The Myth of the Greek Heavenly Demon

Chapter 8 – The Beginning Of The Journey

Bewildered Nesneria had no idea how she ended up returning to the sea.
Of course, it was only later that she learned that Dianes, in a panic due to the ominous presence of monsters on the night of a new moon, had followed and escorted her as she rushed back to the sea.

Coincidentally, a few days after their first encounter was Nesneria’s coming-of-age ceremony.
Though still young, the nymphs, who each had different milestones for growth, celebrated the coming-of-age ceremony of their little sister with grandeur.
However, amid the congratulations from her sisters, Nesneria was lost in thought, thinking only of the boy named Dianes, whom she had met that day.

And when she first arrived alone at the bright coastline of Passos Island at the time of her coming-of-age ceremony, Apollo’s chariot raced across the sky.

“What? It’s only been two days.”

On the pure white sandy beach, Dianes greeted her with a sword in hand.
Under the bright sun, with his face drenched in sweat, Nesneria felt her heart sink once more.

“Wh-why are you here?”

“Hm? This has always been my training ground. The sound of the waves is nice, and no one comes because of the rumors about monsters in the waters.”

Saying that, Dianes picked up his sword again and started dancing precariously on the rock.
That day, Nesneria saw the second most beautiful thing in the world.

The face that had been smiling brightly at her soon turned exceedingly serious, and the wooden sword moved naturally as he extended it, flowing like the currents of the sea or dancing freely like the wind rushing down the mountainside.

And such days continued.

Every day and hour, Dianes would come down to the nymphs’ side of the beach, wielding his sword, while Nesneria, or, as she allowed him to call her, Neri, would watch quietly.
They spent their days exploring the stream together, learning various fascinating martial arts in the forest.

She thought such days would continue forever.

“Eek!”

“Neri!”

Neri, who had dashed to the nymphs’ beach in a single breath, plunged into the sea in an instant.
Dianes, who hurriedly ran to catch her from behind, was too late as she melted into the waves.

Neri, without looking back, entrusted her body to the waves and descended into the deep sea.

“Sister!”

“Neri?!”

Arriving at the Thetis Palace in an instant, Neri threw herself into the arms of her eldest sister, who was embroidering.
Her eldest sister, puzzled by the sudden clinginess of their youngest, listened to the whole story and then…
She let out a deep sigh.

“Eh… Our youngest is sad. What should we do?”

“Waaaah! Unniiieee!!”

A nymph who falls in love with a human experiences such heartache.
Nymphs are tied to one place, unable to leave.
While humans live passionately, as if they cannot be bound to a small world.
Their love often ends in pain for one side.

But.

“Neri, what are you worried about?”

“Huh?”

Being tied down was just the story of other nymphs.
They were Nereid nymphs.
Spirits of the vast sea.

No matter how much a human flies and crawls, a human wandering Greece could never escape the sea’s grasp.
No human could escape the grasp of a Nereid nymph.

“Come on! This is not the time to cry!”

“Huh?”

“Everyone gather!! Our youngest is going to catch a man!”

At the resounding call of the queen nymph, all the nymph sisters of the sea gathered in an instant.
As a result, fishermen and travelers faced unexpected hardships due to the sudden storm.
However, something far more important had occurred.

“What?!”

“The youngest is going to catch a man?!”

“Who is it? Is it that black-haired one?”

The sisters, almost as ferocious as lions of Nemea spotting their prey, gathered with gleaming eyes.
Meanwhile, a farewell was taking place on the sea above Passos.

“Farewell, Dianes. May you become a renowned hero in Greece.”

The old priest’s hand stroked my young head and blessed me, and behind him, with eyes full of jealousy and envy, I saw the faces of the temple orphans looking at me.

Leaving this small island for the mainland, moreover, for the forest of the great heroes’ teacher, Chiron, seemed enviable to everyone.

“I knew from the moment you first arrived that this day would come. Go. Go and become a great hero; shake all of Greece!”

“May Hermes’s blessing be with you on your journey!”

“May the high god Zeus bless you!”

“Yes! Take care, everyone!”

I, too, waved my hand in response to their warm send-off and boarded the ship where Chiron was watching over.
Soon, amidst a grand farewell, the ship set sail, and the island of Passos gradually began to fade away.

“You seem to have many thoughts running through your mind.”

“Well, that’s true.”

Chiron, the centaur, approached slowly with a clattering sound and kindly spoke to me.

“Is it the nymph girl that keeps coming to mind?”

“You are very perceptive, aren’t you?”

How could I not be worried?
I was leaving without properly saying goodbye to the person who had been following me around since the coming-of-age ceremony.
No matter how I looked at the situation, my heart felt uneasy.

“Well, they are a long-lived species. We’ll see each other again when I come back later.”

“Ahem… Well, it seems there’s no need to worry about a reunion.”

With a questioning tone, Chiron glanced at the sea and bitterly smiled, then knelt beside me.
. Despite kneeling, his adult frame and horse body still made him tower over me.

“So, how do you feel?”

“How do I feel? Well, my heart is racing for the first time in a while.”

