Chapter 54: 50: Pots, Bowls, Ladles, and Basins, Submit to Me!
"You make it sound so easy, but if you really could let go, would you need to squat in Knossos City all day long?"
Athena gave Hestia across from her an unimpressed look, bluntly exposing her aunt\'s insincerity.
The Goddess of the Hearth\'s cheeks turned slightly red upon hearing this, and she stubbornly argued with her neck stuck out.
"I just like the food here, like the atmosphere of life here!"
"Yes, yes, right…"
Athena responded insincerely, her gaze brimming with mockery.
Under her niece\'s smiling gaze, the increasingly embarrassed Hestia\'s face flushed, and she rose angrily to shoo her away.
"Go on, get, don\'t bother me if there\'s nothing important!"
"Fine, fine, I\'m leaving, okay?"
Athena raised her hands in surrender, got up from her seat, and beckoned Nike in the backyard to withdraw as well.
However, at the moment when the maid and her mistress stepped out the doorway, a certain Goddess of Wisdom casually looked back, her lips curling up.
"But just so we\'re clear, this time, you can\'t blame me for it."
"Huh?"
Hearing this nonsensical remark, Hestia was taken aback.
But before she could react, the ground beneath her feet shook violently, a torrent of wild magic tide surging and boiling.
"Boom!"
In an instant, accompanied by a thunderclap out of the blue, the entire backyard erupted in flying grass, falling branches and leaves, with dense green mud spots dropping like rain.
Hestia turned stiffly, staring blankly at her nursery that had been dug three feet deep and at the tall figure in the middle of the yard whose entire body was swirling with a fierce red blood aura.
"My vegetable garden... my flowers... I shouldn\'t have planted them…" Find adventures at m v lem|p-yr
The Goddess of the Hearth\'s gaze was hollow, she murmured to herself, her voice appearing to carry a hint of a sob.
Seeing Hestia\'s expression of losing the will to live, Luo En, as the one who caused the mess, hurriedly raised his hands in surrender, steeling himself as he made promises.
"Wait! I\'ll compensate! Isn\'t it enough that I\'ll compensate for everything?"
Hearing someone would cover the losses, the Goddess of the Hearth\'s face cleared up, and she fiercely stretched out two pale fingers.
"Not enough! I want twice the compensation!"
"Okay, whatever you say."
Luo En agreed hastily, pulling a face as he signed the agreement, comforting himself in his heart.
Twice the amount it is then, since I was at fault to begin with, let\'s consider it indirect compensation for the hospitality and care this Goddess of the Hearth had provided them.
Better to exert a bit of effort than to directly fall out with a Chief God who rarely gets close to humans.
~~
Time flies, several months whizz by.
At dawn, just as Crete Island was barely lit, residents of the Knossos Royal City started opening their doors one after another, lighting their stoves to prepare the morning meal.
The clatter of pots and pans and the commotion of crowing roosters and barking dogs slowly awakened the underlying bustle of the city.
"Zeus, go to hell!"
Luo En, waking up as usual, flipped his middle finger as a "blessing" to his divine father.
A day in the life begins with blasphemy.
And soon after, that irreverent mortal raised his hand to summon the twelve-sided die from within, rolling a number.
Twelve? Hermes\'s blessing?
The luck for today is not bad.
Luo En muttered to himself, then sat up from the bed, lazily stretching his limbs.
Next to him, the twelve-sided die spinning aimlessly drew out a stream of light-blue divine energy from the invisible air, quietly flowing into the host\'s body.
Luo En closed his eyes and felt the slight agility within his flesh and blood, as well as the faintly increased responsiveness of his limbs, and he couldn\'t help but emit a comfortable moan.
After a moment, that wonderful experience gradually faded, and he opened his eyes, sincerely praising the large family of relatives on Mount Olympus.
Awesome! The currency explosion by the Twelve Olympians is simply delightful!
Hermes\' divine blessing this time seemed to be geared toward enhancing the agility aspect of physical reaction speed.
Probably about a 3% improvement?
A benefit you can get for a dirty word, what a steal!
Luo En glanced at the Twelve-Sided Die on the bedside, which had automatically dissipated into streams of light, and he caressed the gradually disappearing Wheel of Hecate on his chest, even beginning to miss the sensation of being duped into starting that thing.
After several months of getting used to it, he had further figured out some patterns of the Dice of Chance.
First, the stuff in the friendship pool could definitely include useful items like the Wings of Icarus, which could play a significant role in certain situations, so it couldn\'t all be trash.
The main reason he hadn\'t fished out any good items was probably because the Daily Chapter was too easy.
After all, low risk corresponds to low gain, which is only fair.
Both inevitability and chance tend to follow this rule.
However, when occurrences are frequent enough, the advantage of chance becomes apparent.
—It really could burst forth with great items.
For example, obtaining divine blessings and baptisms corresponding to numbers from deities.
—The indomitable fighting will of Ares, the life healing of the Agriculture God, the water affinity of the God of the Sea, the intuition of Apollo, the agility and speed of Hermes...
These could all potentially be acquired from the opportunities of chance after desecrating the Twelve Chief Gods of inevitability.
Of course, the probability was low.
So far, Luo En, having used up his accumulated 100 pulls, had only managed to draw Hermes once, Ares twice, Apollo once, and Hestia once from the common pool.
Moreover, the enhancements brought by these divine baptisms were present, but the magnitude wouldn\'t be great.
As the Twelve Olympians\' jurisdictions span more than one domain, there was also great randomness.
Among them, the divine baptism given by Hestia to him was the most difficult to hold back.
Perhaps because of the jurisdiction of the Goddess of the Hearth, that baptism actually improved his control over kitchen utensils and the cooking of dishes...
Luo En really wanted to complain, expecting him to face off against an opponent in a life-or-death battle, then dash into the kitchen with a dish.
—Pots and pans, submit to me?
The imagery was too beautiful; he dared not even imagine it.
However, it was important to obtain decent benefits from the common pool, but what truly occupied Luo En\'s attention was that the Twelve-Sided Die could actually secretly extract the divinity of the Twelve Olympians bestowed by fate and pour it into his body.
This thing was a bit too overpowered, wasn\'t it?
And a certain speculation in his heart seemed to have been confirmed as a result.
—Using the variable of chance to pry open the inevitability of fate, ultimately toppling the foundation of the gods.
Perhaps, that was the true function of the "dice."
Luo En\'s gaze flickered with deep thought.
High risk, high reward.
To put down such a hefty stake, it seems that his "angel investor" had quite a lot he wanted to achieve.
But soon, he scoffed and shook his head.
Forget it, since he had confirmed this path could shake the divine right of fate, he\'d best not think about these things for now.
He was merely a pawn crossing the river at this point, nowhere near sitting at the gambling table with the power to go all-in deciding life and death.
There was no rush; he\'d bet when he had amassed enough capital.
So, today\'s task was...
Luo En took a deep breath, solemnly bidding farewell to the warm comforter, got up to go downstairs, and wielding a hoe, he rushed toward the nursery in the backyard.
—Digging holes, planting fields!