Chapter 26: Just One Of Those Nights Where You're Stuck In An Inn Room With Your Nemesis

“Did they really just lock us in here?" Athena asked with a tiny little giggle at the end.

“Oh for fuck's sake," I said, picked her up and sat her down on the bed and then I did something I'd only recently learned to do.

Yume had taught me the technique for Qi Healing a while back but only a few weeks ago she'd showed me how to combine it with Qi Projection in order to heal people other than myself with it. And that's what I did. Qi Healing couldn't only heal injuries but also cleanse toxins and in the end alcohol was nothing more than a very mild poison.

So I held a hand over her forehead, not quite close enough to touch her but close enough to feel the warmth of her body, and sent Qi into her to destroy the alcohol making her act so stupidly cute. It was impossible to hate her the way she was and I wasn't sure I'd get through this night without hating her.

“Feeling better?" I asked when I was done.

“What did you do there?" she asked.

“Sobered you up," I said. “You're welcome.”

“But I enjoyed having my mind all fuzzy," she whined as she rubbed her forehead, apparently not entirely sober quite yet. “So, what do we do now?”

“What do you think?" I asked. “We're going to sit here and talk until we're tired enough to fall asleep.”

“I suppose," she said. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“How the fuck would I know?" I said. “What about you?”

She stayed quiet for a good long while, long enough to make me think she wasn't going to say anything.

I sat down on the bed, an arm's length away from her, and waited for her to speak up.

“When those adventurers asked for my name you called me Aithia," Athena said eventually.

“I did," I said. It was one of her titles. It meant 'diver' in the old tongue, referring to her obsession with birds of prey, particularly owls. It was also the title she'd always been referred to back in Athena's Grove. And from the uncomfortable look she gave me she clearly remembered it just as well as I did.

“I do regret what happened to your hometown, you know?" she said, in a very quiet voice.

“They were my neighbors," I said, clenching my fists. “My friends and my family. There was a girl there I thought I would marry one day. And they're all dead. And when I begged for your help to avenge them you ignored me, then sent some self-righteous idiot out in my stead.”

She looked away, clearly uncomfortable.

We stayed quiet for a long while and then I sighed and decided to just go for it. “Well, since we're stuck here I guess I might as well ask. Why do you hate me so much?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You mean other than desecrating multiple magic items I'd personally blessed and insulting me every time we've met?”

I rolled my eyes. “That's not what I meant. I mean, back when I asked for your help, all those years ago. I was never the most devout person in the village but I'd never been a blasphemer either. I worshiped you as much as anyone else. So why did you snub me? Why did all of you snub me?”

She sighed, harder than I'd ever heard a woman sigh. “I suppose I owe you an explanation at this point. But in exchange I want something.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Those techniques you've been using," she said. “I want to know what they are and how they work. I watched when you swung your mace at that spider's legs. For an instant your Strength stat shot up by an order of magnitude.”

“My Strength... stat?" I asked. “What does that mean?”

She sighed. “Alright, this is going to take a while to explain but it's part of why I never chose you.”

I was suddenly completely focused on her.

“Us gods see mortals like you differently," she began.

“As insignificant worms?" I asked.

“Oh hush," she said. “When we look at a mortal we don't just see the people, we also see their stats. Vitality. Endurance. Strength. Dexterity. Faith. Intelligence. Luck. All neatly quantified. Each stat has a clear number as well as a letter rating their growth potential.”

I frowned at her. “What does that mean?”

“Let us take two people, both with 50 points of Strength, a fairly decent number. One of them has A-rank potential and the other has D-rank potential. If both of them did the exact same training the A-ranked one would see much faster results. By the time he reaches 100 points of Strength the other would still be at 60. Have you ever wondered why so many Chosen Ones are so... physically unimposing?”

I blinked. I had. A ton of them were scrawny prettyboys without even a hint of strength to back up their arrogant attitude. And it was precisely those Chosen Ones who so often ended up dying due to their overconfidence. I nodded at her.

“They are chosen not because their stats are so high but because their growth potential is so enormous," she said. “And being chosen increases that growth potential even further. We tell them to travel the lands and right wrongs on the way to their destination so that they grow powerful on the way but most of them assume being chosen makes them invincible and so they tend to get killed quite pathetically.”

