Chapter 4: Preparation (21-03-26/16:12 image added.)

No matter how much knowledge I had forgotten about the original source, I still remembered the story of the heroes who boarded the Argo ship, the Argonauts.

And it wasn’t as if it had vanished from my mind entirely. I had recorded everything I knew about Greco-Roman mythology in my own way so I could look it up and read it whenever I needed to.

That was why this surprised me even more.

I turned toward the direction Chiron had called out to with as calm an expression as I could manage, but inside I was going wild.

No, the fact that Theseus was already studying under Chiron was itself a huge deviation from the original myth, but I never expected Atalanta to come here too.

“Actually, that child was personally entrusted to me for a little while by Artemis, the Moon Goddess and virgin goddess, the goddess of the hunt.”

“What? Artemis personally?”

It was no easy thing to pretend not to know. Especially not in front of Chiron.

So I had to cover my face with a mask made from the exact same material as my own skin and hide my expression completely. Only then would Chiron be fooled.

All of a sudden, a thought struck me.

“Could it be that all the Greek heroic figures are going to end up under Chiron...?”

No, to be honest, if I remembered correctly, among the famous male heroes, the only one who had not studied under Chiron was Theseus. And now even Theseus was here.

Atalanta stayed on guard, pressed tightly against Chiron’s back, and hid herself again.

“Grrrrr...”

When I stared straight into her eyes, she growled low like a beast in warning and stared back at me.

How interesting. Personally, when I first possessed(?) Jason, she had been one of the women I wanted to completely overturn fate for, and now I was meeting her like this.

I had already met enough male heroes. In fact, if you changed the fates of the people who rode the Argo ship during the earlier age of Greek mythology, there was a good chance the later events would never happen at all.

Singularity? Lostbelt? They can go to hell! The fact that I had possessed Jason already meant I was walking a path different from the original myth, and even if it weren’t me, this world was already moving along a different path from the source.

Theseus, and Atalanta.

The very fact that Chiron ended up teaching these two heroes already meant things were different.

I decided to bite into the meat raw instead of roasting it first. If I wanted to build a decent relationship with the young Atalanta, it would be better to act a little wild like she did and slowly draw her in.

“Want some?”

She looked flustered, caught off guard not only by the fact that the person she had been showing wariness and hostility toward was suddenly acting as if nothing was wrong, but also by the food being offered to her.

Chiron, too, tilted his head with a look that seemed to ask why I was suddenly collapsing onto the ground and tearing into raw meat. But when I held out another piece of meat toward Atalanta, he seemed to realize what I was trying to do and gently nudged her forward.

“It’s all right, Atalanta. Go on.”

“Uu...”

Atalanta carefully bit down on the meat, set it on the ground, and sniffed it, as if checking whether I had done something strange to it. Only after she had remained wary for quite some time and repeatedly confirmed that there was no trick in the meat did she finally start eating.

“Does that child have no parents?”

I whispered while sitting right beside Chiron, in case the child might hear.

“Well, Artemis only entrusted her to me. She didn’t tell me anything else.”

Hmm. Should I intervene when she was young, or would it be better to intervene after she became a hunter?

※

Season had come around again. My parents had peacefully departed for the underworld the season before, but my other friends helped keep me from sinking into grief alone, and Chiron had also become a steadfast supporter.

“Yo, Jason.”

“Theseus?”

I met many heroes, became friends with them, and sparred without rest. In the process, my relationship with Theseus, who had once been rather distant, improved to the point where we were good friends, if not best friends.

“Got a minute to talk?”

And because I had become known among Chiron’s students as someone who listened to other people’s worries and helped counsel them, Theseus came to see me today.

“What’s wrong?”

Even while pretending not to know, I understood part of it. But from Theseus’s point of view, this would be easier.

“I’m not actually here to study under Chiron completely. I’ll be leaving here soon.”

And I knew Theseus’s future. I knew the end of a hero who was toyed with by the gods and broken to pieces. I knew the future where he saved his people, only to have the woman he loved and the one who had helped him taken away by a god, and then, before he could even drown in that grief, his father killed himself and left him in despair.

“Right, it’ll be five years soon, won’t it?”

“Yeah. I have to go back to my mother and grandfather now.”

Theseus was fifteen now. If the original source I knew matched this world, then starting next year he would hear about his father from his mother and set out to find him.

It seemed Theseus would not board the Argo ship here. The timing simply didn’t match in several ways. Then at the very least, this was the right time to help him.

