Chapter 67
The place we arrived at was an old-fashioned tailor shop.
It had the vintage atmosphere of a movie about secret agents — classical music played softly in the background.
When I Su-yeon Lee arrived at the tailor shop where violin strains floated through the air, she asked me.
“Is there something here that can get Fenrir?”
She lowered her voice extremely when she said Fenrir’s name.
“Yes. It’s here.”
“But this is just an ordinary tailor shop. It doesn’t look like a god runs it or anything….”
She glanced up at the sign.
<Tailor>
A sign that simply described the shop’s purpose, with no embellishment.
It was practical to the point of seeming indifferent.
“Are you sure something amazing we need to get Fenrir could really be here?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
And right now the sign seemed wildly out of place.
Su-yeon raised her head and looked at the surrounding stores.
<Hermes Logistics Service>
<Heimdall’s Home TV — Keep your pet safe, always.>
<Jecheon Greatness, My child has changed.>
<Seté’s Café — Temptations of the Devil>
Not only were gods’ names plastered everywhere, some stores used gods’ symbols or even the deities themselves as models.
The shopfronts and glass walls were covered in full-body portraits of gods.
Sometimes the guild’s apostles were featured in the photos, too.
The shop vouched for its quality by invoking the god and the guild.
Advertising that the god ran the place was one way to buy trust.
It had become common sense that stores connected to gods wrapped themselves in that kind of flashy packaging.
So a shop with only three plain characters on its sign and no tagline or logo had no obvious connection to any god.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you! I’m just worried.”
That was exactly what Su-yeon meant.
She worried whether this plain-looking — or precisely because it looked plain — shop could actually possess something remarkable.
But sometimes true treasure hides in places that look ordinary at first glance.
This shop was exactly that.
A shop that hid its uniqueness behind a mask of normalcy.
“Don’t worry. You’ll see when you go inside.”
I went ahead and entered.
Within the tailor shop, where the old violin music played, the atmosphere felt like Victorian England.
“Huh? It was narrow outside but….”
— Interesting. Expansion magic, huh.
Surprised at how much larger the interior was than the exterior, Su-yeon and Jörmungandr’s voices trailed behind me as we stepped into the lobby.
At the workbench in front of the lobby sat an elderly gentleman whose white hair looked as if dusted with snow. He wore a neat gray suit and a monocle, and he was absorbed in his work.
“Excuse me….”
Just as I was about to speak to the gentleman, I put a hand on Su-yeon’s shoulder.
At least for now, we shouldn’t disturb him.
Interrupting a craftsman while he’s working is the best way to ruin a first impression.
“Wait a moment. The craftsman is currently at work.”
“…Understood.”
She read my gaze and nodded.
“Shall we sit here?”
“Make yourself comfortable. Feel free to take a look around inside for a moment.”
—I’m with Su-yeon. You’ll be a hindrance to the work you need to do.
“Whatever’s comfortable.”
While Su-yeon sat carefully in a chair in the lobby and leafed through a magazine, Jörmungandr stood watch over her.
I stared at the one-eyed tailor who continued his work without a word.
His hands, measuring and cutting, moved with clean precision.
He cut and stitched the fabric with an economy of motion—neat, efficient—quickly assembling a suit.
I surveyed the suits displayed around the shop.
Mannequins wearing wrinkle-free suits, and racks full of ready-made garments of the same designs.
They looked expensive at a glance.
The bespoke garments bore abundant traces of magic.
[Artisan’s Garment — A Rank]
[Description: A garment made by a skillful weaving artisan. Wearing it makes the body feel lighter.]
[Effect 1: The power of wind protects the wearer.]
[Effect 2: Withstands the edge of a blade.]
The lowest rank suits I saw were B, and A-rank pieces showed up pretty often.
Though the exterior gave no hint of gods or magic, the moment you opened the door you felt a mysterious power thick in the air.
The interior was unnaturally spacious compared to the outside.
Clothes imbued with magic.
I watched the old man’s wrinkled hands sew the suit.
Snip. Snip.
Even my gaze didn’t stop his hands.
He was making the suit so quickly that in less than an hour he completed a finished coat as if by magic.
“Hmm….”
He swallowed and inspected the suit here and there, his brow furrowing, then he cut the finished garment with his scissors.
Snip!
“This, either, won’t do.”
Without hesitation he cut the finished product and finally turned his attention to me—though he’d been aware of me long before.
“Oh, a customer has arrived.”
He spoke as if pretending to have only just noticed me.
That he had recognized me long ago was something I already knew.
But I didn’t call him out on it; I needed his help for now.
“Did you come for a tailor-made outfit? Or to buy one off the rack?”
As he asked, I briefly glanced at the door behind him.
