Everyone on the Greek side was cheering, the name of hero Griffith rising to fill the sky.
That overwhelming surge of morale made the enemy army feel as though Achilles had truly returned to the field.
Paris trembled.
Even someone who had never met Night before could see that unlike the fraud from before, this unfamiliar hero had genuine ability.
(Night internally: How did you know I fight best with two weapons? Laughing jpg.)
At minimum, Palamedes before him had not even been able to hold Achilles's weapon.
Though part of why Paris was dominated early was his own fear of the name Achilles, Palamedes still would have been painfully obvious if his actual performance had been too terrible.
Not that Palamedes was weak, simply that compared to a true monster among warriors, there was no comparison.
The way Paris understood perfectly well how terrifyingly strong his own brother Hector was.
A real monster should be handled by another real monster.
Paris, suffering internally in this moment, did not notice the slight upward curve at the corner of his brother's mouth.
Unlike the low morale of the Trojan forces, and unlike the cheering, roaring Greek soldiers across from them,
Hector was quietly reciting a different kind of celebratory verse in his heart. "That's right. Born of the combined strength of Hector and Achilles, forged in the storm, the greatest hero has arrived. He is the future of Troy. The warrior destined to inherit the name of the strongest and surpass those who came before him.
All glory belongs to Troy.
In this moment, let us cheer for Troy's future."
"Forgive me, my friend, that I cannot openly celebrate your growth."
Hector thought, filled with deep guilt.
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Meanwhile, on another front,
King Agamemnon was smiling like a child.
So innocent. So genuinely happy.
"Did you see that? Odysseus, from the very first day I saw Griffith, I thought..."
Odysseus: "What?"
"He would look far better in that armor than Achilles ever did.
Such a magnificent set of armor and weapons, wasted on Achilles."
As it turned out, Agamemnon realized he had never actually disliked the armor itself, only the original owner of the armor.
Who said Greece couldn't do anything without Achilles?
Who said no other hero could ever lift his weapons?
Look. Just look at this right now!!
In that moment Agamemnon desperately wished he could capture this image and take it directly to Achilles to rub in his face.
Unfortunate that cameras did not exist in this era.
Otherwise he would have sent a few hundred prints straight to the front lines by courier.
It had to be said, at the most dangerous moment, when he was most afraid of facing divine judgment, Griffith appeared like a guiding star, injecting Agamemnon with a powerful dose of confidence.
And with his performance this exceptional right now, how could he not feel elated and overjoyed?
Most importantly, Griffith was not someone who competed for things.
Agamemnon, feeling he had gradually come to understand this hero's true character,
Thought about how it was always Griffith who brought forward constructive ideas, how Griffith remained unmoved by battlefield glory and the scramble for spots in the duel, how Griffith was the one who sent off a departing comrade with a mournful song wishing him a safe return, and how when everyone else was terrified of divine punishment,
It was Griffith who stepped forward, took the weight of that judgment on himself, and restored the fighting spirit of all of Greece.
A man with no interest in power or recognition, who carried responsibility, who had integrity, who loved his people, who was both compassionate and just.
Even a rotten man like Agamemnon himself could not help being drawn to that kind of radiance.
Gradually he stopped seeing the surface, stopped being misled by the face alone, uh...he would still be misled by the face but began to see the deeper, shining thing underneath.
Something Agamemnon had long since lost, but which the deepest part of his heart still longed for.
Night in this moment brought him a sense of profound peace.
After all, this was what the hero you dreamed of as a child looked like, wasn't it?
The image of a hero he had only ever glimpsed in childhood dreams slowly began to overlap with the figure in front of him.
A hero does not lose.
Even if Agamemnon himself would lose, a hero who stood for justice and always led everyone through the danger at the critical moment was someone who absolutely could not lose.
Sometimes hatred and admiration could switch in an instant or even coexist.
And it was for this reason that Agamemnon's impression of Night shifted so dramatically in such a short time.
He had already thought it through.
He and Griffith had no clear conflict of interest.
And toward a genuinely capable hero who had no desire for power, no ambition for recognition, why should he be hostile to someone like that?
Perhaps it was time to change how he approached him and find a way to be around him that was more comfortable for both of them.
And while Agamemnon was cheering Night on with the enthusiasm of someone who had just seen the great hero they admired as a child, with the same joy as when Iason first laid eyes on Heracles,
Odysseus, standing beside him, felt a dark line drawn across his own thoughts and a faintly superfluous sense of his own presence.
Agamemnon really was a man of blatant double standards.
On one hand despising the same armor on Achilles, and now cheering this loudly for Griffith.
Odysseus even had the sense that somewhere in Agamemnon's heart he was lamenting that Achilles was not already dead, because then he could make the call right now to hand the armor and weapons directly to Griffith.
'What happened? Didn't those two just have that whole falling-out over the sacred deer incident?
How did they get along this fast?'
He did not understand.
But his spirit was profoundly shaken.
Then again, thinking about Night's face, with that supernatural magnetism that even Odysseus himself, not a soft-hearted man in the least, had barely been able to hold his ground against.
He had changed too.
Odysseus, who had originally been jealous of Night receiving the moon goddess's favor, now found he could not summon any hostility toward him no matter how he tried.
And thinking about everything this man had done up until now,
Continuing to be jealous of a person like that would be too base and petty, even for someone already as petty as himself.
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Meanwhile, on the battlefield,
Night, surrounded by the cheering of countless people, had absolutely no idea that the two biggest schemers on the Greek side had both done a complete one-eighty in their attitude toward him.
This was simply the terrifying nature of supernatural magnetism that had reached the level of divine authority.
It did not work through crude methods like controlling minds or rewriting memories.
It worked through gradual, imperceptible influence, subtly shaping the way people thought about him, pushing them toward their most favorable interpretation, touching the deepest and softest places in their hearts, quietly pulling them toward the image they most loved, most respected, most admired, most yearned for.
Any emotion connected to fascination could be affected.
And since everyone's preferences were different, the truly terrifying part was not simply that one person was loved by everyone.
The truly terrifying part was that each of those people would fill in the blanks themselves, running wild with it, constructing the version of Night they personally most wanted to see.
Otherwise known as: a hopeless romantic state of mind.
Night had not yet realized what a terrifying scene was coming if all of Greece descended into that state.
Anyone who had witnessed that divine moment today and would continue to have contact with him going forward,
Every single one of them, without exception, was not going to escape it.
Greece, at this rate, was probably beyond saving.
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(End of the Chapter)