The air of Mount Olympus carried a faint frequency of dense energy that curled through the surrounding like mist, enhancing the ethereal beauty of its halls.
The space around suddenly rippled, then...
RIIIIPPP
The grating sound of tearing fabric echoed through the atmosphere, as though on a hollow mountain, as the space before the golden, majestic doors of the Olympian throne room tore like, well... fabric.
From the tear in space, a woman stepped out. Her presence enough to cause wars between races, and tear galaxies apart with war and bloodshed.
Behind her, Nolan stumbled along before falling to his hands and knees as his insides twisted with nausea.
His vision swam inside his head, and a constant ringing filled his ears, disrupting his balance.
He struggled with labored breathing for a few moments before everything slowly began to calm down.
"Hah... Hah... Fuck!" He cursed between gasps, raising an arm to wipe the acidic dribble from his lips with his sleeve.
"Get up."
His eyes flicked up at the sound of her voice, as he truly seemed to take in her appearance for the first time.
Her skin was white as snow. Pale and porcelain, with beautiful black tattoo markings on different parts of her body.
But what was really the most captivating thing about her was the third vertical eye on her forehead.
However, as captivating as her beauty was, it didn't stop the bubbling rise of anger and irritation from his pits of his being.
Did these goddesses think he was a plaything? One moment he was on Earth, and then, through whatever means, that pathetic excuse of an author, who also happened to be the Vassal of one of these goddesses, had sent him here.
And right after arriving here, it was one moment of confusion and vertigo after another.
He wasn't a man with a long rope of patience or temper in the first place, but he believed even a monk with a single atom of self-worth would lose their patience being dragged and tossed around like this.
He had only opened his mouth to lash out when his head snapped to the side, staring at the gate as though he could see through it.
Hecate who was observing the mortal boy before her with an air of indifference, couldn't help but narrow her eyes in shock, as her heart thundered dangerously in her chest.
'What a terrifying perception,' she thought, her eyes boring into him as though trying to poke a hole into his skull with her gaze alone.
It had to be known that the majestic doors of the throne hall carried divine runes that could block out the senses of divine beings, and only the truly powerful ones with special techniques could even hope to bypass them. And even if they managed to peer through, then surely their peeking would be detected.
Yet this mortal...
Nolan, on the other hand, was feeling the claws of death tightening around his heart or, in this case, brain, with each passing second.
There was a secret about Nolan that he had never told anyone in his life, and that was the fact that he was what people would call an ESPER in fiction and conspiracy theories.
He had an uncanny passive ability that spanned a range of about 15 meters in radius around him, allowing him to perceive every living being within that range as though they were standing before him.
He could "see" them without his eyes, hear them without his ears, "feel" them without his skin, smell them without his nose.
It was as though his five senses occupied the entirety of that 15 meters, though it only registered living beings. It had been something he had since he knew himself, something perhaps he had been born with, but of course he couldn't know since he never knew his parents.
The ability had been both a blessing and a curse, as while it gave him extraordinary perception, it had systematically and violently exposed him to reality from an early age, forcing him to mature way before he had any business knowing what maturity was.
That, and the fact that he couldn't turn it off, or retract it. Though he had learnt to somewhat ignore the sensory input as it could be overwhelming at times.
It also came with extra quirks like controlling his blood in his body to some degree.
At this moment however, he couldn't ignore the sensory information his ability was feeding back to his brain no matter how he tried.
Between the large golden doors, he could "see" them looking at him—gods, majestic and terrifying in all their splendor. The weight of their existence, able to shake stars and bend space.
And of course they had noticed his peering senses, looking at him with eyes that ranged from bewilderment, amusement and surprise, to even some level of hostility for his impudence.
Feeling their gaze "resting" on him, it felt as though the pressure of their existences multiplied even further.
Veins throbbed on his forehead, looking like they might burst at any second, and his eyes were already completely bloodshot.
His brain throbbed from insurmountable pressure, as though it were the anvil upon which Hephaestus's hammer forged divine arms, his heart running ten miles a second.
'What level of affinity for the soul and aether is this?' Hecate questioned herself, her thoughts churning like gears in her mind.
Unlike the other Olympians who were watching his plight with interest for different reasons, as the goddess of magic, witchcraft, knowledge, and the threshold, she could tell this was beyond normal, even for a soul like his.
She had sensed his soul—a sole singularity soul—which had made her trespass into the domain of the Norse, to claim him for herself. But this...
Even then, she made no move to help as while she had better knowledge than the other gods who were watching out of entertainment, she was also curious to know what would happen.
Nolan, meanwhile shook like a leaf, his body feeling like it blow up in any second and then...
POP!