“That... makes a lot of sense," I said. “So what are you saying? My stats are fine but my potential for growth is terrible?”

She shook her head. “It's not that simple. Your stats are considered sub-optimal.”

I frowned at her.

She sighed. “Let's go through these one by one. Your Vitality isn't all that good. You must know that. You can't really take a hit. You're good at not getting hit but when you do you immediately need a healer.”

I opened my mouth to retort but then closed it again. She wasn't wrong.

“You've gotten hit so much that despite your low potential your Vitality isn't terrible anymore but it's still not great. Your Endurance meanwhile is great. It takes a lot to tire you out.”

I smirked at her.

“Yes, you can apparently handle four women without tiring. That's the result of great growth potential and constant exercise. Now, your Strength and Dexterity are both good. They have good potential, a B in Strength and a B+ in Dexterity, and you've been training both of them quite well. Then we come to your Faith, which is absolutely horrendous.”

“Wow," I said. “I wonder why that might fucking be.”

She flinched a little. “It doesn't matter anyway. Faith is mostly important for miracles, as it determines how good of a conduit you are for the god's power. Anyway, now we get to the first problem. Your Intelligence is too high.”

“You want your Chosen Ones to be stupid or something?" I asked with a sneer.

“No," she protested. “The main use of intelligence is that it makes a mage's spells stronger, except you don't have any magic potential, so for you Intelligence does nothing but make you smarter. Most of the gods see it as a waste when someone without magic potential has high Intelligence. They think that potential would be more useful elsewhere. I'm a goddess of wisdom so I have a slightly different outlook on it than the others. But that brings us to your Luck stat.”

“Yeah," I said. “I know. It's fucking terrible.”

“You can be such a conceited ass sometimes," she hissed.

I blinked.

“Felix, your Luck stat is sky-high," she said slowly, as if talking to an idiot.

I blinked again. “W-what?”

“Have you truly never noticed this?" she asked, baffled. “You walk into a store and immediately find what you're looking for. You don't trip. You just happen to strike enemies right in weakspots you didn't even know they had. You always seem to know when an attack is headed your way, far beyond what any type of combat instinct would explain.”

I stared at her. She wasn't wrong.

But she clearly wasn't done yet. “Your meeting with Syr was a fluke, a one-in-a-million coincidence, and yet it happened. When you met Yume the two of you happened to get separated from the rest of the group, giving you all the time you needed to win her trust. When Queen Emilia asked you to investigate her dungeon she sent you along with precisely the one of her children who was desperate to be loved.”

“You're making it sound as if my Luck stat is to thank for all the amazing women in my life," I said.

“You overestimate the extent of the Luck stat's influence," she said. “Your Luck stat didn't make them fall for you, it just created coincidences that let you meet all of them under favorable circumstances. But I will admit that most men with harems full of willing women do have high Luck stats.”

I swallowed hard. Could all of this be true? “So, how high is my Luck stat, then?”

“Do you know of Great Hero Albrecht?" she asked.

“Of course," I said.

“He was famous for his prodigious Strength," she said. “At the height of his power his Strength was at 473, enough to wrestle minotaurs to the ground. Before he came along all of us gods had assumed that 400 was the highest value a human could have in any one stat.”

I nodded. I'd seen the statues of Albrecht with his ridiculously massive sword so I could believe his Strength stat being monstrous.

“Your Luck stat is 729, Felix," she said, quiet but insistent. “Your growth potential in it is S+. We assumed 500 was the stat cap for all mortals and that S was the highest possible ranking. Your Luck stat shattered all our estimations.”

“But shouldn't that be a good thing?" I asked. “So I have superhuman Luck. Shouldn't that make me a perfect candidate for being a Chosen One?”

She shook her head. “Us gods have a complicated relationship with the Luck stat. Most of us don't take it seriously. Luck can slightly nudge the odds, any odds, to be more favorable. For an ordinarily lucky person that might mean something fortunate happens to them once a day. But us gods can already nudge probability for our worshipers, make good fortune come to them. Except someone with high Luck wouldn't even appreciate this good fortune because their own Luck stat does the same thing.”

I crossed my arms and snorted.

