The tension in the room was palpable.
My gaze shifted between the three women. The Servant, whom I recognized as Da Vinci, swallowed hard, for one reason only: the Saint Graphs behind me. I noticed this immediately.
Without thinking, I grabbed one.
"What are you trying to do?" she demanded, pointing her gloved hand at me, ready to strike.
"I was just wondering how you managed to keep some Servants' Saint Graphs here, intact, and ready to be used again. I wonder if they're still in here waiting for their freedom or to be used by you," I replied, waving the one in my hand.
Putting it back where it was, I stood in front of the three women and, without thinking, threw myself down in front of them, sitting on top of all the Saint Graphs.
"Hey, who do you think you are to do that?" roared the orange-haired woman.
"Master, calm down; we don't want you to end up destroying the Saint Graph," said the knight with the shield.
Da Vinci glanced from me to the Master, then back to me.
"Neither of us has much time, so let's make this quick," I declared, rising to throw a random object from the room.
Without hesitation, Da Vinci used his staff to shatter it, opening the window to slip past her guard, coming within inches of her.
She, without thinking, tried to attack me, but I, without blinking, easily dodged her, spun around, and kicked her, sending her crashing into the wall.
The truth is, I have nothing against these three of them; the best thing would be for everything to turn out well for her, and morally, knowing what's going on, you should help her.
But my urge to fight and destroy has been gnawing at me these past few days, and since I can't fight alongside my allies yet, I'll take it out on these three; I'll make it up to them somehow later.
"Master," I heard behind me.
"Understood," came the other voice.
When I turned around, I had to dodge a shield that was trying to crush me. I glanced away, watching the Master power up this demi-servant.
Moving my neck to the side, I dodged the thrust from the tip of the shield.
"Oh, incredible, I dodged it without even looking at you, Mash," said the redhead.
"This isn't the time, Master," Mash complained, continuing her attack, but I slapped down the shield to strike with force.
To my surprise, I didn't do anything to the shield, not even a scratch; however, I did force Mash to take a step back.
"I see, unfortunately for you, I have this," I said, using advanced Haki to strike the shield again.
To my surprise once more, the shield remained intact, but Mash, due to the internal damage from my blow, was struck and violently thrown backward.
"Mash!!" the Master exclaimed, going to check on the lilac-haired knight.
The moment I took a step forward, I sensed an attack to my right, so I extended my arm and stopped the Da Vinci bracelet she threw at me.
"You stopped it so easily from so close range; you're not one of those types, you're a Servant," she deduced, looking worried.
"Who knows," I replied simply, deflecting the attack so it crashed into the wall, creating a hole.
Without wasting a second, I grabbed Chaldea's master, who barely had time to react.
"Wait, what are you doing to me?" she said angrily, grabbing her by the hip like a sack of potatoes.
"I have her master kidnapped. None of us have time to waste, so tell me where this is," I said, pulling out a photo Wodine handed me while they held Mash down with one foot.
Da Vinci grabbed the picture while glancing sideways at my two prisoners. Without much delay, she went to a large box and started typing a code into it.
While all this was happening, Mash was trying to reach her shield, which she'd dropped after the blow, but she couldn't, and the orange-headed creature was moving like a madwoman, biting my arm.
"Let me go, you pervert. you're a pervert; how dare you touch me? Now I won't be able to get married," she began to complain, still biting, trying to free herself.
I didn't flinch; I simply wiped away my hatred in my mind before looking at her.
"Did you say something?" I asked, to which she stopped dead in her tracks, glaring at me.
"I won't forget this offense. I'll remember it for the rest of my life," she said, moving more frantically as she threw punches and kicks at me, which I ignored as if they were nothing.
The box opened, and Da Vinci began to pull out several bows, until in the fourth one she took out the relic I had come for: the bow of Maia, the mother of Hermes. It was a ceremonial bow without its string, so it wasn't usable, but it served as a catalyst to summon a Servant related to Greece and the legends of Hermes or those close to him.
