Night fell.
Lorne lay on the bed, bruised from head to toe, letting out weak groans, his eyes full of misery and grievance.
'What do you mean it's all for my own good?'
Bullshit. That woman just wanted a legitimate excuse to beat him up!
He painfully twisted his head back a little, looking at the neat row of blood-red marks on his buttocks like stamped seals.
His mood sank even deeper, and he regretted everything so much that his teeth hurt.
Originally, Athena had held back.
She had wrapped the thorned switch in divine power, and the spikes were basically just decoration.
But he… reflexively counterattacked.
And not only counterattacked, he accidentally used that skill he unlocked last time from Artemis in the Golden Oracle.
"—Silver Rapid-Fire."
As the goddess of the hunt, the bow and arrow were Artemis's signature; she was also the goddess of archery and the divine huntress.
Homer's hymns mentioned her golden bow and arrows, capable of releasing tens of thousands of arrows in an instant forming a sky-blotting rain of arrows.
Thus she had the epithet "Iokheira" (The Far-Shooting One).
A similar technique also appeared in the hands of the great hero Heracles.
According to Greek mythology, one of Heracles's trials was the slaying of the Hydra.
But as an immortal monster, even if a head was cut off, it would grow back, even grow two in its place.
To kill it, all its heads needed to be destroyed at once.
In the end, Heracles shot hundreds of arrows in a single instant and completely finished the Hydra.
Perhaps because he and the hunting goddess had been extremely… compatible lately, their affinities matched perfectly.
So, in this round of random draw from the divine dice, he hit Artemis's slot and obtained her multi-arrow technique.
But limited by his divine power, divinity, and proficiency, he could only split three to seven arrows at once.
Forget becoming Artemis's "one arrow into ten thousand"; he wasn't even close to Heracles's "one arrow into a hundred."
Well, it was a newly acquired ability. It needed practice, training, and familiarity.
As a divine artifact steeped in chance, that die was only a tool to pry open fate's door; it never let him skip the accumulation process and instantly max out a skill.
But that wasn't entirely a bad thing.
What came easy also left easy.
Only through gradual, consistent learning could he turn the dice's fleeting luck into real, tangible power, into his own ladder to ascend godhood.
Yet it was precisely because of this "neither good nor bad" nature that, while sparring with Athena, he'd accidentally revealed the move during a defensive counterattack.
And then…
Her expression immediately turned pitch-black.
She stripped the divine power from the thorny branch and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him.
She really went for the kill!
And she chose the most sensitive, fleshy places every time too.
Damn it, knowing she didn't get along with Artemis, how did he manage to use the Moon Goddess's technique right in her face?!
Lorne stared at his own "traitorous" hands and felt the pain spreading all over his body. Tears almost came out.
When Athena left him and went upstairs earlier, she clearly looked like she intended to make this "righteous excuse to beat him up" a daily routine in future training.
Only one day had passed.
There were still two whole weeks before the Dionysian festival.
Just thinking about it, Lorne felt his vision darken and the future turn bleak.
That petty woman, did all her nutrition go straight to her brain?
No wonder she wasn't growing!
"Eeek~!"
The door creaked open.
Lorne, still complaining internally, tensed up instinctively and snapped his head around in alert.
Hestia tiptoed along the wall like a guilty thief, carrying a warm food box. She carefully placed it on the table and opened it, revealing a hot meal inside.
"You haven't eaten yet, right? I saved a portion for you."
But faced with this gentle, considerate goddess of the hearth, Lorne simply turned his head away, expression dark.
He hadn't forgotten exactly who sold him out today.
He had tried to run away, and she not only didn't stop him, she even used the excuse of punishing Stheno and Euryale to drag away his "backup resurrection item," Little Medusa, leaving him isolated and helpless, forced to face Athena's divine fury alone.
Even worse, during the hours he was getting slaughtered in the courtyard, she didn't help even once.
And the most infuriating part: during the hours he was getting brutalized in the backyard, she never once came out to save him.
What happened to "never leave, never abandon"? What happened to "die-hard ally"? What happened to "external brain and symbiotic partner, inseparable"?
And now she thought she could smooth things over with one meal? As if!
..Bang!
As Lorne was silently listing all of Hestia's crimes, a hand suddenly slapped onto the table, making a heavy thud that scared the wounded man on the bed.
"Athena went way too far!"
Hestia stood there with righteous anger plastered on her face, criticizing her niece harshly.
"Even if you're close with Artemis, she shouldn't have hit you that hard! That's outrageous!"
"…"
Lorne stared silently at the hearth goddess's performance. Though he said nothing, the disdain in his eyes spoke volumes.
Where was this righteous spirit when Athena was here?
Now that she's gone and I've already been beaten to a pulp, you come out to speak up for me?
Are you here to save the emperor, or to loot the corpse?
And you only mention Artemis, huh?
Leaking secrets, selling out teammates, deserting in battle, watching me die without lifting a finger…
Don't you have your own crimes to confess first?
Under the victim's gloomy stare, Hestia's face flushed.
She looked embarrassed, clearly guilty, and hurried to change the subject, using her usual trick.
"Come come, eat first, eat first. The food's getting cold."
Lorne glanced at his half-paralyzed body, then at the table more than a dozen steps away, feeling even more speechless.
"..Can't move? No problem! I'll feed you!"
Realizing her oversight, Hestia hurriedly made amends.
With an apologetic smile, she scooped several hot dishes into a bowl, then eagerly carried it to the bedside and helped him sit up.
"..Huu~ huu~, open wide. Careful, it's hot."
Looking at the spoonful of meat porridge held to his lips and the caring smile on the face before him, Lorne rolled his eyes but obediently opened his mouth in the end.
Fine. Why make things hard for his external brain when he'd still need her to draw fire in the future?
Seeing the victim finally signal reconciliation, the originally anxious Hestia let out a huge sigh of relief.
She redoubled her efforts tending to the patient on the bed, trying to make up for her mistakes, and didn't forget to write empty checks.
"..Don't worry, if she ever dares treat you like this again, I'll spank her butt rotten!"
"..Eeek~!"
However, the sudden opening and closing of the bedroom door instantly deflated the hearth goddess's fierce momentum like a dam bursting.
Her face changed drastically, the spoon in her hand jerked, and the full scoop of meat porridge nearly plunged straight into Lorne's nostril.
(Chapter End)