In my first life, anyone would have remembered and once indulged in Greek mythology…
To think I’d be going to Chiron’s forest, teeming with the heroes at the center of that myth.
Just as when I first entered the Ten Thousand Great Mountains after reincarnating into the Central Plains Murim, I once again felt the emotion of anticipation after a long time.

“Let’s see… You said you grew up on Passos Island your whole life?”

“Yes, when I was young, I was found asleep in the forest of Passos Island by Priest Efaros.”

“Efaros told me. He found you asleep by a stream late at night. Do you have any other memories?”

Memories…
I clearly remember the memories of my past and previous lives, my memories as the Heavenly Demon Lord who shook Central Plains Murim, and my memories of diligently working part-time jobs on Earth.
But there was one thing I particularly couldn’t remember: the moments of my death and the events that followed.
However, when I delve deeply into meditation, fragments of small memories sometimes surface.

An endless pitch-black darkness.
A giant, writhing eye beneath it was staring at me.

And after that…

I don’t know.

Afterward, I lost consciousness, and when I came to consciousness, old man Efaros was looking at me worriedly from the bedside.

“I don’t remember well.”

“Is that so?”

“Rather, I want to ask. Who is the being that crafted my flesh?”

“How would I know that?”

Hoo… This old man knows everything and pretends not to?
I glared at him with fierce eyes, but the brown-eyed centaur just smiled kindly.

“Three days before I met you, the temple was turned upside down. I don’t know why, but the priests took out the bed from the VIP room and moved it to the warehouse, and we scoured the whole village looking for well-dried straw.”

“Oh, thanks to that, I slept well last night.”

“Is that all?”

The mystical wine with a fragrant aroma, which was usually hidden deep in the high priest’s storage when cleaning.
It turned out that old man Efaros had already taken out the wine that was said to have been made by Dionysus himself and was preparing a feast by catching several fat pigs.
Even during the Seeding Festival, he turned away all external guests and strictly prohibited entry.

“At the very least, Chiron, you must have contacted us that you were coming, or we must have received information through another route that a centaur was visiting our temple… But you told me to go right away as soon as you saw me, didn’t you?”

“Hmm… that’s right.”

“And that too, even though old man Efaros, the other priests, and the others were so eagerly courting you, asking to take me along?”

As a result, it could be seen that the centaur came to this faraway Passos targeting me, or at least obtained information about me through some means.
And if the source of that information was likely the gods…

“How is it? Is there something wrong with what I said?”

Then he, too, should at least know how I ended up in this world, and who the parents that gave birth to this body were, right?
The old centaur, who had been listening intently up to that point, then clapped his hands and laughed as if in admiration.

“Hahaha! You are a very wise child. I, too, am greatly impressed. Yes, that’s right. I received the great oracle of Olympus and came to fetch you.”

Chiron slowly began to recount how he received the oracle.

“Let’s see, yes. It was after I had a war class with my disciples. I laid my weary body under the shade of a tree and was briefly intoxicated by Hypnos’s whispers.”

Hypnos was the god of sleep, and the fact that he was intoxicated by his song meant he dozed off for a moment.

“But then Hypnos whispered in his dream. A seed had sprouted in Passos, so he told me to place it in the Forest of Heroes.”

That’s how Chiron came to Passos, and before meeting his old friend Efaros, he entered the island’s forest to prepare a gift, where he saw me and Artemis arguing.

“And that’s how it came to this point.”

“…Is that forest not a good place?”

Come to think of it, when I first tried to set up a training ground in that forest, I had a hard time because of bandits and monster-like bears.
Thanks to that, I was able to refine my martial arts to some extent.
Anyway, to sum it up, the twelve gods of Olympus noticed me, and thanks to that, I am now heading to Chiron’s forest.

‘Then, would the people from Olympus also know about the identity of this body?’

The reason I was exploring the origins of this body was because of this strange qi flowing through my entire body since I came to my senses.
It was similar to the divine qi I felt when I competed with the hidden Dao masters in the past, yet its nature was closer to demonic qi—endlessly deep, dark, yet impeccably pure.
This qi flowing through the blood of all the meridians in my body assisted me every time I practiced the Martial Spirit Arts, and, in turn, I slightly learned and used Demonic Arts, achieving effects dozens of times more potent than in my past life.
If I could fully absorb this and make it mine…

‘I might surpass the Heavenly Demon realm and truly enter the Divine Demon realm beyond that.’

Thus, I was trying to confirm where it originated from and from whom it came.
To find this, it would probably take a long time.

“I, too, do not know about your origin.”

“I see…”

It seemed I needed to reach the divine level to get information.
But if it were the gods of Greek mythology, almost all of them had disaster-level personalities, so it wasn’t appealing…

“However, one thing is certain: you are a descendant of a god.”

“A god?”

“Yes, a very high-ranking one at that. So always respect the gods and be careful with your conduct.”

A high-ranking god?
Who could it be?
Judging by the divine qi flowing in my body, it was probably a god related to darkness, but who?
Hades, the King of the Underworld? Thanatos, the God of Death?

It seemed more like pure darkness, closer to pure dark energy than death.

“Who could it be…?”

“Ahem, more importantly, let me tell you about the Forest of Heroes we are heading to now.”

Chiron cleared his throat and changed the subject.