Suddenly, Athena's hair transformed into a pure, unblemished silver-white, the colors across her form appearing completely consumed by that absolute silver radiance.
Under the blessing of the pure white goddess, a covenant delivered through a close contact of this nature could be classified as the absolute highest tier of divine blessing.
She completely ignored the outside world, launching into a thorough, sweeping offensive that left a certain Moon Goddess so thoroughly stunned she actually forgot to feel anger, her mind turning completely blank.
She could only stare in absolute daze as those two silhouettes, radiating an immense divine glow in the middle of the sky, steadily burst with a brilliant silver-white light of raw divine power.
'Wait a moment, what on earth are you doing to someone else's dependent?!'
'In the true name of Athena,
I command the sun's favor to scatter, letting the stars and the black winds manifest once more!
Ancient storm, transform into raw strength and reinforce this body!'
Chanting this silently within her heart, this marked the very first time Athena had bestowed her personal blessing upon a mortal, and it was a highest-tier covenant delivered through such close intimacy.
This did not mean the power granted by the blessing would reach an apocalyptic level; rather, it allowed the connection between herself and the recipient to lock with perfect security, which stood as the ultimate piece of strategy within Athena's layered calculations.
'Oh, Artemis! Even though you were generous enough to surrender your gear, you never managed to forge a divine blood covenant of this density with Griffith, did you?'
With that thought in her mind, she funneled a portion of her own divine blood into Night's body to complete the blessing covenant, and after wrapping up the process, she stepped back without a single change in her expression, acting as though everything that had just transpired was a perfectly normal occurrence rather than a highly intimate act.
That was, if one chose to ignore the shimmering thread of moisture lingering in the air, the deep crimson flushing the goddess's earlobes that made it glaringly obvious that she wasn't truly indifferent to the act and her current demeanor was nothing more than a flawless mask.
Poseidon? Artemis?
That was a mouth neither of them had ever touched!
Well, as to whose mouth this statement referred to, it was easy to clarify for Artemis, but highly difficult to say for Poseidon.
At this moment, the Sea God felt as if his very molecules were fracturing, pushing him to the absolute brink of madness!
On the other side, although his brain remained a bit blank after being blindsided by Athena's sudden move, Night finally confirmed that this Goddess of Wisdom was definitely far from proper.
Yet he didn't make any move to push her away earlier.
No way, it felt good...both the sensation and the person.
After all, this was Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, the Chaste Goddess, who never had any scandals with any man in the Myths.
To be perfectly honest, had the timing not been so terrible, he would have loved to experience the sensation for a good while longer.
Alas!
Presently, Night evaluated the power coursing through his body.
Although the total output remained the same and the blessing hadn't altered its limits, the energy felt remarkably easy to control, responding to his thoughts as fluidly as if it were his own natural strength, with an added thread of a mysterious concept woven into its depths.
It was as if a power that originally possessed no elemental property had undergone a qualitative mutation.
Looking at the man, Athena stated, "Blessed by the authority of the Goddess of War, I have divided the aspects concerning storms and raw strength from my power, planting them as a seed within your blood.
Enjoy this power of the storm to your heart's content, Griffith!
Let me bestow a true name upon you to serve as the verbal catalyst to command this strength.
True name: Set! The brilliance of ten thousand armies shall crown your path, until the day you ascend as the Sovereign of Strength arrives, and that day shall inevitably come!"
The moment Athena uttered that final sentence, specifically the name Set, Night felt the mysterious concept within his body undergo a brand new transformation.
It was as if a critical key had successfully triggered a lock, flinging a massive gate wide open as a terrifying power erupted violently from every corner of his muscles and bones.
Roar!
Night felt his soul become completely wrapped in a brand new power, achieving a spectacular evolutionary leap.
In a fleeting instant, a colossal silhouette materialized within his mind before vanishing from sight.
It was a towering frame standing proudly upon the earth amidst a desert storm, looking exactly like a grand deity, projecting a crushing pressure that resembled a massive obelisk.
