The Myth of the Greek Heavenly Demon - Chapter 66

Chapter 66 – The Musician Longing For Home

For the next week, I practically lived with Hestosias.
For me, it was a hardcore quest that not only involved my own life but also the life of Atalanta, who would be directly hated by Artemis.
Since it was the first time Hestosias made an instrument, he asked me about every detail, from how to produce sound in various situations to whether the shaping was correct, and even issued numerous quests to obtain items that couldn’t be found in the blacksmith’s shop or the forest.
Like bringing back an olive tree from deep within the Taygetos Mountains without damaging a single root.
Or retrieving the repair tools used by a minstrel from a house in a village that had been ruined and occupied by a herd of wild boars.
Or collecting pearls from pearl oysters nestled deep in Poseidon’s sea and silver ore that could only be found in the deep sea.
Each quest was incredibly bothersome and laborious to do.
Finally, after completing the detailed adjustments, we perfectly recreated the gayageum from my memory in just three days.
During the remaining period for material preparation, I could hardly attend classes and had to focus solely on Hestosias’s quests.
Despite this, I couldn’t refuse the demands of this swaggering blacksmith.
It was because Hestosias, like me, was also wholeheartedly dedicated to this task.
Whenever he spoke, he seemed like a blacksmith who would spit on the floor, yet when he carved wood with his chisel and hammered silver in front of the crimson flames, he faced his work with the reverence of a praying believer, without a hint of disarray.

It was one night when I had just placed various household items in my bleak home, and couldn’t even enter due to being busy with Hestosias and work.

“Ah~ To think I have to spend this night with a grimy man, not a lovely nymph.”

“I had to sneak out, avoiding the eyes of two lovely ladies, you know?”

“Ah, are you talking about Atalanta, the daughter of Artemis, and the Nereid nymph?”

The blacksmith never shows his work to others.
But as this was a new instrument never seen before in Greece that had to be made solely based on my memory, he specially invited me to his workshop.
It was not an exaggeration to say that he was the son of Hephaestus and the disciple of the Cyclopes, as his house-cum-workshop was a spacious Greek-style mansion.
In the center was a large garden open to the sky, surrounded by a three-story main building and various rooms in a U-shape.
It had been modified so much that the mansion itself was no different from a gigantic workshop.

Anyhow, before starting the work in earnest, we were having a simple meal of wine, and bread.

“It’s almost finished. How is it? I think it turned out quite splendidly.”

“Honestly, just hearing your casual tone, it’s hard to believe that a beautiful piece came from your hands.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with my tone?”

Hestosias grumbled, pouting his lips. The gayageum placed next to him was almost complete.
I ran all the way to the Taygetos Mountains and carefully brought back an olive tree without damaging a single root.
I didn’t understand at the time why I had to bring the whole tree with its roots intact if it was going to be carved and trimmed to become a gayageum.
But after seeing his work, I realized why he wanted the olive tree brought back alive.

“Good heavens, to carve a tree while it’s still alive like that.”

It was certainly something that deserved to be called magic or a miracle.
Good heavens, the crazy blacksmith hammered with fire and iron, bending water and wood to reshape them entirely to his will.
While the tree was still fresh, with its roots not yet dried, he hammered it alive into the shape of a gayageum.

“How on earth is that possible?”

“I learned this from the three Cyclopes brothers. This is just a minor trick. If you get the chance, visit the workshop of the three brothers in Sicily. You’ll see what truly extraordinary things are.”

Even though I praised his skills with genuine admiration for the bizarre sight that left me at a loss for words, Hestosias just shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

However, the ability Hestostias displayed overturned my entire understanding.
The principle that metal overcomes wood and water overcomes fire is never reversed.
Yet, this man reversed it, making metal conform to wood, and fire allow water to alter its course.
And that wasn’t all.
Gayageum strings are typically made from silk threads.
However, ordinary strings could not withstand the melody of the “Longing Ghost Sound” and would always break.
So the gayageum presented to me was made of thinly drawn out ten-thousand-year-old cold iron, refined by dozens of artisans in the Heavenly Hall.
When its sharpness was converted into aura and unleashed, mountains were split in half, and when the sorrow of the “Twelve Melodies of Longing” was played in the chill of that iron, even the fighters, who battled like burning wild boars, would stop fighting, clutch their chests, and weep.
If one were to pick the most important part of the gayageum, it would be the strings, as important as its body.
Even if the body was made with the unparalleled craftsmanship of divine magic, could this blacksmith produce strings that could withstand the sorrowful melodies of the “Twelve Melodies of Longing,” which could only be managed by the Heavenly Hall made of ten-thousand-year-old cold iron?
I was worried.
However, he, making my worries seem unfounded, melted the pearls and deep-sea silver I had painstakingly collected, enduring the scorn and glares from the Nesneria sisters, along with some other metals.
Unexpectedly, he brought out a spinning wheel and began to spin the molten metal on the wheel.