I extended my free hand, and she understood, tossing me the bow. The moment I received it, I suddenly released Chaldea's Master, causing her to almost fall face-first, but her reflexes, like a cat's, allowed her to extend her hands, preventing further injury.
"Be more careful with the other one," she complained.
At her comment, I couldn't help but look at her.
"Do you want to repeat that?" I asked.
"Ah, that's not what I meant," she corrected herself, hitting my leg. "How about you release Mash instead, you pervert?"
"My job is done. I'm not interested in the three of you. You're too weak. We look like losers," I said, releasing Mash.
Instead of jumping on me, Chaldea's Master went straight to check on her companion.
"Mash, are you alright?" she asked; she's performing healing magic.
"With a little rest, I'll be fine," she said, getting up.
Ignoring the orange-haired woman's murderous glare, I walked up to a wall.
"What int-," Da Vinci began but fell silent when she saw me smash through the wall of the room to reach the next.
"I'm leaving; my planet needs me," I said simply and continued through the rooms, smashing through walls without looking back, leaving the three women bewildered.
After several rooms, I found myself in a hallway. I looked both ways, which led to other corridors, so I pulled out the map I had, but I remembered that it only had instructions on how to get from the entrance to my destination; if I didn't know where I was, it wouldn't do me any good.
Given this, I had no choice but to keep moving.
As I continued my journey, lost, I arrived at a place that could be described as the kitchen, and only just, since everything was frozen solid, along with several people who must have been Chaldea staff.
Without thinking much about it, I walked past, but something stopped me in my tracks.
There was a gacha machine by the kitchen entrance, and something inside me told me I had to use it, so I broke the ice on it to open it. When I pressed the button, nothing happened; I needed tokens.
Faced with this situation, I looked at the guys who were frozen there and, without thinking much about it, I broke some of the ice to check their clothes without freeing them, since doing so might only cause them to suffer the bleaching of the world or be killed by some soldier from the Russian Lostbelt. Maybe it was cruel, but it was better to leave them frozen.
After finding a few tokens, I went back to the gacha machine to count how many spins I had. With each spin, my addiction grew, and on the seventh spin, I stopped dead in my tracks.
"Wait a minute, I'm not like this," I told myself.
"You're just realizing this now?" I heard Kiss-shot say.
"Before, when I played these kinds of games, I didn't get so addicted, and from what I can see, it's not the machine," I deduced through simple logic.
"What changed?" I tried to follow Kiss-shot's train of thought.
I looked at my body, but nothing had changed, except that that Chaldea master had bitten me.
The moment I thought that, everything clicked. She quickly enveloped my body in darkness to absorb any anomalies, only to then stop feeling the urge to gamble all my material and non-material possessions on a 50/50 roulette wheel.
"Does that fix anything?" the beautiful woman who lives in my shadow asked me.
"Interestingly, yes, it was like when one man bit another man and became the superhero Man-Man, only this time it was a woman with destructive, compulsive tendencies," I declared, looking at my body while ignoring the screams of a man over the speakers.
"What kind of references are you making now? I don't understand what you're saying," Kiss-shot complained.
"Never mind," I said, slumping my shoulders dejectedly and kicking the gacha machine, breaking it and crashing through another wall to see where it led.
After several minutes of wandering aimlessly and ignoring the various oprichniki roaming the corridors, I sensed several life signatures, which felt alive, so I went through several walls to reach them.
Reaching the last one, I ended up interrupting a major encounter.
On one side was the servant, who escorted me to the entrance along with Koyanskaya, while on the other side were the three women I had faced earlier.
"I finally found someone; I was getting bored of wandering aimlessly. This place is quite large, you know, and it's easy to get lost without a map," I said, glancing at the three women and passing them to the other two who were supposed to be my companions in this situation. It should be noted that someone is missing here.
"Well, if it isn't you, I was wondering where you were," Koyaskaya remarked, looking me up and down.