“Yeah, I'm sure you find it funny," she said. “But between your high Luck and low Faith a god could do any amount of nudging for you and you wouldn't even notice. In fact, your Luck is so ridiculously high that it borders on reality manipulation. Long shots are practically certainties for you.”

“So the reason no god ever chose me was because I, what, wouldn't be appreciative enough of it?" I asked.

“Essentially," she said, her cheeks turning red. “I... will admit that our decision might have been too rash. You have become a Great Hero in all but name. And you didn't do it in spite of us ignoring you, you did it because we ignored you. Had a god chosen you then you might have avenged your hometown and then gone back to being a tailor.”

“I fucking hope you aren't going to claim credit for what I've achieved," I growled.

“Not at all," she said. “I just want you to understand that the Fates sometimes work in mysterious ways. You ended up becoming a Great Hero to spite the gods. And then I, the one who spurned you the most, ended up having to beg for your help.”

I let out a rueful chuckle. “They do have a sense of humor, don't they? So, what about the others?”

“The others?”

“Alisha, Selene, Yume, Anna," I said. “What are their stats like?”

Athena sighed. “You're really making me work for the answers I want, aren't you?" she muttered. “Very well. Alisha has tremendous Intelligence and Faith while her physical stats are rather low. She technically has good potential in Dexterity but she has no reason to exercise it so it stays low.”

I smiled. Yeah, that sounded about right.

Athena continued: “Selene is a prodigy. Freya chose very well with her. None of her stats have a lower growth potential than B rank, with an A+ in Vitality and Strength. However, ever since she finished her quest she has had a Broken Pedestal effect applied to her.”

I frowned. “What's that mean?”

“Her Faith is cut in half," she said. “What happened during her quest shook her Faith deeply.”

“That doesn't make any sense," I said. “If what you said is true then her miracles should be weaker, but if anything they've grown in severity ever since she stopped being a Chosen One.”

Athena gave a rueful smile. “The moment she chose to use the miracles Freya gave her it triggered a class change to paladin, which gave her a massive boost in Faith, enough to make up for the debuff and then some.”

“So you're saying that if we got rid of this effect her miracles would grow even stronger?" I asked.

“Yes," she said. “But don't be too hasty with that.”

I frowned at her.

“Broken Pedestal comes with a positive component," she said. “In exchange for the lowered Faith her growth potential in all other stats is enhanced. But unfortunately it's almost cured since she has almost forgiven Freya. It only needs a little push and she'll lose the effect. You might want to push her to train a lot before that happens.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I will.”

“As for Princess Annabella," Athena began, “she has great stats all around. Part of it is the Royal Born trait giving her enhanced potential in all stats. All in all her potential is slightly lower than Selene's but she's had much more time to develop her stats so except for Strength and Vitality they're all higher than Selene's. Her standout stats are Dexterity and Intelligence.”

I nodded. “She is an archer and an herbalist, after all.”

Athena nodded. “Now, Yume. Her growth potential is a little low but that is simply because she is long-lived. Her stats grow slower because she has so much more time to develop them. But she still has sky-high Endurance, great Dexterity and high Intelligence. Her Strength and Vitality are rather terrible, though.”

I nodded. “She makes up for that with her Qi techniques.”

“Her what?" Athena asked.

“The techniques you were asking about," I said.

“Right," she said. “I do believe I've earned that explanation now.”

I sighed. My head was spinning after everything she'd just told me but I did owe her for telling me all of this. I got up off the bed and pulled a sword from my bag of holding. It wasn't Helios Edge as I didn't want to risk setting the inn on fire but it was still a proper blade.

“Watch closely," I told her and then drew on the elixir sea deep inside me. These days a simple Qi Burst was so easy for me to use that I could do it in the blink of an eye. Yume had once told me that once I mastered it I could use the technique on every one of my swings without breaking stride and I was pretty much at that point already, but for Athena's sake I did it as slowly as I could without messing up, letting her see exactly what I was doing. When I had the power drawn all the way to the tip of my blade I thrust forward, creating enough wind pressure to blow her hair back and make the window rattle in its frame.

“Quintessence..." Athena whispered in utter shock.

“Quint... what?" I asked.

“Quintessence," she repeated. “Life force, the power that makes you an individual. I've never seen anyone just draw that power up from inside and use it to fuel their fighting prowess. Please show me again.” Her speech was getting more rushed and she was breathing harder.

