Chapter 167: The Calydonian Boar Hunt (9)
Just moments earlier.
From the forest behind the plain where they were fighting, a single mage walked out calmly.
In stark contrast to the blood-soaked battle, the mage appeared so peaceful that—for a brief instant—both the blessing-possessed attackers and those trying to stop them lowered their weapons.
The mage’s sudden appearance felt so disconnected from the battlefield that it gave an eerie, surreal impression.
He glanced at the fierce fighting, frowned, clicked his tongue in disapproval as he walked past them, and rubbed his eyes as if he’d seen something filthy.
“Tsk tsk. Is it because the younger generation lacks skill? How pathetic—resorting to such a filthy brawl.”
[…….]
Silence fell over the battlefield.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It felt as though some massive, oppressive force was bearing down on them—no one in the entire field dared to respond to the mage’s words.
As his footsteps gradually faded and his figure nearly disappeared into the forest plain—
“What the hell! That little brat—does he even know what we’re doing right now?!!”
“Tch, ignore him, Jason. He just doesn’t understand. He probably has no idea what kind of beings we’re holding back, so he can say things like that.”
“Yeah. We’ve seen types like him among the Lapiths too. I always personally shut their loose mouths for them.”
“Same here. Looks like he couldn’t even reach our feet.”
Trying hard to shake off the strange feeling, the heroes hurled curses at the mage.
As if trying to dispel the bizarre sensation they had just felt.
“Enough! Let’s suppress these crazed bastards again!”
“Yeah!! That mage must’ve pulled some unknown trick. Just showing up and freezing the whole battlefield—give me a break!!!”
“Uwaaaah—fight!!”
“Let’s take them down!”
Humans instinctively reject or deny things they cannot comprehend or that feel uncanny. Now both the frenzied possessed and the sane defenders—driven by some unseen urgency—began swinging their weapons again with desperate ferocity.
The battlefield grew far more intense than before.
Yet among them, only Atalanta refused to simply brush off the eerie feeling.
Raised among hunters in the forest, she had always lived surrounded by strange and uncanny beings.
In the woods, every kind of creature existed.
Even if a wendigo suddenly jumped out from that forest right now, it wouldn’t be surprising.
Mages, too, were beings whose actions were often incomprehensible even to themselves.
It was practically an open secret that dead mages dragged off by Nyx’s grasp became undead.
Considering all of that, to Atalanta’s eyes, that boyish mage was someone she absolutely had to capture.
She had felt his gaze—cold, analytical, memorizing everything about them—but she knew people like him well.
Sometimes, these eccentric types could be beneficial to hunters.
That’s why, driven by both faint hope and an instinctive urgency screaming at her, Atalanta shouted:
“Mage! Please help us!! I’ll give you anything I can!!!”
Back to the present.
Atalanta let out a sigh of relief, convinced her decision had been the right one.
The mage standing before her now was someone whose realm she couldn’t even fathom—just like the strange, eccentric figures she had encountered multiple times in the forest.
Would you believe it if she said that, in the instant she called out, the mage—who should have been too far to be seen—had suddenly appeared right behind her, bypassing all her senses?
And in that same moment—
Everyone on the forest plain froze in place exactly as they were, as if time itself had stopped.
It was one of the most memorable experiences of her short life—enough to still make her fingertips tremble when she recalled it.
(Especially the fact that someone like him had been hiding in Calydon all this time…)
Atalanta firmly resolved as she watched the mage—who now seemed no different from an ordinary human—chatting away cheerfully.
‘I’ll give up any thought of using him. I’ll serve and honor him completely—like the first time I met Lord Pan in the forest.’
***
Poseidon had revealed himself briefly, but he had no real intention of sincerely helping them.
He had only appeared on the battlefield on impulse.
He knew full well how vicious Artemis’s blessing truly was. If things went wrong, every heroic seed here could die in horrific ways.
That was why Poseidon had stepped in—to personally gauge just how far the blessing’s influence extended.
