizing yourself.
What do you mean, 'a follower offered prayers to you'? To put it bluntly, it was plunder.
Every person in the world who possesses a sense of awe for knowledge—whenever they think, research, or learn—the fruits of their knowledge automatically and uncontrollably flow toward your divine domain.
Your so-called 'prayers of followers' is just a prettied-up way of saying it.
The truth is, you are plagiarizing their knowledge."
Hera looked at Jerry.
"Cho Chang's parents spent many years researching that blood curse.
Twenty years of heart and soul, twenty years of experimental data, twenty years of failed lessons. These things were automatically absorbed by Athena's godhood during the process of their research.
Athena did nothing but sit in the Pantheon, waiting for this knowledge to deliver itself to her doorstep."
Athena's grey eyes flickered. She did not deny Hera's words.
"Regardless of how I obtained the knowledge, the fact remains that I possess it.
I know the complete structure of that blood curse. I know where its weaknesses lie.
I know how to lift it."
Her voice became even more urgent.
"This is information you cannot obtain through any other means.
Cho Chang's mother has already surrendered all her research results to me; she herself no longer possesses the complete counter-curse solution.
Only I have all the fragments, and only I can piece them together."
Jerry watched her.
He remained silent for about five seconds.
Then he moved.
He walked over from the staircase corner. The waistband of his sweatpants hung loosely about three centimeters below his hip bones. That thick meat-root swayed slightly from side to side with every step he took, the residual traces of mixed fluids from Hermione and Aurora reflecting scattered points of light in the lamp glow.
He walked up to Athena.
Then he squatted down.
Jerry bent his knees, his center of gravity dropping, the height of his face lowering from its standing 175cm to about a meter, nearly level with Athena's face as she lay on the steps.
In his squatting posture, that meat-root hung in the gap between his legs, its tip nearly touching the surface of the step. From Athena's perspective, the thing hung less than twenty centimeters before her face—the thickness, the length, and the dark red hue from continuous engorgement all became overwhelmingly real at this close range.
Jerry's right hand rose.
Smack.
The palm slapped against Athena's left cheek.
The force wasn't massive, but it was enough to knock her head to the right, her ash-blonde hair whipping through the air in a fan shape.
A faint red palm print immediately surfaced on her left cheek.
Jerry didn't pull his hand back. Using the same hand that had just delivered the slap, he gripped Athena's chin directly, his five fingers locking onto the sides of her jaw, forcing her face back to look at him head-on.
"You're trying to bargain with me."
Jerry's voice was deep.
Smack.
He released her chin and delivered another slap. This time to her right cheek. The force was slightly greater than the last. Athena's head was knocked to the left, a drop of golden divine blood flung from her nostril by the vibration of the slap, landing on the step as a tiny golden spot.
Jerry gripped her chin once more, forcing her face back.
"You think you have the capital to bargain with me?"
He pressed his thumb forcefully against the tip of Athena's chin. The pad of his thumb sank into the soft tissue, pressing a depression into the skin.
"Your situation is this: Your godhood energy is nearly exhausted. Those tattoos on you mean your divine rank has dropped to the absolute bottom. You have no clothes. You are in my territory. Your true body is pinned to the stairs by Hera. You cannot escape."
He removed his thumb from her chin.
Smack.
The third slap. Left cheek again. The force increased yet another level. Athena's head snapped to the right, the "Possession" tattoo around her neck twisting with the rapid turn of her head before returning to its place.
Her left cheek was now completely flushed, the entire area from cheekbone to jawline presenting an even, crimson glow from the repeated striking.
Jerry gripped her chin yet again.
"The blood curse on Cho Chang is indeed a problem I've always wanted to solve."
His voice softened slightly at this.
"But did you think using that to trade for your life would work?"
He released her chin.
This time he didn't slap her.
He reached his right hand to the top of Athena's head, ruffling her ash-blonde hair haphazardly as if rubbing a pet's head. The action formed a bizarre contrast with the previous slaps; tenderness and violence alternating in the same hand.
"Listen closely."
Jerry squatted before Athena. In his squat, his meat-root hung between his legs, the tip resting on the cold surface of the step. The weight of the shaft caused it to curve slightly, like a resting python.
"I am not making a deal with you. I will not trade your life for the information on Cho Chang's curse."
He held up his index finger before Athena's face.
"What I want is worth far more than your life."
Athena's grey eyes stared at the raised index finger.
"Your Godhood."
The two words fell from Jerry's lips into the narrow space of the stairwell.
The flame of the wall lamp flickered in that instant, as if weighed down by the gravity of those two words.
"Surrender your Divine Persona."
Athena's entire body went rigid at the words "Divine Persona."