“Are you alright?" I asked.

“Yes, of course," she said, her tongue almost tripping over the words she was speaking so fast. “Please, hurry.”

I frowned. “What's going on?" I asked. “You aren't acting like yourself.”

She blinked, then a blush crept up on her cheeks. “I'm a goddess of wisdom," she said. “Whenever I find something I don't know I want to learn all about it. So please.”

“I'm not showing you the entire technique," I said and she looked incredibly disappointed. “At least not right now. I'd like to actually get some sleep tonight and that won't happen when I have to watch you meditate for hours. At least that's the way Yume taught it to me. Essentially you feel out the well of life force inside someone who can already manipulate it. Once you know how it's supposed to feel you search the well of life force within yourself. And once you have that you begin to manipulate it.” Before she could comment I demonstrated the technique again, letting her see exactly what I was doing.

She reached out tentatively with one hand but then stopped herself. “May I... may I touch you, to see what the power feels like?”

I waited just long enough to let her know I was considering my answer before I nodded, put the sword away, and sat back down on the bed with my legs crossed. “I'm going to cycle the power through my body. Try to feel the flow of power.”

She nodded eagerly and placed a hand on my arm. I rolled my eyes at her before I grabbed her hand and placed it on my middle dantian instead, then closed my eyes. I could feel her hand tracing the lines of my muscles as it rested on my chest but decided not to say anything about it, chalking it up to her recent inebriation. Instead I cycled the Qi through my body, slowly sinking into the exercise, meditating as I let my elixir sea rush through my body, touching every nook and cranny with the power inside me.

“Unbelievable," Athena whispered. “I never knew this power could be so freely manipulated. And the effects you can create with it... What can it do other than enhancing your Strength?”

I calmed the roiling ocean I'd stirred up within myself and opened my eyes to see her hand still resting on my dantian, on my chest. She made no effort to pull it away.

“According to Yume there are more Qi techniques than one could learn in a lifetime," I told her. “But so far I can enhance my strikes, project them outward and multiply them. I can also enhance my movements, shift my position in an instant and heal others and myself.” She'd also taught me the Qi Blast, the first Qi technique she'd ever shown me, but while it was impressive to look at it was so horribly inefficient that I would never use it aside from trying to impress people with it. A Qi Blast had less effect than a Qi Burst channeled through Helios Edge but was an order of magnitude more exhausting to use.

“And where did Yume learn it?" Athena asked.

“She learned it back in her homeland," I said. “Apparently these techniques are common knowledge in the southern realms. She was baffled when she arrived here and nobody was using Qi.”

“An entire realm with power over quintessence..." Athena whispered. “And we've only just begun to learn about it.”

I smirked, wondering how she would react if she found out that the royal family had known about Qi for at least two generations.

“What are you smiling about?" she asked.

“Just reflecting on the irony," I said. “My stats or whatever were so useless that no god wanted me and now I find myself in a position where the goddess of wisdom is hanging on my every word because I know something she doesn't.”

She glared at me. “Despite everything you're still an ass, Tailor.”

I smiled. “That reminds me. You told me why the gods spurned me. I can't say I agree with your reasoning but it at least makes sense in a twisted way.”

She blinked.

“However," I continued, “what doesn't make sense is the way you treated me.”

“How so?" she asked.

“Why were you so obsessed with me?" I asked. “After every single quest you came to insult me, knowing I'd insult you right back.”

She opened her mouth but then shut it again, pressing her lips tightly together.

“I mean, yeah, you were pissed that I kept fighting Dark Lords despite not being a Chosen One," I said. “I get that. But at some point you must have realized that your behavior wasn't going to sway my course of action. A normal person would have given it a rest. But you didn't. For almost a decade you came to argue with me every few months.”

She looked a bit nervous and I thought I saw a drop of sweat trickling down her temple.

I decided to make light of the situation and said: “If I didn't know any better I'd think you get off on being insulted and mistreated. Did you touch yourself after our encounters?”

I had expected her to slap me for that. Honestly I deserved a slap for a comment like that. But the slap didn't come.

Instead, a blush began to radiate out from her cheeks and moments later the goddess of wisdom was beet-red from her hairline all the way down to her cleavage.