Tia actually had no idea what kind of tribute ought to be offered to a god.
For the goddess of war and wisdom, the proper offering would presumably be victory in her name—battle enough to please her, blood enough to satisfy her.
But that was only his personal guess.
Looking back across Heracles' life, whether it was the guidance he received during the Twelve Labors or the one who led him after his ascension, Athena had always played an immensely important role.
Because of that, she was also the hardest kind of god to predict, the hardest to account for.
To Tia, she was the greatest variable of all.
"So... I'm off, then?"
Tia asked, half-questioning, half-not.
He looked toward Athena. The latter shifted aside, opening a broad and inviting path for him.
The smile on the goddess's face remained as gentle as ever, yet in Tia's eyes it was inexplicably chilling.
Meanwhile, the anxious Castor hurriedly got to his feet, bowed once more to the great Athena, and then followed after Tia toward the deeper woods.
[Thanks to Athena's guidance, the Cithaeron range—something that should have required a full carpet search—loses all its secrets before you.]
As the words appeared across the azure screen, the forest that should have been a labyrinth seemed, at that moment, to lose all power to hide anything.
[You step into the woods. After only a short while, an intense, almost choking fragrance of grapes surges into your nose.]
[It is the lingering madness left here by Dionysus, god of wine—a sweet perfume rich enough to shatter reason.]
[If an ordinary human inhaled it for the first time, they would immediately become a slave to divinity, sinking into pleasure and sweetness beyond escape.]
[But you are entirely unaffected by this force.]
[You are Heracles—the one who inherited Zeus's blood, whose fate is tangled inseparably with Hera, who was blessed by Athena, and who is destined to become Greece's greatest hero.]
[To you, this smell is not even as unpleasant as the medicines in the Einzbern household.]
[Castor, however, is entirely different. Though he too inherited Zeus's blood as a demigod, the divinity within him is far inferior to that of his sister, Pollux.]
[So, faced with this heavy grape-scent, he seems slightly intoxicated.]
[You have no choice but to support Castor and keep moving forward. Looking at him now, he will likely be of no use in whatever battle comes next.]
[Still, you are deeply puzzled as to why such an interruption would arise at a time like this.]
[Perhaps this too is Athena's doing.]
As they pressed deeper into the woods, the scent of wine that had hung over the outer forest gradually faded.
Then, the instant Tia swept aside the final screen of brush, a lion's roar—strong enough to tear at the soul—burst into their ears, accompanied by the thunderous crash of something heavy slamming into stone.
It was a giant lion, as large as an ox, with dark golden spines jutting from its back.
A sickly yellow light burned in its eyes. It had clearly been tainted by the aura of Dionysus and was now in a frenzied state.
And before it, amidst a heap of broken stone, Pollux was kneeling in disarray.
Her light Greek skirt had been torn, and her pale legs were covered in bloodied scratches left by thorns.
Even in his drunken haze, Castor saw the scene before him—and it made his eyes split with rage.
But for some reason, his body could not summon even a fraction of strength.
He could not swing a sword.
He could not even run.
"Pollux!!!"
He could only shout, pouring all his panic into his voice.
Pollux was a demigod blessed with immortality.
She should never have looked this weak.
So why?
Tia could not make sense of it either, but the most urgent matter now was saving her.
The lion's head became a streak of dark-golden lightning.
It opened jaws wide enough to swallow the girl's torso whole, lunging to devour Pollux in a single bite.
Boom—!
But the expected agony never came.
Instead, there was only the dull crash of flesh colliding with flesh—and the pained scream of the lion.
Tia's speed was so overwhelming that even he himself could barely control it. Since reaching adulthood, this was the first time he had ever used his full strength.
Castor had not even seen what happened.
In the blink of an eye, the one who should have been supporting him was gone, and Castor himself had collapsed onto the ground.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw Tia gripping the lion's upper and lower jaws with perfect precision, holding them apart in a raw contest of strength so that the beast could advance no farther.
"Class isn't over yet, teacher."
Tia's voice was terrifyingly calm, yet every word remained perfectly clear beneath the lion's roar.
Pollux trembled as she opened her eyes.
Under the moonlight, that figure stood before her, pressing the arrogant beast bodily into the rock wall with both hands.
In her gaze, there seemed to be the faintest trace of entrancement—
and something like longing.
But clearly, the giant lion had no intention of waiting.
Driven mad, it struggled wildly, claws sharp enough to slice through iron lashing toward Tia's abdomen.
Yet those claws could not cut even the slightest trace into his skin.
It tried to tear at him with its fangs, but all it could leave on Tia's body were faint white marks.
It tried to settle the matter by brute force, yet the one before it stood unmoving, like a mountain.
The Cithaeron Lion felt the difference in power—deeply, unmistakably.
Magical beasts were usually more intelligent than ordinary animals.
That was the gift the mana-saturated atmosphere of antiquity had given them.
As the longtime lord of these mountains, it had long fed itself by attacking the cattle herds of the neighboring kingdoms.
It knew human beings were not to be trifled with, and so in all these years it had never earned a reputation for eating men.
But the human who had fallen before it tonight did not fall under that rule.
That one, reeking of divine blood from head to toe, had been irresistible—like a deliberate lure.
Ah.
I really shouldn't have done that.
The clarity in the Cithaeron Lion's eyes returned at once.
It knew well what end awaited it now.
So, with one final desperate gamble, it threw itself at the one before it.
"Look out!"
That warning came from Pollux.
But Tia, at this moment, had fallen into thought.
[You have never once used the full strength of this body.]
[After roughly fifteen years of growth, you still have no proper understanding of what your limits truly are.]
[You only know that you are strong—but not how strong.]
[Even the masters who taught you knowledge and skill, or the magical beasts around the kingdom, or the experts you sparred with, had never once forced you to go all out.]
[And suddenly, you become curious.]
[You remember that your power does not come only from the flesh.]
[As a transmigrator, you also possess magical circuits far beyond those of ordinary people.]
[You decide to use those circuits to perform a simple reinforcement on your body. You draw upon those bottomless circuits, attempting to pour magical energy into your right arm—but the result far exceeds anything you expected.]
[The structure of your body mutates the instant the magical energy begins to flow. The circuits that had always lain dormant turn into ravenous beasts. Not only do they devour the portion you tried to call forth, they trigger a chain reaction, instantly draining all the magical energy stored inside you—enough to support several Holy Grail Wars in succession.]
[This is no longer simple "physical reinforcement." Your arm is completely reconstructed into something like a "divine-made armament," and the increase in density is so extreme that it even distorts the surrounding space.]
[Your magical energy is exhausted. But what you gain in exchange is a punch that has already stepped beyond the realm of "technique" and become absolute "causality."]
[Trait — Abnormal Magical Energy Storage: You may use this talent at any time to grant your body even greater power. Perhaps it has other uses as well.]
[And the moment you truly begin drawing upon your magic, the world before your eyes changes.]
[What you see is no longer the forest you had just been looking at. The sky itself is now covered in countless circuits.]
[And then, that strange scent of wine suddenly rises once more to your nose.]
[You see it now.]
[It is the bounded field of Dionysus, god of wine.]
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