Her grey eyes bulged to their limit. Her pupils contracted sharply. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The vocal cords in her throat felt as if they were being choked by an invisible hand.
Godhood.
That was the fundamental root of why a god was a god.
What did losing godhood mean? It meant no longer being a god. No more divine power. No more immortality. No more authority. No more prayers from followers. No more existence transcending physical laws.
It meant falling from an existence hundreds of dimensions above humanity to a level as fragile as a human—prone to aging, prone to death.
"You... you want my godhood?"
Athena's voice was shrill to the point of cracking.
"How is that any different from killing me!"
Jerry tilted his head slightly.
"There is a big difference. If I kill you, most of your godhood's energy will dissipate into the air, wasted.
If you surrender it to me, your energy will be preserved in my alchemical devices, becoming useful materials.
As for you, you will become an ordinary human and continue to live."
The corner of his mouth quirked.
"Living is better than being dead, right?"
Smack.
He delivered another slap, this time to the right cheek. Athena's face was now so red it looked as if it had been boiled; both cheeks were symmetrically swollen, deforming her once-perfect facial contours into a slightly comical, puffed-up roundness.
"Don't hesitate. Your options are as follows."
Jerry held up two fingers.
"First, surrender your Divine Persona.
Give me the information to lift Cho Chang's blood curse.
You become an ordinary human.
You live.
But I will allow you to become a witch."
He held up a second finger.
"Second, refuse to surrender. Hera sacrifices you. You die. Your godhood is burned as fuel for the seal reversal. I'll figure out a way for Cho Chang's curse later on my own."
He waved the two fingers before Athena's eyes.
"Choose."
Athena's lips were trembling.
Every golden tattoo on her body lit up in this moment; the symbols representing "Chains," "Obedience," "Possession," and "Loyalty" flashed frantically across the surface of her skin as if activated.
This was the final struggle of the contract system Zeus had etched into her body. The contract had triggered its defense mechanism upon detecting the concept of "surrendering godhood," attempting to prevent her from making the decision to betray Zeus.
The flashing of the tattoos was accompanied by excruciating pain.
Every line, every symbol produced a burning sensation on Athena's skin as it flashed, as if countless red-hot needles were piercing her muscles simultaneously.
Her body arched on the steps. The line running from her cervical to her coccygeal vertebrae on her naked back lit up most fiercely; golden light surged from that line, outlining her entire back in a glowing arc.
"Ah..."
A moan distorted by pain escaped her mouth.
Her hands clawed desperately at the steps, her ten fingers curved into talons, her broken nails scraping harshly against the granite. Her naked legs kicked at the stairs, her toes curled to their limit, and the muscle lines of her calves tensed into visible cords during the spasms.
Her buttocks rose and fell uncontrollably in the pain, hitting the stone surface of the steps repeatedly with a series of dull slaps. The circular seal pattern on her abdomen grew brighter and brighter as it flashed, eventually becoming so luminous that the outlines of the organs within could be seen through the abdominal wall.
The serpentine tattoos on her inner thighs were also flashing desperately. The two golden "snakes" seemed to come alive, writhing on her skin as they swam from the roots of her thighs toward her knees and back again, leaving a trail of scorched red marks wherever they passed.
This was the contract's punishment mechanism.
The loyalty contract Zeus had implanted in Athena would automatically release pain signals to stop the host when it detected an imminent act of "betrayal."
Hera watched this scene from the side, no sympathy in her golden eyes.
"Contract punishment.
How many layers of safety locks did Zeus leave on you?"
Her voice carried the indifference of "seeing exactly what was expected."
The pain lasted for about thirty seconds.
Then the flashing of the tattoos began to weaken.
The golden light decayed from the brightest white-gold to ordinary gold, then to a dark gold, and finally to a near-extinguished murky brown.
The energy of the contract system was also nearing exhaustion.
Athena's body slumped back onto the steps. Sweat seeped from every pore of her body, covering her naked skin in a thin film of moisture that reflected a faint luster in the light. Her chest heaved violently, every breath accompanied by a trembling sob.
Jerry still squatted before her.
He waited for a while.
Then he reached out his right hand and gently pinched the tip of Athena's nose with his thumb and index finger. The action was incredibly tender, forming a sharp contrast with the previous slaps.
"Have you chosen?"
Athena's grey eyes looked at Jerry through the blur of sweat and tears.
Her lips moved.
The golden nosebleed and transparent tears met on her face, forming several crooked lines shimmering with different lusters.
Her voice emerged from between those lips stained with blood and tears.
Tiny.
Light.
Utterly exhausted.
"I will surrender it... but... you... must become my Master..."