Chapter 69: The Demonic Werewolves and the Medusas (1/2)

The legend of Medusa was a tale that had gone through multiple retellings and had a ton of different versions floating around.

One such version claimed that she was a priestess of Athena who, due to her beauty, caught the fancy of Poseidon. Poseidon visited her in Athena’s shrine and raped her. Having been raped, her body was no longer pure and was viewed by Athena as being a taint on the shrine. And so as punishment, she was turned into a snake demon.

Some claimed that Athena was unable to punish Poseidon and so ended up venting her anger on Medusa…

Another version claimed that she was in a relationship with Poseidon despite being a priestess and was punished because of that. There’s another retelling that said that Medusa was extremely narcissistic and even had the gall to claim that she was more beautiful than Athena and so she got punished for that…

There was even a version that claimed that she was actually a clone of Athena…the Greek mythology is just so chaotic, completely unlike our Chinese legends. There was only one Yellow Emperor and that was Xuanyuan. There’s no instance of his legend being cloned like what happened to Zeus and Jupiter.

(In roman mythology, their king of gods was Jupiter who was also Zeus in the Greek mythology. There was a saying that goes: Rome conquered Greece with its might but Greece conquered Rome with its culture.)

When I first encountered the Medusas in this world, I found, to my surprise, that they had no connection to the legend of Athena at all. In a sense, it was impossible for them to have a connection anyway.

REPORT AD

————-<>

(In order not to forget how to write in Chinese, Mo Ke would write down his musings from time to time in a diary of sorts. This diary contained some of the thoughts he had when he was free.)

———————————————————————————————————————

“Master, can I ride my hellhound into battle?”

Big 5 stood anxiously at the side with his hellhound as I went about crafting a new set of equipment for him.

“You wish to fight while riding him?”

Due to his evolution, his body had grown bigger, making it awkward for him to ride his hellhound. In the past, the pair were a perfect match for each other proportion wise but now, his feet nearly touched the ground as they rode along, creating an extremely awkward looking sight.

I guess it wasn’t strange of him to suggest such a thing. Furthermore, I originally had the intention of creating a cavalry unit but I ended up giving up on that idea since I didn’t know how to create a saddle and reins. Since he took the initiative to ask me, I guess there’s no harm in trying.

Seeing that I had no intention of rejecting him, his enthusiasm grew even stronger. As he stared at me with longing eyes, he answered, “Yes Master, I wish to ride him into battle, I feel that it makes me look cool.”

REPORT AD

“I have no objection to you being a cavalryman but I have no way to secure you to his back. If you aren’t secured to him, it’s highly likely that you will fall off his back. Plus, I can’t teach you how to fight so you have to figure it out step by step. All I can do for you is craft a weapon.”

Even after saying all that, the enthusiasm on his face didn’t dim a bit. Judging by that, he probably already came to terms with these issues. Even so, I asked him one last time, “Don’t forget that you will be the only person in the cavalry unit for now. Before the other devils get the approval of the hellhounds, you won’t have any subordinates to command. Are you fine with that?”

“Master, I’ve already made up my mind, please allow me to do so.”

“Alright, I understand. If you’re able to prove yourself in the coming battles, I will support you in creating your own hellhound cavalry unit.” I’ve already received his resolve, all that’s left for me to do as his master was to support him with a handcrafted weapon.

Because I didn’t know how to create a crossbow, I ended up making a variant of the Mo sabre that was significantly shorter at just two meters in length.

Truth be told, this was merely an experiment to me, one that was unlikely to succeed. After all, the issue of the saddles was still up in the air, until that was resolved, the future of our cavalry unit seemed bleak.

As for Big 5, his thinking was just as innocent as always. Upon receiving his own custom short Mo sabre, his face immediately broke into a silly grin.

Thankfully, the hellhound’s weight bearing abilities were still pretty decent. Even while carrying the slightly enlarged Big 5, he still didn’t lose much speed. The only issue was the bumpiness of the ride.

REPORT AD

Big 5 had to use his legs to support himself from time to time in order to maintain his balance, creating an extremely awkward scene. Furthermore, this style of riding was a heavy burden on the hellhound’s fatigue; are dogs even suited to being mounts?

The summoning of the skeleton archers proceeded as smoothly as projected. Within the first day, I managed to summon 15 archers. However, they didn’t seem to work out as well as I would hope. Against the wandering undead, they were significantly less effective.

I was only able to command them to fire in a general area, as for targeted shots, it was simply impossible. In other words, their archery wasn’t that good.

This became a huge problem when fighting the undead as their only weak point was their head. These skeleton archers had to fire directly at the skull of the undead in order to damage the soul flames within…this was the equivalent of asking someone who didn’t know how to play basketball to make a three pointer shot right off the bat.

So far our journey today was really smooth; we had zero casualties despite our battles. While we didn’t acquire any meat for the half-orcs, they were still able to feed on the meat stored up from yesterday so they didn’t have to starve.