“Honestly, at that time, I wondered what on earth he was doing…”

I mean, what kind of nonsense is he doing with the things I worked so hard to collect?
Even if you put molten metal on a spinning wheel and spin it, it’s not going to come out as a thread.

I had thought that, too.

“I don’t know what you were thinking either. You put thread on the spinning wheel to spin it. But where would it come out from?”

“Isn’t it obvious? If you spin molten metal in a spinning wheel, threads will come out, right?”

Amazingly, just as Hestosias said, at the end of the spinning wheel, which was spinning round and round, strange milky-white metallic threads started to come out.
The threads that had been spun in such a way were now sorted by thickness, waiting to be assembled.
The sight of crafting the body from living wood and spinning threads from molten metal on a wheel truly made me feel that this was indeed the land of myths.
Honestly, I had seen gods like Hermes or Artemis go crazy so often that I wasn’t impressed anymore.

“But there was something I hadn’t had a chance to ask you because I was busy. That person you call your master.”

“Master? Which master? I have more than one master, you know.”

“Come on, seriously. Who else could it be? The one who taught you to play this broad Hyperborean instrument!”

“Oh, the master of the Crazy Wind Spear technique?”

“Longing… guess?”

Sure enough, Hestosias tilted his head, making a squeaking sound, as if it were difficult to express the Chinese characters in Greek words.

“Damn, it’s hard to even pronounce.”

“Longing Ghost Sound. It means a musical ghost longing for its homeland.”

“Well, that’s quite something. Anyway, about that master of yours. What kind of person was he?”

Hestosias’s sudden question was filled with curiosity for some reason.
I thought he was someone who knew nothing about anything but his work.
Surprisingly, he asked me about various trivial things, and we shared quite a lot of stories.

“Then shall we exchange stories again this time? I also have something I’m curious about.”

“Sure. We’re almost done anyway.”

The gayageum was almost complete, and he began finely tuning it.
He hammered down anything that might cause a blemish or make noise with a hammer imbued with magical power, and for places trying to take root again, he scorched them with a chisel heated by crimson fire, pushing them inside as he asked me.

“Shall we start with your story first? It seems that knowing the stories of the person who will play and who has played this might provide a clue to complete it.”

“Well, I don’t know the detailed story either. He was someone who didn’t like talking about himself much.”

What I knew about the Longing Ghost Sound was that, judging by his appearance, he looked more like someone who would be revered as a saint in a Taoist sect rather than a cult leader, and that he was a wandering musician who drifted into the martial arts world after losing his homeland a long time ago.

“He had a face that looked like he could ascend to heaven at any moment. With a white beard and a wrinkled forehead. An old man whose eyes sparkled like they had stars embedded in them, but his temper was incredibly nasty.”

However, upon investigating the fact that he used the gayageum as his main instrument and the origins of the Twelve Melodies he composed, I discovered something quite unexpected.

“That man. He was probably from the same country as me?”

“The same country? Was it also a place with numerous countries like this chaotic land?”

“It’s complicated if I go into detail, so let’s just say it was roughly like that.”

To be honest, it was a long story.
My original hometown was 21st-century South Korea, and the hometown of the Longing Ghost Sound was a small country that existed on our land in ancient times.
Even when he was inaugurated as the leader of the cult, it was long after the fall of the kingdom, and even after becoming the lord of all demons, he always longed for his hometown and wrote songs.

“The place that was passed on to me as a result was the 12 Divine Demons’ Melody. It was his lifelong masterpiece and an unparalleled musical technique.”

No one could have imagined it.
The sorrow of a traveler who lost his hometown, how deeply it pierced the heart, and how it drove people mad.
Only I will remember him and live carrying the true meaning of his music.

“Both me and that man are destined to be lonely for life.”

“What are you talking about…?”

Buddha said that life is a lonely island.
An island floating alone in the vast sea.
The Melody of Longing was said to be a particularly quiet island, isolated from the world.
No one truly understood him, and no one truly knew the landscapes he knew.
More and more, he delved into his music, and as a result, he began to gain fame as a master of sound arts.
Perhaps that’s why. When I inherited the essence of his Twelve Melodies and recited the landscapes he depicted.
That eccentric musician quietly shed tears and thanked me.

“At that time, I didn’t know why that old man was crying. It was only much later that I understood why he cried.”

“Why did he cry?”

While tuning the gayageum in a brusque tone, Hestosias looked at me with curiosity. I responded with a sly smile.

“He said that a lonely island, which no one could reach, had created an identical lonely island with its own hands. And how could he not be moved to tears by such joy?”