Although the image vanished in the blink of an eye, it had clearly solidified according to the subconscious prompts of his own mind.
The true name Set, (Sutekh) and the appearance...
'Wait, what?! Damn, Obelisk the Tormentor?!'
The moment he realized what his subconscious mind had actually manifested, he knew this specific image certainly wasn't a random, meaningless illusion born on a whim, but rather something acting as a clear omen.
The last time he experienced a sensation of this nature was back when the Goddess of Beauty designated him as Adonis.
Again?!
Night's mind was thoroughly shaken.
He suddenly wanted to ask Athena what kind of relationship this
Set of hers shared with the Set who stood as one of the nine high deities within Egyptian mythology.
Abruptly, a buried memory concerning the Goddess Athena surfaced in Night's mind.
Within the text of Timaeus, the great philosopher of ancient Greece, Plato, once wrote:
"There is at the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the river Nile divides, a certain district called the Saitic.
The great city of the district is Sais... The founder of their city is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they say, Athena."
Which meant that Athena genuinely shared a documented link with Egyptian mythology.
In his works On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch also pointed out that an inscription was carved onto the statue within the temple of the goddess named Neith: "I am all that has been, that is, and that shall be. No mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers me."
She was the mother of the gods, the goddess of creation, the goddess of war, the goddess of wisdom, and in her earliest forms, she could even be classified as the goddess of the hunt, which meant the absolute security of
Artemis's position was in severe danger, effectively turning her into a replacement.
By the late Ptolemaic Dynasty, the goddess Neith was still universally acknowledged to possess an immense creative authority, having brought the world into existence using seven magical utterances.
If the records and divine status concerning Neith held true, then her alter-ego next door wasn't a matter of becoming a king of the gods; she was directly on par with Ra, Atum, or Yahweh, acting as the supreme creator god of an entire mythic system!
It was worth mentioning that her original prototype was also linked to the incarnation of the great deluge, which meant that if one pieced these concepts together according to rival mythologies, she could even be linked to Tiamat, the primordial mother goddess of the Mesopotamian plains!
He didn't dare let his thoughts drift any further.
Setting aside those bold hypotheses and focusing strictly on the connection between Athena and Neith, it was glaringly obvious that their link was the most secure, with explicit historical records stating the two were the exact same entity within legend.
Even if one ignored the exaggerated background of the deity
Neith, focusing strictly on her aspect as a goddess of war, numerous characteristics aligned perfectly with Athena.
Yet, if one had to identify a major distinction between the two, it lay in the fact that while Athena remained a virgin goddess throughout Greek mythology, Neith was not always portrayed as such.
Even though other traditions presented her differently.
In several Egyptian traditions, particularly those associated with Sais and later periods, she possessed a husband.
Her husband, in those accounts, was none other than Set, one of the most powerful deities of the Egyptian pantheon.
The god of storms, the desert, warfare, chaos, and foreign lands.
A fearsome divine warrior whose strength and destructive power made him one of the most formidable gods in Egyptian religion.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Libyans (Berber peoples) claimed an especially ancient worship of Poseidon, leading some modern scholars to speculate that certain Libyan deities or traditions may have influenced or paralleled aspects of Set.
Such comparisons remain speculative, however, and the ancient Greeks themselves more commonly associated Set with Typhon than with Poseidon.
Even so, if one sought a rough Greek counterpart based on martial power and untamed force, Poseidon was perhaps the closest among the Olympians.
In Greek myth, he indeed pursued Athena, only to be firmly rejected.
Yet despite occasional comparisons drawn by later writers, Poseidon and Set belonged to entirely different mythological traditions, each possessing distinct origins, domains, and religious significance.
So now, much like the incident with Adonis, had he actually replaced and completed the divine status belonging to the god of storms, the god of strength, and the sovereign of ten thousand armies, the destined husband of the virgin goddess Athena within this mythic world?!
Damn! A sudden shock.
'Am I... Set?'
.
.
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(End of the Chapter)