"A lion's head, a goat's body, a python's tail, and it can breathe fire?"
Hearing the Arcadia warrior's description, Ares couldn't help but blink in surprise.
"Isn't that the famous monster from Greek World legends, the stitched-up Chimera?"
But Ares remembered that when this monster was a cub, it was supposed to be the pet of the King of Caria, who ruled the southwestern part of Asia Minor.
Later, its violent nature gradually emerged as it grew, breaking free from the chains the King of Caria had made for it.
It then roamed from the Kingdom of Caria to the neighboring Kingdom of Lycia, devouring people and livestock along the way and burning crops with fire, which is how its fearsome reputation became known throughout the Greek World.
"But why would this fierce and brutal monster appear in the forest of the Arcadia Kingdom?"
Something was fishy.
Considering Athena, who had been doing who-knows-what recently, Ares decided it would be best to go to the forest and see for himself.
So he bid farewell to the two Arcadia warriors, then used magic to conceal his presence, quietly leaving the Arcadia city-state and heading towards the forest the Arcadia warriors had mentioned.
This avatar of Ares certainly couldn't deal with the Chimera.
As a disposable avatar used for stirring up trouble, this avatar's quality was even lower than that of an average human, and it had no reinforced modification plugins.
If a real fight were to occur, this avatar, even with Ares's extreme maneuvering, could at most contend with a squad of ordinary soldiers.
However, this avatar could use some minor magic that didn't require too much magical power.
Using these spells, Ares was confident that he could sneak into the forest to investigate the situation.
Even if he were discovered by that Chimera, Ares could simply withdraw his consciousness; this avatar was going to be discarded anyway, so letting the Chimera use it as a chew toy was no big deal.
With the help of magic, Ares quickly arrived at the edge of the forest.
By the roadside, he saw an overturned ox-cart, with its contents scattered messily along the road.
The draft animals were nowhere to be seen.
Near the ox-cart, there were bloodstains and scorch marks, indicating that this was likely where the team of merchants had been attacked by the Chimera.
Ares didn't spend time investigating the various clues at the scene.
He directly used another small magic trick to activate a special vision for himself.
In this vision, everything around him turned to dark gray colors, but the bloodstains and scorch marks on the ground emitted a red glow.
This magic was developed independently by Ares and could help the user quickly distinguish traces on the ground.
However, after developing it, Ares understood why Hecate didn't develop similar magic.
This kind of magic was indeed quite useless for them, who were born divine.
If Ares had come with his divine body or divine power avatar, the tracking effect of this special vision would be inferior to his naked eye vision.
But for his current avatar, this magic was indeed very useful.
After activating the special vision, Ares not only detected bloodstains and scorch marks on the ground, but soon, he also saw some footprints.
These footprints looked somewhat similar to cat paws but were enormous, even larger than a lion's paw print.
In Ares's vision, these footprints emitted a faint blue glow, extending from the forest all the way to the crime scene.
Ares blinked, added a magic spell to conceal his presence and aura, and then followed the footprints in reverse.
He arrived at a clearing in the forest.
Strangely, here, the lion's footprints gradually shrank, slowly transforming into human footprints.
"What does this mean?"
Seeing this, Ares was somewhat surprised.
"Could it be that this Chimera was a human transformed?"
Suppressing his astonishment, Ares patiently searched the vicinity and finally discovered something peculiar in a patch of grass.
It was a bronze syringe, with some faint blue liquid still remaining inside.
Upon seeing this syringe, Ares confirmed his guess: this Chimera was indeed another creation of Athena.
Only Athena had used this type of syringe.
When he was in the Youxing Starship, he had seen Athena use the same style of syringe to extract spiritual particles from the deceased Youxing Vanguard.
But in this forest, it was unknown who had become Athena's test subject; it could have been an innocent passerby.
However, Ares was more inclined to believe it was Hippomenes, who had lost to him in the race today.
Ares remembered that after he had taken Atalanta away, this fellow had also taken advantage of the chaos to leave the arena.
Furthermore, when Ares later scanned the entire city with his divine eye, searching for a place to stay with Atalanta, he hadn't found any trace of him in the Arcadia city-state.
He might have wanted to escape the Arcadia Kingdom but encountered the Goddess of Beauty, who gave him the golden apple in this forest.
Afterward, something happened, and Hippomenes most likely angered Aphrodite, then was punished by the Goddess of Beauty and transformed into this monster.
Of course, this was just Ares's guess.
He guessed this simply because Athena had previously instructed the son of the Goddess of Beauty to shoot an arrow at him and Hecate, almost causing them to make a mistake.
And Aphrodite was relatively easy to fool; perhaps Athena had already fooled her when she borrowed her son.
Moreover, even if this matter was truly as he guessed, he couldn't blame Aphrodite for anything.
Hippomenes was not his worshipper.
As for disregarding human lives, the Greek gods had no such concept.
Currently, the most important thing was to carefully preserve this tool of the crime and bring it back, so Hecate could examine the composition of the potion inside.
To be safe, Ares left this avatar in place, then transformed his divine power avatar into an animal and personally came here to magically preserve the syringe and carefully take it away.
After leaving the Arcadia Kingdom, Ares did not return to the Underworld first.
Instead, he took Atalanta and crossed the mountains and rivers of Greece, heading towards the Sparta Kingdom.
Midway, Artemis, the irresponsible chief god, finally seemed to sense Atalanta's prayers.
She finally appeared to respond to her worshipper and, after listening to Atalanta recount the entire story, agreed to let her go to Sparta.
Under Ares's constant protection, Atalanta finally arrived within the borders of the Sparta Kingdom.
On the plains of Laconia, from afar, the girl from Arcadia could already gaze upon the towering city walls of the Sparta city-state.
However, just as she continued towards the Sparta city-state and reached a fork in the road, the surrounding sky imperceptibly darkened.
Atalanta found herself suddenly entering a dim, lightless world, but she did not panic.
Instead, she drew her Bow of the Heavens and vigilantly looked around.
Soon, Atalanta saw three faint glows of fire suddenly appear on the road ahead.
Accompanied by the sound of bells, she saw a beautiful goddess with waist-length purple hair and a graceful figure, holding a candelabra, walking towards her from the darkness.
The goddess approached, blinked at Atalanta, and then asked with some curiosity:
"Are you the princess of Arcadia, Atalanta?"