The Myth of the Greek Heavenly Demon - Chapter 64

Chapter 64 – Around Ten Short Years

Once upon a time, in a very distant past.
Even before the divine masterpiece Pandora was crafted by the hands of Hephaestus, a newborn baby went out for a walk alone from a cave at the foot of a mountain.
The baby, who was less than three days old, had been sternly warned by its giant mother to never go outside.
But life in the cave, without a nanny, friends, or toys, was unbearably tedious for the child.
So, how long did the baby walk? In the far distance of a vast field, didn’t it see plump cows leisurely grazing?
The baby instantly recognized them as the Sun Cows of Apollo, the Sun God of Olympus, as told by its mother.
The baby devised a plan.
It wrapped cloth around the cows’ hooves, tied brooms to their tails, and drove the cows far away with a booming voice that resembled its mother’s.
Then, with small hands, the baby built an altar and offered burnt sacrifices to the Twelve Gods, led by the Chief God Zeus and Queen Hera.
Among them was also a burnt offering to the young god who had just been born and performed his first divine duty.
The King of Olympus, who was watching this, was very pleased and accepted the burnt offerings, but eventually, even the sun that overlooked everything heard the news and set out to find the young thief.
However, the young baby, no, now the young god, had already prepared a trick.

He had made an instrument with a beautiful sound that had never existed in the world before, using the intestines of the cow he had just sacrificed, a turtle shell, and a sturdy oak branch.
As the heat of the furious Sun approached, and the cows, sensing their original owner coming, raised their voices and wailed.
The young god began to play an instrument that had never existed before and would never exist again.
Then, the bellowing cows quieted at the sound, and the trembling vegetation, shaken by the Sun’s fury, calmed down.
And the Sun, too, forgot its anger at the beautiful sound and listened quietly to the young god’s performance until it ended.
When the performance ended, the Sun, utterly captivated by the sound, exchanged its herd of cows for the young god’s lyre and acquired the divine duty of music and instruments, while the young god took on the shepherd’s divine duty that the Sun God had held.

“…And that’s how! The divine duty of the shepherd, originally protecting the shepherds who roamed the pastures under the sun, was transferred to Hermes, who is also the God of Travelers and Pilgrims, and the divine duty of music, born from the first instrument, the first lyre, was given to Apollo, the Sun God!”

With her petite frame and short, wavy light brown hair, the pottery instructor, Teterir, was said to be a rock nymph born to the retinue of Demeter.
Originally, she worked in agriculture following Demeter, but eventually, she became deeply engrossed in pottery, which was as solid as her rock and adorned with all sorts of beautiful drawings, storing grains and wine.
Now, she was said to be a teacher of pottery in this Forest of Heroes.

“Today, we will make pottery ourselves and draw the story of Hermes that we heard today on it!”

-Yes~

Following Teterir’s words, everyone took their pottery wheels and lumps of clay, sat down, and began to slowly turn their wheels.

As the pottery began to spin slowly, they quietly watched the lumps of clay, and then slowly placed their hands on them.
Even as clods of dirt spun wildly, my mind was reviewing the answer to the riddle I had stumbled upon by chance.

“First of all, it’s certain.”

In the cryptographic techniques of the Ghost Night Riding Thief, there was a saying.
A riddle refers not only to the sentence that contains its metaphor and content.
Just like an oracle, even if the content is the same, the interpretation and intent can vary greatly depending on the issuer.
Especially with riddles, everything around the riddle itself becomes a clue beyond just the sentence.
It was said that the more concise and ambiguous the riddle, the more the clues were scattered outside the riddle.

‘The grace of a master is truly wondrous.’

I’ll offer a tribute later, Master Riding Thief.

A child born without a midwife. A child bestowed with divine duty.
In Greek mythology, whether God or Hero, their births were rarely blessed occasions.
The Goddess of Childbirth, Eileithyia, was Hera’s daughter and servant, and if Hera did not permit, she would never end the pain of labor.
There was no reason for Hera to send her daughter to help a mistress who had conceived a child through an affair with her husband.
But among such children, if one had attained divinity, it meant they were now a god.
A god born alone without a midwife that even the Goddess of Childbirth could not bless their birth?
Among Zeus’s illegitimate children who have made a name for themselves, such as Apollo, Artemis, Dionysus, and Athena, Hermes would likely be the only one.

‘Athena from Zeus’s head, twins protected by Delos Island and sent by Zeus’s trickery to Eileithyia, Dionysus who used Zeus’s thigh as an incubator.’

