Archon of Danmachi

Finally standing before her delighted familia in her full glory once again, Freya sported the usual patented smile on her face, giving no hint as to what was going on inside her head. Still, that was precisely what all the executives were used to and fell in love with so it only brought them relief.

They quickly offered their congratulations and showed how thankful and happy they were to have back to normal and their goddess gracious accepted their words.

"Thank you all for your care. I'm quite well now. Still, my condition in the previous few days has most certainly caused issues which must be discussed." Freya declared.

"Please Freya-sama, we live to serve you, any issues are secondary compared to your return to us." Hedin eloquently said, being seconded by everyone else besides Ottar who was his usual stoic self and Horn who was trying to divine her mistress' intentions.

The girl had used her unique blessing to try and experience what Freya experienced in her relatively short meeting with Nox and though she got nothing quite as accurate as exact memories since Freya was being herself and not Syr, the emotions were still, surprisingly, quite clear . . . and intense.

However, despite the incompleteness and the briefness of the experience, it had actually profoundly affected Horn's view and her opinion on the matter of Nox. Horn inherited Freya's obsessive love for him but also bore him great hatred.

The latter was due to the changes, the drastic changes an usually immutable goddess went through just due to his actions and words, even when they were not at all directed towards her. She knew far more than anyone else how mad Freya had been driven by his unwitting words and yet . . .

On that day, she felt the other side of things. The emotions that ran through her, never had she felt such excessive love, lust, joy . . . such an extravagant, decadent cocktail of position emotions from her goddess. It was like a drug for the soul and even now, she was slightly absentminded, still slightly basking in the afterglow.

Nox could drive Freya, and consequently, Horn as well, crazy in a bad way but also crazy in a good way depending on how he acted since the goddess of beauty hanged on his every act and word to an extreme degree.

More than once, Horn had thought of eliminating Nox, a plan whose foolishness she realized once his power became apparent but now she thought differently. Sure he could be bad from Freya and her but getting rid of him has a very low probability of fixing things.

Meanwhile, even if he has ill effects, so long as he notices them, he can quickly solve them if he wants to. If they make him want to.

His existence brought out the worst and best Horn had ever seen of her goddess and perhaps, that was love. Was it not?

Maybe rather than wallowing in hatred and wondering how good it would be if he never existed, Horn thought she could instead invest her efforts in earning Nox's care for her goddess, maximizing the good effects while minimizing the bad ones.

And maybe . . . Just maybe . . .

Perhaps she would one day be able to experience that intoxicating mixture of positive emotion directly, rather than through her connection to Freya, though this was a small piece of her thoughts that that girl actively pretended not to know existed to the point of actually fooling herself.

Back to the matter at hand, considering her mistress' Nox induced great mood and her absolute lack of care and complete approval of the cutthroat price were were forced to pay the man for him help, she was most certainly not pleased with the attitudes of Allen and the Gulliver Brother.

Hedin and Hogni were also jealous like the others but they kept it well under check, not letting that cloud their judgement. They might not care for Nox and even have problems with him, but they knew better than to interfere with their lady's intentions regarding him.

In fact, now that she was more calm and reasonable since Nox was far and away with Freya's issue fixed for the moment, Horn felt some admiration for how Hedin saw things and acted accordingly. He handled his jealousy even better than she handled her now waning hatred.

Granted, none of them had felt what she felt but still, it impressed her nonetheless. It also earned their mistress' favor so their restraint was most definitely worth it.

As for the others, while they followed orders to the letter regardless of opinion, their attitudes towards Nox completely cloud their thoughts whenever they are not acting with a specific directive and that could not be good for them.

Horns thoughts regarding this matter could be summed up as such . . .

'In normal times, Freya-sam might tolerate such behaviour, maybe actually find it please or perhaps entertaining, maybe even encourage it, unfortunately for those fools . . . For better or worse, everything about the current situation is all but normal.'

Still, Horn had no idea what that displeasure would lead too, what her mistress was planning on doing and that was precisely what she was trying to figure out. It was not like she needed to however, it was simply something she liked to do.

To try and approach her ideal goddess. Simulate her thought, likes and dislikes, she wished to be her, that was the origin of her ability to turn into Freya, so trying to figure out her goddess' thoughts before they were made clear, became something she loved to do, especially when her deductions turned out correct.

This still confounded her on this particular matter though. The situation was abnormal, Freya was not acting like her usual self, at least not internally and Horn's experience which allowed her to make predictions was pretty much useless.

In the end, she could only give up the matter this time around with an internal sigh and await Freya's decree.

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

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