"I was looking for the relic," I said, holding the bow, "but when I got it, I tried to come back, but I didn't quite know how to get out of here."
"What a strange way to get out of here, tearing the place apart piece by piece," the white-haired woman said, giving me a strange look.
"That's one way to look at it, they say—" I was about to ask the three women on the other side, but they weren't there.
"They escaped," she exclaimed, realizing her prey had fled, and walked past me, following them.
Not far behind, the white-haired girl followed as fast as she could, figuring running in her dress wasn't very feasible.
Left alone, I decided to head straight ahead until I got out of there, since the others' mission wasn't part of mine; I needed to reach a Lostbelt to move between them and return to Kirschtaria.
...
"You know, I've only managed to put one of these things together once in my life, and I think it was because reality got distorted," I commented while playing with a Rubik's Cube.
Not far away, Wodine was surrounded by papers, his computer beside him displaying data that, frankly, I couldn't care less about.
Unfortunately for me, stress only makes me angrier, and anger only increases the likelihood that I'll try to destroy Olympus. Oddly enough, putting together a toy stresses me out less than understanding my master's plans.
Since Kirschtaria was ignoring me—whether intentionally or not, I didn't know—I got up and headed for the door to leave.
"Where are you going?" he asked, his gaze fixed on several papers covered in magic formulas.
"Just looking around," I replied simply.
At that moment, Wodine looked up at me, staring as if I were an idiot, and for some reason, I felt like I was.
"You know that your Servant nature means that every second you spend on Olympus only increases your anger and hatred," he reminded me. "I created a boundary that recognizes this place as separate from the outside world, so being here prevents that from happening."
Upon hearing this, I could only click my tongue and head towards the relics, from which I took one.
I looked at the piece carved from marble; as far as I understand, it came from a temple where they worshipped two brothers, who were brothers of Helen, who I believe is the one from Troy, if I'm not mistaken.
"When you thought about summoning Atlas, with the summoner already in hand, I thought you would do it immediately," I said, trying to satisfy my curiosity.
"If I want to summon a titan, I have to act quickly for my plan. No matter how great a wizard I am, I can't completely control a being like Atlas, so I need to gain Zeus's trust, even more than I already have. And to do that, I need to make him believe that we're both on the same page and that my servants will help him with all the problems that exist both inside and outside of Olympus," Wodine explained to me.
"I see," I said simply, glancing outside at the city.
It looked technological, but the people in this place seemed frozen in time.
It's as if Greek citizens suddenly appeared in a city thousands of years in the future and thought that was okay or normal; the image just doesn't add up.
Not long ago, Kirschtaria uncovered the seven Lostbelts of him and his A-Team teammates, and apparently, humanity, or technically almost all of humanity, was whitewashed. Only a few people remain, like Chaldea, those in another dimension, like the wandering sea, and others whose survival I couldn't fathom, like that guy on his way to Area 51.
So, it'll be about three months before Chaldea reacts and starts eliminating the Lostbelt one by one, which means I still have time to wait.
I could also tell Wodine this, but I wouldn't know how to explain where I got this information other than using the Kamigami no Gigan. But honestly, from one perspective, I think his plan could do more harm than good to the world.
Making humanity evolve, and doing so, is something that can go very well or very badly, and sadly, knowing the evil and sins of the world, since, as the gods demand, the Abrahamic god also demands it, so his scriptures may have some truth to them.
This leads to humanity ending up destroying the world itself, or at least tearing apart its very fabric, causing humanity to almost become extinct or, in the worst-case scenario, to become enslaved by the fantasy beings of the other side of the world.
Anyway, I'm leaning towards the more pessimistic side, but the probability isn't very low, since the more power humans possess, the greater their arrogance and pride will be.
Faced with all this, I decide not to alter anything, follow Wodine's instructions, have fun, and, if I can, destroy Olympus—this being paramount if I'm given the chance, even if I have to disobey Wodine.