“Well… fortunately, it’s not quite as nasty as I feared. The latent effects aren’t that severe either.”
(‘…Still, I doubt the ending will be pretty.’)
In any case, Poseidon decided to hold off. There was no real need for him to intervene.
Unlike that idiot Apollo’s mess back in Thebes, as long as they kept their heads straight, things looked manageable.
Above all, his favorite—Atalanta—seemed safe. That was enough.
He had only come to observe Meleager because the Fates had commissioned it—he held no real affection for the boy.
So, judging there was no major issue, Poseidon was about to continue on his way—
When Atalanta perfectly timed her intervention and essentially seduced him.
His favorite girl, right here in Calydon.
(‘Huh…? Is this girl trying to seduce me right now? Artemis is going to lose it—but should I get involved after all? Or maybe just take her and leave. Yeah… this counts as her seducing me. Whatever happens, it’s not really my fault.’)
Among all the heroes he’d seen in Calydon, Atalanta was the one who stood out most to Poseidon. It had been a long time since he’d seen someone with such talent, sharp instincts, and proper manners. She had no divine blood and came from the very bottom—no god would dislike a child like her.
After all, as a god, Poseidon’s hobby was observing fascinating humans like this.
Just look at how he wandered the world disguised as a human mage.
Whether she knew his thoughts or not, Atalanta—still smiling brightly—continued explaining the situation and seeking his advice.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, Mage, but we’re in very deep trouble right now. Honestly, before you appeared, we were debating whether we’d have to kill or maim all our comrades.”
“Hm… I’ve roughly grasped the situation just by looking. Still, these bodies look pretty sturdy. Doesn’t seem like a big problem to me?”
“Yes… but we don’t know when they’ll go berserk again. We originally suspected it might be the influence of the madness god Dionysus.”
“Dionysus isn’t behind this. If it were him, they’d lose the ability to think rationally—but they wouldn’t cross boundaries like this. These guys aren’t just drunks.”
“Hm… then what could it be? We can’t even guess.”
“Here’s a hint: look at how they’re exerting their strength. These guys aren’t going berserk and breaking through their physical limits.”
As Poseidon chatted with Atalanta, Jason, Theseus, Caeneus, and Ancaeus couldn’t bring themselves to approach the mage.
Thinking back on what they had said to this dangerous mage earlier, they feared that getting too close might earn them a curse that would make them suffer until death.
—You go, Jason.
—What?! Are you telling me to die?!
—Unfortunately, as a member of the Lapith royal line and the one destined to lead our people, I can’t die in a place like this. Besides, Jason, you’re the one who wouldn’t be missed even if you died.
—You lunatics! Who says anyone here is expendable!!
Of course, Poseidon had long since noticed their pathetic behavior and was staring at them with contempt.
(‘Those kinds of idiots are supposed to become heroes in the future…? Olympus really has no eye for talent.’)
***
Thanks to the mage’s help, the frenzied victims were safely subdued and properly restrained.
Now their remaining concern was Meleager, who still hadn’t woken up.
As long as he remained unconscious, they couldn’t conclude anything.
The spear in Meleager’s grip was rejecting them all.
Ah—of course, the suspicious mage had already declared that the boar was long dead, its life extinguished by the spear’s power.
“No way, no way, no way. It’s completely rejecting us the moment we try to touch it.”
“Jason, I’ll say it once: shut up. You’re unbearably loud.”
“What?! Theseus, you were the one who told me to try pulling it out! I endured the pain and—”
Jason had tried to pull the spear as their representative, but the moment he touched it, an agonizing pain stabbed through him like his flesh was being torn apart. The spear—deeply embedded in the divine beast’s corpse—refused to budge.
“Exactly as Meleager said. It rejects anyone but its master.”
“Hm? But Meleager isn’t exactly its master either, is he?”
“Haha, you idiot Caeneus. In a way, Meleager is the descendant of its previous owner. So he can at least hold and wield it.”
“I see… Then taste this idiot’s fist!”
