— — — — — —
The flesh is weak, but the machine is eternal
Even with his eyes tightly shut, Hermes could feel the tension gripping him.
Sweat seeped from his forehead, one drop after another sliding down his cheeks. His eyes, forced closed, were drawn tight, like he was trapped in the middle of a nightmare.
To be honest, Hermes had never heard that phrase before.
But that didn't stop him from understanding what Ryo was getting at.
Talk that mocked the weakness of flesh and praised the superiority of machines instantly made him think of Hephaestus.
Hephaestus, God of fire and craftsmen.
Most people knew him as the smith who forged divine artifacts for Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, and the other great gods, worshiped as the god of forging.
But very few remembered that the very first robot in Greek myth had been created by Hephaestus himself.
He had crafted the first female automaton to assist him in the divine forge of the gods' palace.
And more than once, he had openly scorned the inconvenience of flesh and praised the excellence of machinery.
Because of his long-standing affair with Hephaestus' wife, Aphrodite, Hermes had more than once been hunted down by Hephaestus' mechanical troops.
In fact, every single time it happened, those machines chased him until he was running for his life.
So now, hearing Ryo suddenly drop that line… how could Hermes not overthink it?
No way.
'He's not planning to turn me into a machine, is he? That's impossible. Arcadia can't possibly have Hephaestus-level technology.'
Just then, Ares shouted in terror, "I knew it! Hephaestus really is working with you!"
"He's hated me for ages, hated Hermes, hated Zeus too. And on top of that, he's always had a thing for Athena, that bitch. That's it. He has to be in on this with you!"
Hearing that, Hermes was shocked.
Athena and Hephaestus working together?
And Athena was already working with Ryo.
That meant Ryo and Hephaestus absolutely had some kind of connection. Maybe that line about machines had even come straight from Hephaestus himself.
After all, the god of craftsmanship had once doted endlessly on Aphrodite, the wife Zeus had granted him. He pampered her, indulged her, worshiped her.
And in return, he got betrayal.
Who wouldn't feel hatred after knowing, even witnessing, their own wife fooling around with their father, their brothers, their uncles?
No one could stay calm about that.
Hermes hadn't seen Hephaestus in six or seven hundred years. The craftsman god had shut himself inside the Forge God's Hall for just as long.
Hermes still remembered the hateful look in Hephaestus' eyes every time he realized he'd been cuckolded again.
Maybe… all these years, Hephaestus had been obsessively researching mechanical modification. Maybe his goal was to turn every last one of the gods who'd put green hats on him into dickless machines.
Given how much Hephaestus hated Hermes, Ares, and even Zeus, he had motive. He had reason.
Which meant… Ryo might already be working with Hephaestus, planning to turn Hermes and Ares into robots.
Fuck… what kind of punishment was that?
It was more terrifying than digging up their ancestral grave in Tartarus.
"You can't do this!"
Hermes thrashed wildly inside the hanging basket.
The basket, woven from branches and leaves, immediately began creaking under the strain.
"Damn it, damn it! So that's your plan? Turning our incarnations into machine gods and stripping us of our authority entirely? Bastards!"
Ares struggled as well. The suppression of the domain capped his output, but he could still maintain five-digit-level strength.
Unfortunately, the gift game of Croix's Little Theater limited his actions.
He struggled forward, moving stiffly and slowly, like a malfunctioning robot, jerking step by step, but he did manage to move.
Without satisfying the "Sleeping Beauty" condition, any action other than attempting to fulfill that condition would be forcibly restricted by the game.
"Damn it!"
Realizing he couldn't act freely unless he lifted the game's restriction, Ares gritted his teeth and turned toward Hermes.
"Piece of shit. Open your mouth!"
"What?" Hermes froze.
Then, sensing Ares' face rushing toward him, he screamed in horror, "Wait, don't come over here!"
Watching the eye-searing scene of a prince kissing Sleeping Beauty, Ryo took a step back in disgust.
At that moment, the game condition was fulfilled. Hermes and Ares were released from the game's restrictions at the same time.
After a brief struggle, they immediately tried to flee the game field.
"Stop all actions."
With Ryo's command, both Ares and Hermes froze in place.
The only parts of them that could still move were their eyes, which widened as they stared in shock at the two black scrolls in Ryo's hands.
They were the Little Garden's Ownership Deeds.
"You two seem to have forgotten something very important," Ryo said with a sneer, casually shaking the parchment.
"You didn't forget that forcibly intervening in someone else's gift game and then losing means you become the host's property, right?"
"Oh, that's right. I almost forgot. You two probably haven't ever lost a game like this before."
His smile turned downright nasty.
"How pitiful. You paid such a huge price, and yet you still couldn't escape defeat."
Ares and Hermes' faces flushed bright red.
Not embarrassment. Rage.
Ryo glanced down at the ownership deeds and sighed. "What a shame. That's the best they can do."
Ownership deeds were proof of possession, but they only granted limited command authority. Any command that would directly harm the "property" simply wouldn't take effect.
He could order Ares and Hermes to stop moving. That worked.
But telling them to mate with a sow, or hand over their spirit rank or authority? Those commands would fail.
So even holding ownership over Ares and Hermes, Ryo couldn't use them as combat power.
That was exactly why he turned to the idea of machines. The inspiration came from the Machine Gods of Greece in FGO (Fate/Grand Order).
If he could convert Hermes and Ares into Machine Gods and have them recognize him as their master, all these problems would vanish.
People slack off. People disobey. Machines don't.
Although the Dimensional Forum hadn't found the FGO world yet, Ryo never expected FGO to solve everything for him anyway.
The machine gods in FGO didn't reach four-digit output. If he ruined valuable materials like Hermes, he'd be taking a massive loss.
So Ryo needed a technology that could transform Greek gods into a mechanical race while preserving most of their power.
He didn't have that technology himself.
But he did know of something very close.
The Cleansing of the Strike the Blood world.
A bizarre technique capable of rewriting the world itself and altering an entire race.
.
.
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Trivia: The Cleansing (聖殲 Seisen, lit. "Holy Annihilation") is a magic created by Cain that allows for him to interpose and temporarily alter the laws of the universe, thereafter that allowed for him to change the being of the Devas (Gods) into another being; into Demons, rendering them weaker in strength therefore allowing for them to be accessibly killed by Humans and thus potentially be annihilated, or cleansed, from the universe. (...From Wiki)
(T/N: The abilities of the Cleansing are real, but the reason Cain carried it out was only what people believed, not the ultimate truth.)