Some of the people in the crowd marveled inwardly: the last time Agamemnon came, the king had a face like thunder the whole time.
No one had ever seen him smile this brightly!!
And that was the king of Mycenae!
The people knew their king had a special background as the son of the great hero Heracles, so even toward the king of Mycenae, the dominant power over all of Greece, he could afford to show displeasure and give no face.
But by that same logic, someone who received this much favor from the king would have to be of far nobler standing, or close enough to the king's family to warrant such warmth.
Did this not only confirm further his identity as a descendant of the Argo heroes?
If Telephus knew what his people were thinking at that moment, he would absolutely have screamed in protest.
Even being the son of the great hero Heracles did not make him Heracles himself.
He had a fairly clear sense of his own weight.
As for not giving the Mycenae king any face and walking around with a sour expression, he had a perfectly good explanation for that.
Isn't it obvious?!
Someone just finished ransacking your country, took everything, then said a casual "sorry" without offering a thing in return, dusted off their hands, and walked away.
Could you have given them a pleasant face?
If his strength allowed it, Telephus would have put a sword through Agamemnon right then and there.
Unfortunately, he knew his own limits. He had inherited his father's wisdom, but not his father's martial might.
It was not that he did not want revenge.
It's just that he simply could not win.
And so, with him invited into the palace by Telephus, Night was received with the highest possible hospitality.
Very soon the two were having a thoroughly enjoyable conversation over drinks.
Well, there was just the matter of how Telephus could not remember a single one of the anecdotes he brought up from time to time, about how his grandfather got along so well with certain other heroes on the Argo and what amusing things they did together.
Telephus didn't remember any of them... but he didn't care too much, just kept agreeing...
He felt a little awkward.
Those things happened so long ago, and his father never went into such fine detail.
Who in the world would know everything that happened on the Argo back then?
And the stories Night brought up were carefully chosen to be trivial, everyday, almost entirely inconsequential details.
All things that could not be verified.
Yet the way he spoke was completely natural, even vivid and lifelike.
If the stories were made up, they were far too detailed for that to be the case. (Night: If Norse mythology does not interest you, the Celtic mythology and Egyptian mythology packages are also available.)
It was definitely not something improvised on the spot, yet just like the mental trap the people had fallen into earlier,
Going to all that trouble and spending so much money on something that brought no real benefit beyond a slight boost in reputation, there was simply no reason to deceive anyone over something like this.
And the king reasoned that since the people had already confirmed Night's identity and rallied behind him voluntarily, it was only natural to believe him as well.
The people saw the king come out to greet him and took that as automatic confirmation.
And whenever someone later thought to look into the legend of the Argo hero in question,
Everyone who was part of this experience, the driver, the people from the slums, and even ordinary citizens, would voluntarily spread the story and use it as their own talking point.
This kind of deception built on inertia of thought became harder and harder to detect the longer time passed.
It was safe to say that by this point, the plan was already more than half successful.
Apollo, the sun god, and Artemis, the moon goddess, who witnessed almost the entire process, fell into a silent, mysterious contemplation.
This actually worked?
Were those mortals all complete fools?
The whole sequence of moves, as long as they were bold, careful, and calm enough, could in theory be replicated by almost anyone.
The success rate just would not be as high.
The handful of weak points that did exist were completely covered by Night's composure and the image projected by his looks, bearing, and presence.
Especially the story he improvised about the hero Kratos Lista.
Both gods found it extremely interesting.
Things like encountering the mysterious Valkyrie Brunhilde in Iceland, obtaining a divine artifact there, and then using it on another island to slay the dragon Fafnir, who guarded a vast hoard of gold.
Told with such conviction and detail that it was honestly more captivating than most hero stories circulating in Greece right now.
For the gods of Greece, who were collectively obsessed with heroes, a story this compelling, if it turned out to be fabricated, would be quite the shame.
Provided, of course, that Apollo and the others had not heard the other version of Kratos's adventures, the one involving deicide.
"Is there really a Valkyrie named Brunhilde? Since it was an island in the ocean, could she be one of Poseidon's sea nymphs?"
"Hmm, possibly a goddess under one of the other ancient sea deities."
Apollo and Artemis were mulling it over.
Nominally, Greece was divided among the three brothers Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon, three divine kings, each ruling the sky, the underworld, and the sea, respectively.
But in reality, setting aside the sky,
Of the other two major regions, Poseidon could only control about one-third of the Greek seas.
There was Oceanus, the god of the seas among the twelve Titan gods who once ruled the world in the previous age, and vast regions under the dominion of powerful beings like Leviathan, creatures so mighty that even the gods held them in wariness.
And the underworld was the same.
Beyond the surface layers of Hades lay deeper regions that not even the gods could trespass: the abyss that was the very body of the primordial god Tartarus.
The defeated rulers of the previous divine war, led by Uranus the sky king, along with many Titan gods, were all imprisoned there.
The Olympian gods nominally ruled Greece, but how many gods actually existed in Greece was something even the twelve principal gods could not fully account for.
Quite a few ancient beings who survived from earlier ages were no weaker than them.
This Brunhilde might well be a force under one of those ancient factions.
When a story was told so vividly that even the sun god Apollo and moon goddess Artemis, who witnessed the entire thing from the outside looking in, began to doubt and almost believe it,
Telephus, who was right in the middle of it all, had already believed at least eighty percent.
More importantly, he could not think of any reason someone would go to the trouble of fabricating such an impressive epic just to deceive him.
In between, Night also gave a demonstration of his musical talent, and that voice, a match for the Muses themselves, only won Telephus over further.
The atmosphere was excellent, and the timing looked just about right.
So, Night steered the conversation toward the recent invasion of the Mysian coast by the Greek alliance.
After arriving on the island, he had heard about the atrocities here from the citizens, and Telephus's mood darkened immediately.
When Telephus naturally began to vent a little, Griffith played a mournful song on the lyre for the heroes who fell in that battle.
"It is hard to imagine a group of heroes marching under the banner of justice while doing things worse than pirates and bandits.
They did not even bother to confirm whether the shore they were landing on was actually their target before attacking."
"I do not believe a group of men with even a shred of righteousness in their hearts could make such a base mistake.
And more absurdly, many of their fathers once sailed that very ship of heroes, the Argo."
In this moment Night seemed to be indignant on Telephus's behalf; comforting him on one hand, his words about the Greek alliance disregarding old bonds and raising their swords against a fellow hero's descendant immediately struck a chord with Telephus.
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