His plan is going to fail in the end; what difference does it make if it fails sooner?
"So, I can do whatever I want here?" I asked, just testing the waters.
"As long as you don't destroy anything," she replied as she began to draw with a ruler and compass.
Seeing her indifference, I just shrugged and walked over to the armchair.
"You can come out now," I said with a smile.
At that moment, Kiss-shot emerged from my shadow in all her splendor, causing Kirschtaria to stop dead in her tracks and slowly turn to look at the vampire, and, of course...
The presence that Kiss-shot radiates is something that cannot be ignored.
"Who is it?" Wodine asked, a little agitated. After all, Kiss-Shot possesses the second true magic, since I made sure it remained in her soul and, by default, in mine. Therefore, both her real body and every summon she makes will always have it, as power comes from the soul.
"I thought you'd investigated me thoroughly. You should know who she is," I replied simply, as I slowly began to undress.
"Now what are you doing?" she asked, becoming even more agitated.
"What do you think? We're going to have sex here on the couch," I replied, taking off my pants and standing completely naked. "You won't let me go out, you won't let me fight Zeus, I can't move freely, and I have nothing to entertain myself with, so I have no choice but to do what adults do in the countryside when they're bored."
At my response, Kirschtaria began to rub her head.
"You know what, you can go; as long as you don't cause me any trouble, you can do whatever you want," Wodine declared, sounding somewhat stressed. I couldn't tell if it was because of the situation, because I kept interrupting him, or something else, or all of the above.
"Can he go to other Lostbelts too?" I asked.
"Do whatever you want; just don't bother me; I'm very busy with my plans and the other Lostbelts right now," he replied, turning away and taking a breath to calm himself.
I glanced sideways at Kiss-shot, who was smiling, finding the whole situation amusing.
"Well, I'll wait for you outside," she said, leaving the room.
Not waiting for Kirschtaria to change her mind, I dressed with a snap of my fingers using magic and left the room, and by extension, the designated area.
...
"And to think this is Olympus; so much has changed in 3,000 years," Kiss-shot remarked beside me as she took in the city's details.
Two young people walked past us, greeting us, but I didn't respond; I kept my face as neutral as possible to hide my emotions.
"As much as it doesn't resemble Olympus, and knowing this place is where the Greek gods reside, I already feel like destroying it, even though I don't consider it Olympus itself," I said, clicking my tongue. "I can't help feeling angry and frustrated."
"Hmm, it must be your vengeful nature," Kiss-shot suggested.
"It's mostly my dissatisfaction with my current situation; if things continue like this, I'll have to leave here and live in Atlantis; at least there's fun there," I said as I followed Kiss-shot into a field of flowers.
The moment we reached the center of the flower field, I caught sight of a woman, whom I immediately recognized.
"Europa?" I asked upon seeing her.
"Hmm, new children?" she asked with a broad smile.
"Children?" Kiss-shot asked, tilting her head.
"Every child born on this earth is my child," she declared, opening her hands as if a mother awaited a child's embrace.
Seeing this, I simply clicked my tongue.
"I forgot that this Europa isn't the human one," I reminded Kiss-shot.
Long ago, at the very beginning of my journey on Olympus, I met Europa, but that was a long time ago, and I couldn't have much interaction with her then either, since Zeus, with his consorts, was quite possessive in certain matters.
"Unfortunately for you, neither of us was born in this dimension, so we can't be your children," I told her.
"Oh," she said, sounding a little depressed, then cheering up slightly. "It doesn't matter, we can still be friends, since I've been feeling a bit lonely lately."
Faced with her sincerity and cheerfulness, I had to cover my eyes, as I felt it was too bright.
"I don't like this. We should leave, but at the same time, I don't like the idea of seeing her sad," I told Kiss-shot.
"For some reason, I feel the same way. Let's take the risk. Maybe it won't be a big deal," I replied to Kiss-shot, but I knew this could go wrong, or very wrong.