The true daughter of the King of the Gods was dead.
Suddenly, everything could be logically explained.
Why would a pervert like Zeus, who didn't even spare his own biological daughters, let go of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the mortal world?
To claim that he refrained out of pure paternal affection, viewing her as a beloved daughter and cherishing her too much to strike, much like his treatment of Artemis, was complete nonsense.
If he truly loved Helen, he would never have allowed her to fall into the trap of becoming the ultimate victim in the grandest conspiracy of myth, the war of the Golden Apple.
To seduce Paris, any beautiful woman would have sufficed.
Greece lacked many things, but it certainly did not lack famous, gorgeous women.
Yet how did Zeus handle the situation?
Regarding Helen's tragic fate afterward, being manipulated by the Goddess of Beauty and treated as a mere tool caught between two men, he remained entirely indifferent, acting as though he had never possessed such a daughter in the first place.
Because the Helen who emerged later was nothing more than a counterfeit he had casually manufactured.
A person only treasures a genuine masterpiece, viewing it as something of absolute value.
Yet who would ever treat a cheap counterfeit as a prized treasure?
Much like the authentic calligraphies or the poems, which were priceless treasures, whereas anyone could purchase a dozen replicas online for a few coins.
A counterfeit remained a counterfeit; no matter how visually pleasing it appeared, it held zero collection value.
If all these hypotheses held true, then the individual who suffered the most tragic fate in this entire narrative, falling victim to a completely undeserved disaster, was none other than Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld.
She had been turned into a complete substitute for Helen, targeted by the hero Pirithous and lusted after by Zeus, with every mortal and god seeking to possess her, purely to satisfy a twisted substitute aesthetic and release an unquenched, primal desire.
After destroying the true Helen,
Zeus's cold, ruthless voice echoed out once more. "I shall make you realize that your proud, celebrated beauty and royal status can be replaced by anyone I choose, as long as I desire it!
You shall be imprisoned within this avatar of mine for the rest of time, watching someone else enjoy everything that rightfully belonged to you!
Let us see if that dear mortal father of yours can recognize that the girl beside him is no longer you!"
Zeus delivered his chilling mockery.
As the King of the Gods who possessed the most human traits, yet simultaneously displayed the absolute worst aspects of human nature to their fullest extent,
Zeus was the most selfish and narrow-minded ruler of the gods.
He could swallow his own pregnant wife out of fear over a single prophecy.
He could also take Prometheus, the wise titan who contributed immensely to securing his throne as the King of the Gods, and chain him to the Caucasus Mountains to endure the agonizing torture of a scorching sun and a giant eagle devouring his liver every day, simply because Prometheus offended him by bestowing fire upon humanity, leaving him unable to sleep, exposed to the elements, and treated as food for beasts.
So for him to strike down the true Helen in a fit of rage simply because she repeatedly rejected his filthy desires and chose destruction over his forced favor wasn't surprising in the slightest.
This was entirely typical of something that grand stallion would pull off.
And given that this was Zeus, with his notorious level of pettiness, his retaliation would naturally never be so simple.
Immediately after, Night witnessed the full meaning behind the words Zeus had spoken.
He transformed Helena, another beautiful maiden in the temple who originally served as Helen's personal handmaiden, dressing her in the regal attire of a princess and using his divine power to bestow upon her an exquisite beauty, much like his past creation of Pandora, that masterpiece designed to bring ruin to mankind.
Following that, Zeus altered the memories of every single living soul within the borders of Sparta, causing them all to view this newly remade maiden as Helen, the most beautiful princess of the kingdom.
Even the heroes Theseus and Pirithous, who were utterly infatuated with Helen, failed to detect the slightest anomaly.
They didn't even realize that this princess, whose facial features were now entirely different, was no longer the girl who had danced gracefully within the temple and caused both of them to fall in love at first sight.
Or rather, when placed before a breathtaking woman, men were inherently fickle, quick to chase the new and abandon the old.
Even if they could vaguely perceive a faint trace of disharmony, once they laid eyes upon a girl who had been blessed by the all-powerful god Zeus—shining brighter than the stars and the moon, causing the very heavens to lose their luster with her radiant beauty at the tender, innocent age of thirteen or fourteen, every lingering trace of contradiction was promptly cast to the back of their minds.
However, when the two men who had abducted this "Helen" found themselves in disagreement over how to share the prize, resolving to draw lots to determine the final possessor with the agreement that the winner would help the loser claim another supreme beauty, an unexpected development occurred the moment Pirithous lost.
Unlike the heroes in other mythic tales who would draw their swords in a fit of humiliated rage, Pirithous showed neither hesitation nor pain.
Instead, as if feeling a strange sense of relief and liberation, he calmly accepted the outcome and shifted his sights elsewhere.
Through an eerie twist of fate, he locked his ultimate target onto Persephone, the queen of Hades, Lord of the Underworld!
Amidst the flickering firelight, the dreamscape began to slowly dissolve.
Until the very end of time, that single, forgotten sliver of a true soul remained trapped within the cage constructed by Zeus, forced to watch the living hell the King of the Gods had manufactured in her name.
A girl who bore her name, who had forgotten her original identity, yet suffered an equally tragic fate as she was toyed with in the palms of heroes and gods alike as the most beautiful woman in Greece.
Even after the Trojan War concluded, Zeus showed zero intention of letting her true soul go, seemingly preparing to use her essence for an even more ruthless, grand layout.
The dream shattered into fragments, the subsequent scenes lying beyond what his current strength could perceive.
Yet Night felt as though he already knew what Zeus would do next.
He recalled the grand scheme of the Greek gods across the Mediterranean, seeking to expand their mythic system and lay the foundations for Roman civilization.
He thought of that princess born from the earth veins nurtured by the countless dead souls of Carthage, Rome's eternal enemy, and the underworld of the Roman world, all crafted by their hands.
Zeus was truly ruthless to the extreme.
Even Night found it hard to stomach.
So, while he finally understood that the Red Dragon Queen indeed possessed a native identity in this world, her current state was that of having her identity completely usurped.
Her true soul should still be held captive by Zeus.
Where did she go after arriving in this world?
She couldn't have walked straight into Zeus's cage, could she?
The thought of her walking directly into the trap gave Night a massive headache.
If she was truly in Zeus's hands, rescuing her would be absurdly difficult.
Even if he could leverage Athena's power to pull off a miracle against the Sea God and the War God, he had never entertained the delusion that he could take down Zeus right now.
Zeus, the All-Powerful God.
Even if he couldn't achieve true conceptual omniscience and omnipotence, the sheer comprehensiveness of his strength rightfully earned him the title of an all-powerful deity.
Facing a supreme ruler who possessed zero weaknesses and had developed into a flawless, well-rounded powerhouse much like himself, especially after feeling in the dream that merely focusing his attention on the deity risked immediate detection,
Night couldn't help but frown deeply.
Just how strong was Zeus?
With his current capabilities, pondering that question was far too distant.
Even with Athena's reinforcement, he could only match high gods in terms of pure destructive output, yet he remained entirely unable to comprehend powerful, rule-based manipulations like free-form metamorphosis, turning stones to gold, or transmuting humans and gods into sheep and cattle.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)