It wasn't that they had no interest. It was that they were all afraid.
The goddess, who had originally admired his resolve and wanted to recruit such an outstanding warrior, now after watching this scene understood that Night was not someone available to be recruited.
How enviable.
Real life wasn't a card draw that could be repeated endlessly until you pulled an UR.
Artemis.
An iridescent hero. What was this?
Did people who pulled wild URs on a single draw actually exist in this world?
Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war and one of the three virgin goddesses, whose appearance resembled Sasha from Saint Seiya but who did not share the fate of her counterpart in another world of being protected by many stubborn survivors, found herself in a strangely unsettled mood.
She had to admit she felt a little envious.
This world's Athena had no ambiguously close relationship with a Pegasus knight.
Though she was also a virgin goddess, she did not have Artemis's eternal vow of purity extracted from Zeus.
This led to her being constantly harassed by various male gods.
Her uncle Poseidon, for instance.
The narcissistic fire god Hephaestus, who was convinced she had feelings for him.
It seemed like that guy never looked in a mirror.
Not even an ordinary mortal woman would fall for that, and Aphrodite only got forcibly married to the ugly god of forging because she had offended Hera.
Why did she have to work so hard to defend her own purity while Artemis went along without a care and received a devoted, loyal, young, and handsome hero in return?
Listen to this.
An iridescent person!
Compared to Artemis, the ones pursuing her were absolute trash.
Her uncle Poseidon, who wanted to force himself on her.
Her half-brother Hephaestus, who wanted the same.
If she weren't strong enough to defend herself, she would have ended up like those goddesses Zeus forced into situations they never chose.
The eyes of the goddess in her owl form flickered faintly, and she felt she probably would not encounter her own iridescent person in this lifetime.
Though in mythology, Athena did have versions of stories with both Prometheus and Apollo pairing her with someone.
Sometimes you couldn't trust myths.
But sometimes when a legend existed, that legend could become real.
That was fate.
In many mythological traditions, fate was a concept nearly impossible to break.
So across many universes, some versions of the goddess did have someone by their side.
If this world's Athena would ever truly end up with anyone, mythology gave no CP record of it, but one could get a general sense.
She liked the intelligent and beautiful type.
Someone like Prometheus who held tremendous knowledge, or Apollo the art god who mastered music and every kind of learning.
Talent was also a form of intelligence.
In plain terms that anyone in the modern world would understand: she wanted someone talented, widely knowledgeable, and also handsome.
It could be said that Athena's aesthetic view of men was very consistent with most normal people's aesthetics.
Add in the fact that she favored powerful warriors and protected the courageous, and strength and bravery were clearly bonuses in her eyes.
Powerful and courageous, intelligent and talented, and the looks couldn't be lacking either.
Taken one at a time, none of those conditions sounded that impossible.
However, when put together, they might actually be harder to satisfy than Artemis's own already demanding standards.
Apollo left. Extremely displeased.
He kept feeling that the relationship between Night and Artemis wasn't as simple as Night made it out to be.
Could a flower crown really be all it took to make Artemis act like that?
He frowned faintly, then composed himself, turned into a beam of light, and left.
Never mind.
He had no evidence either way for now.
And beyond the matter of Artemis, Apollo said nothing during the visit about Troy or the Greek alliance.
The situation at the Trojan front was tense.
The battlefield was also a place where the gods watched closely.
He couldn't stay long, and he couldn't discuss Night's plan to turn the Greek army upside down from the inside.
If the gods heard about it, especially if Zeus happened to overhear, the fury would be enormous, and the entire undercover plan would be finished.
After Apollo left, Night lay down on the bed and started to rest.
He opened the window and let the moonlight keep falling on him, recovering his strength and healing his internal injuries, not wasting a single moment he could use to grow stronger.
A sense of urgency rose in his heart.
He didn't know how long he could stay undercover inside the Greek camp.
So, let's set two targets first.
One: find where Briseis was being held and wait for the right moment to get her out.
Two: quietly take out a few Greek heroes and reduce their fighting strength.
Diomedes was a priority, but it was difficult to act now.
The fight yesterday attracted too much attention, and if Diomedes died now, every eye in the camp would land on him.
Besides, Night was fairly sure Athena was probably already watching him, working out how to make him pay for nearly killing her family.
She was a reasonable goddess under normal circumstances.
But she also had a petty side.
In the myths, Medusa got turned into a monster not because of anything she did, but because Poseidon coveted her beauty rivaling Athena's and assaulted her inside Athena's own temple.
In the end, Poseidon suffered no consequences whatsoever.
Medusa, on the other hand, got Perseus sent after her head, which ended up embedded in a shield.
If we're talking about the most tragic characters in Greek mythology, that pitiful Gorgon was at the very top.
He came close to killing Diomedes, so he definitely offended Athena.
Whatever.
As he thought earlier.
There were already too many debts to worry about any one of them, especially when these were gods on the opposing side to begin with.
Completely unaware that Athena was not only not thinking about how to deal with her, but also turned into an owl to spy on him, Night felt his situation was genuinely dangerous.
This dangerous Greek camp—he had to take out a few people before he could sleep soundly.
He settled on a target quickly.
The timing was just right.
And he needed an accomplice.
At least, the target's death couldn't be directly tied back to him.
So.
"I choose you, Odysseus the scoundrel!!"
The night passed sweetly.
The silver-haired youth, beautiful as a narcissus flower, sank into quiet breathing, and the moonlight, driven by a certain goddess's gentle touch, grew a little brighter than usual, speeding up his body's recovery.
When the next morning came, the sun's blessing began working again.
Even though Apollo left the night before with a sour expression, the moment daylight came, he didn't withhold his divine power from helping Night grow stronger.
The young man slowly opened those deep, starlit eyes and felt completely refreshed.
The morning was the best part of the day.
Dappled sunlight came through the window, and birdsong drifted in from outside.
Night felt something stir inside his heart, so he got up, washed, and picked up the lyre.
And then,
From inside the Greek camp, beautiful music began to drift out.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)