[Analysis unavailable.]
[A high-grade magic has been applied.]
Horus’s eye reacted.
Of course.
“I’d like to commission an undergarment infused with the craftsman’s touch.”
At my words the old man raised his left eyebrow.
“We do not deal in underwear here,” he said.
“Then would a shirt be all right?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Does that matter? What’s important is that we understand each other.”
The old man studied me for a moment, then nodded.
“…That’s right. That’s it.”
And at that moment his voice changed.
Until then he’d sounded like a serious old man, but his voice shifted, becoming pure and clean like reeds trembling in the wind.
Along with the voice his form began to twist.
The short white hair that had been dusted with frost lengthened and turned a beautiful brown.
The suit he’d been wearing became a light, flowing green dress, and the face of the old man transformed into that of a young woman.
“Grandpa turned into a sister….”
Su-yeon gaped in surprise.
But I simply looked at the young woman.
“You’re not surprised.”
“After everything I’ve been through, this is nothing to me.”
The artisan—now a young woman who could stop people in their tracks with her beauty—bowed again.
“Pleased to meet you. Let me properly greet the customer. I am Monos.”
“Dojin.”
Monos—Greek for “alone.”
But I knew her true name.
Arachne.
The weaver.
In myth, she was the ill-fated woman who was cursed by Athena and turned into a spider.
When the myth-world merged with this one and the gods descended, Arachne descended too—not as a spider but in human form.
‘I used to live as Monos after Athena made me drink the river Lethe and erased my memories in my previous life.
Even now it’s the same—Athena did it.
Why Athena forced Arachne to drink Lethe, I don’t know.
But by killing Arachne’s memories and giving her name to spider-like monsters, she tried to erase her from this world.
‘I guess Athena liked the ability—she didn’t kill me but used me.
Maybe she wanted to take the power while erasing the memory of the human who beat her once.’
To erase someone’s memories is morally the same as killing their mind.
What keeps a person as themselves are precisely their memories.
What became of Arachne, who lost her past memories in a previous life?
She gave even her life to resurrect Athena, the one who had erased her memory.
It’s ironic—sacrificing herself for the goddess who turned her into a spider and stole her memories.’
I thought that, but didn’t say it aloud.
“Inside, Lady Athena is waiting,” she said with a smile, pointing to the inner room I had seen earlier.
That was the room where the tailor shop’s true owner, Athena, resided.
Su-yeon, who had been watching from behind, clung to me.
“You—did you say Athena just now?”
“Yes. The owner of this tailor shop.”
“Athena? She’s a god running the place—then why is it so…?”
She was asking whether the shop could really look so plain.
“I don’t know either. Ask her yourself.”
It was not Su-yeon but Arachne—no, Monos—who answered.
“I’m sorry, but Lady Athena has invited only Dojin here. No one else may enter.”
“Ah….”
Su-yeon sighed with disappointment.
Instead of protesting, she whispered in a small voice.
“Dojin, maybe….”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence for me to understand what she meant.
She was asking whether I planned to kill Athena, like with the other gods.
“Not here.”
I’d need her help for now.
“Wait here. I’ll be back soon. You stay beside Su-yeon.”
— Understood.
I didn’t mention Jörmungandr’s name on purpose.
Leaving the two in the lobby, I opened the staff-room door.
The moment I opened it, warm air embraced me.
A soft, warm breeze guided me, and the door closed by itself as I passed through.
I looked into the staff-room.
It was a completely different atmosphere from the Victorian-England-style tailor shop I’d just left.
Marble and ornamentation typical of ancient Greek buildings gleamed; the space was luxuriously decorated.
It felt akin to the famous Parthenon combined with traces of modern civilization here and there.
A beautiful blend of past and present.
“Interesting fellow.”
As I inspected the room, a voice came from inside.
Athena stepped out slowly, wearing a purple peplos—ancient Greek dress.
Athena—the goddess of wisdom and intellect, of both peace and war, presiding also over crafts and the arts.
One of the Twelve Olympian gods, and now an upper-tier god since ascending after the descent.
Even though she smiled, the pressure she exerted was formidable.
“How does a mere human know the cipher of this place?”
She held a goblet of wine in one hand and looked at me while drinking.
I showed her the hammer.
Hephaestus’s hammer.
A relic obtained by killing one of the Twelve Olympians.
“Would you like to examine this?”
Athena’s eyes narrowed.
“You possess an interesting object.”
“Thanks to you, I came to know it.”
At that, Athena’s lips curved up.
“Amusing. Have you come to kill me too?”
“No. I’ve come to make an offer.”
“An offer?”
“Would you not like to make use of a human who killed a god?”
To use anything necessary to prevent the future where everyone is destroyed.
That could include even a god.