Thwack! “Gwaaah!!”
Poseidon looked at Jason and Caeneus—who had started brawling while talking about the spear—with utter disdain.
Thinking that these fools might become more famous than Atalanta in the future made him feel a little sick to his stomach.
(‘I really need to smack that Jason kid in the back of the head someday.’)
“Huh? Why do I suddenly feel a chill?”
Because you’re going to get punched by my fist, that’s why!
“Eek! Dodge—!!!”
Still annoyed by the noisy pair, Poseidon frowned and cast a spell to seal away the two loudmouths so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.
“Huh? What’s this?”
“Huh?”
In an instant, the two vanished.
Silence returned to the forest plain.
“Hm… Finally quiet. Those noisy idiots were making it impossible to concentrate.”
Poseidon smiled refreshingly and turned his attention to Meleager’s spear this time.
And as the others watched him in stunned silence…
—Did you see that?
—Yeah… those two disappeared without any resistance.
—Is this mage Atalanta caught really that incredible?
“Atalanta, did you grab him knowing this would happen? Even if he’s an uncontrollable mage, if someone of his caliber shows goodwill, it’ll definitely benefit us somehow.”
“Wow… Atalanta’s skills have grown again. We just thought he was some crazy mage.”
“…Yeah, pretty much. Right, Ancaeus?”
(‘What the hell? Why would a mage like that listen to someone like me?!’)
The heroes’ evaluation of Atalanta rose sharply after seeing Caeneus and Jason vanish.
Leaving them behind, Poseidon—who could now closely examine both the spear and the divine beast’s corpse—frowned slightly.
No matter how he looked at it, the situation was strange.
(‘This vicious spear was supposedly given directly by Artemis… Does that make sense? A hunter of her caliber would forget something like this? She said it was instinct, but she seemed to know exactly what would happen—entrusting me with protecting the beast’s most vital core, even though she already took it away? And this spear isn’t the type that tests or chooses its master, yet it’s even awakening will?’)
As Poseidon saw it, Artemis was the goddess of the hunt. And hunters—especially at her level—didn’t forget or abandon their weapons and supplies.
In a world where even rabbits could swallow tigers, anyone who neglected meticulous planning and logistics died.
For the pinnacle of hunters—Artemis herself—to be so careless? Poseidon could confidently say that was as absurd as Zeus stopping his affairs or Hades abandoning his scheming, filthy plots.
(‘What in the world is she thinking? These young ones these days are impossible to understand.’)
***
Old-man (?) Poseidon’s prediction was spot-on.
Artemis had absolutely no intention of letting her divine beast die like this. Of course, that didn’t mean she was pleased with Calydon overcoming the trial unscathed.
“Callisto, what do you think will happen next? If things go as I planned, Meleager should safely set foot on the path of a hero, right?”
“That may be true, Lady Artemis… but are you sure this is wise? It’s an unspoken rule among gods that those who overcome a trial must receive fair compensation… And more than that, I’m concerned that the humans still don’t realize the trial isn’t over yet…”
Callisto looked at Artemis—who held the divine beast’s core (its soul and true body)—with a worried expression.
It had been an unbreakable rule since the birth of humans and all races: those who overcame a divine trial must receive proper reward.
Yet Artemis had taken away one of those rewards—the beast’s core.
Callisto’s concern was perfectly reasonable.
“Callisto, don’t worry. You worry too much. What could they possibly do with this core anyway? Even just the hide, tusks, sinews, and bones of this lovely child would be an enormous reward for them. And you know it too—the trial isn’t over yet. The madness of the moon isn’t so easily shaken off. I’ve already openly shown them the terror of my blessing. What comes next is up to them.”
Artemis smiled enigmatically as she looked down at the heroes below—still fawning over Njord.
“I thought Njord wouldn’t be able to resist coming down. He’s always had a soft spot for that lovely girl Atalanta. So her life should be safe, at least. Now let’s see… whether Meleager and Calydon can truly notice my blessing and overcome it.”
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