If I closed my eyes and rewinded my memories, I remembered that Eileithyia was present when the birth of the twins was prophesied in the Greek and Roman mythology comic book.
Considering the twins had a rough time, her husband’s head was about to burst, and his thigh was on the verge of tearing apart. No matter how much Hera tried, she couldn’t have stopped her daughter from helping her father.
However, Hermes was an exception. Teterir explained that Hermes’s mother, Maia, was a Titaness and the daughter of Atlas.
If she was a giant god from before Olympus, it was understandable that she could give birth alone without the help of the Goddess of Childbirth.

‘If there’s a variable, it might be among the minor gods I don’t remember…’

Considering Hermes’s words about teaching a way to avoid the wrath of the Sun.
A calculation emerged that Hermes was the only one who knew of a child born without a midwife and who possessed divine knowledge to avoid the wrath of the Sun.

Even if nothing else were known, it would be hard to imagine another being who was born alone, escaped Apollo’s temper, and became a god.

“If it were an ambiguous god, they would have already been taken down by Apollo’s wrath.”

Therefore, the answer to the riddle was, for now, Hermes.
Recalling Hermes’s face, full of a triumphant expression, it made sense that the protagonist of the riddle could indeed be him.
If that assumption flowed naturally, then the part where he gained divine knowledge also made sense.

“Surely, it doesn’t mean to steal Apollo’s belongings and barter them.”

It must mean to follow the story of giving the lyre to the enraged Apollo to calm him down.

“Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice an instrument…?”

For a moment, the cute little instrument I got yesterday flashed through my mind, but I immediately dismissed it.
Even though it was a remarkable artifact, it was just a flute, the most common instrument in Greece.
More importantly, it was too precious to offer my favorite, the obsidian flute that adorned my top collection, just to appease some temperamental god.

“I’d rather crash head-on.”

Was Hermes the one who posed such a riddle to me?
I had a vague guess.
Apollo, being the God of Music and Instruments, mastered numerous instruments existing in Greece.
To captivate the interest of such a god and make him forget his anger, as Hermes did, would be impossible with the instruments already present in this world.

“Indeed, it means he didn’t just spend thousands of years idly, right?”

In a few exchanged words, even while I was flipping my expected answers several times,
he intertwined my past life’s story with his own anecdotes to present such an intriguing puzzle.

“So then… the instrument is decided.”

The one I learned most intensely, the one I handled best.
And also the instrument that held the pieces I understood most deeply and moved me to tears.

“Master, you must be pleased. Your compositions will resonate again in this distant mythical land.”

-Swish!

The lump of clay, speeding up, changed its form swiftly, like a mirage, according to my gestures.
After conquering the world by running full throttle for half of my life, the supreme leader naturally had nothing to do.
Having grown tired of drinking, dancing, playing music, and indulgence, I once learned pottery while wandering the world.
Though it was only about ten years of a hobby, my martial arts and senses were gradually reviving the knowledge and know-how from that time.

-Tak!

As the potter’s wheel slowly reduced its speed, a preliminary pottery piece, boasting elegant curves like a swan, stood where the lump of clay once was.

“W-Wow…! That’s amazing!”

“Hey, is there anything you can’t do? When did you learn to make pottery?”

Teterir and Hercules couldn’t hide their admiration as they looked at the completed pottery dough I had made while deep in thought.
But this wasn’t it.

“This isn’t it.”

-Woojik!

It wasn’t as if I was fully focused, and I couldn’t let this poorly made piece, which I crafted while thinking about other things, bear my name.
With a single gesture, the pottery reverted to a lump of clay.

“…Well, it’s up to you.”

“Hieee…? Wh-What are you doing?!”

Somehow, it felt like Hercules shrugged his shoulders as if he knew I would make a fuss, and with Teterir’s screams in the background, the lump of clay began to spin on the wheel once more.

“Now that the Divine Demon is gone, let’s do this properly.”

-Swish!

Don’t underestimate it just because it’s a hobby.
It’s because it’s a hobby that I go crazy over it.

With a peculiar sense of stubbornness and determination, I ignored Teterir’s protests.
And then, with a refreshed mind from solving the riddle, I slowly began to recreate those sorrowful melodies, imagining the pulsating golden strings beyond the lump of clay.

So sorrowful and mournful, it felt like my heart was aching.
Those beautiful and poignant twelve melodies.
Twelve memories, longing for a hometown I could never return to, with no traces left behind, slowly took shape in sound and began to be etched inside this small piece of pottery.