“Can I really go out there and do well? Is the path I’m about to take truly the right one?”

As someone who had watched Theseus until now, I knew all too well how much he worried about the future he would walk.

“There was something I wanted to tell you, so this works out nicely.”

There was something I had wanted to say before he left.

“Do not be swallowed by fate, and do not stay silent in the face of the gods’ injustice. As for your people, it would be best never to abandon them no matter what happens. And make sure you never lose sight of whether you have forgotten anything by becoming trapped in a single emotion. Also, do not be dazzled by the treasures and glory you gain and come to see people only from one side.”

All of this would determine your future, your fate.

When I finished speaking, I looked straight into Theseus’s eyes.

“Would that be enough advice?”

It was a strange sort of advice, but in the first place, future and fate were not things one was allowed to advise on directly.

“...For now, I understand. I’ll never forget your advice. I’ll keep it in my heart.”

Theseus, too, seemed to understand my words, since he knew a thing or two about prophecy and oracles. He nodded firmly.

A week later, Theseus left Mount Pelion and returned to his homeland.

Not long after that, the time came for Heracles to officially graduate, and he came to see me as well.

“It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? Jason.”

“Yeah, it has. Long time no see, Heracles.”

Honestly, there wasn’t much I could say to Heracles. Theseus’s fate was something he could change through his own effort, but Heracles’s... that was entirely tangled up in Hera and Zeus’s complicated affairs.

Honestly, Zeus had been a womanizer even before marrying Hera, getting rejected over and over when he proposed, and even after finally marrying her, he still cheated and made several women and their families miserable.

“First of all, I can only truly thank you. I doubt I ever showed my parents the side of me that was truly human. Yet you, who had no reason at all and had only just met me then, gave me a gaze that treated me as an equal. I never could have imagined that, even in my dreams.”

How embarrassing. Of course, I already knew Heracles had never received that kind of gaze before, so I had thought that if no one else would, I should at least give him the eyes of someone looking at another human being as a friend. I just hadn’t expected it to occupy so much of Heracles’s heart.

“So, I ask this of you, my first friend, my first comrade.”

Do I simply kill and subdue things?

!!!!

...You’ve brought me a difficult subject.

That certainly sounded like something Heracles would struggle with. After all, the very reason he was born was as a weapon prepared for the great war of the Gigantomachy.

And the reason he came to Chiron was also because of an impulsive killing, caused by his impatient temper and his inability to control a power that could easily kill a grown man.

As Heracles was now, he had learned how to use his strength to subdue and strike others properly, but he had never used that overwhelming power to kill and defeat beasts and villains who threatened humanity in order to save the good.

Was it confidence, or self-esteem?

No, maybe with Heracles, the problem was self-esteem after all.

I finished thinking and met eyes that were deeply loathing themselves.

“Heracles, I ask you this.”

What do you want to do with that tremendous power of yours?

Will you only use it to kill, wound, and subdue?

Will you only use it to take away what is precious to others?

Will your destructive power only bring destruction to others?

Heracles gave a dry laugh and shook his head.

“Surely not.”

“Then what do you intend to do with that power?”

“If my strength is suited to killing and subduing, then I will use it to defeat enemies. If it is suited to that, I will use it to eliminate evils that threaten humanity. And I will use it to drive away anything that threatens my happiness.”

Then remember this well, my comrade, my friend.

“Do not only see what is in front of your eyes. Do not only hear what reaches your ears. Do not only touch what is within your hands. Do not think only what you believe is right is right, and do not think only what you believe is wrong is wrong.”

And.

“Always look around you. You are not alone.”

I am here, and Theseus is here. Chiron is here, the Dioscuri siblings are here, and Asclepius is here too.

“So don’t keep suffering by yourself.”

Yes, I am a deceiver.

I know everything, but I cannot change all of it. Because I fear the price, I had no intention of changing it directly either. I would only watch and offer advice.

Heracles’s Noble Phantasm, the Twelve Lives, is the crystallization of the Twelve Labors he accomplished.

To perform the Twelve Labors, Heracles had to trust only what he could see, and without realizing he had gone mad, he had to kill his wife and children after mistaking them for lions and hyenas.

It was Theseus who stopped him when he tried to kill himself then.

I knew all of this, but forcing myself to change even what could not be changed would not be transformation. It would only be chaos.

So.

“Change yourself.”

It was not something others should change for you. It was something you should change yourself.

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