Athens was louder than I expected.
From a distance, it had looked impressive—stone walls, tall structures, temples, people moving in and out like ants. But once I entered the city, the first thing I noticed wasn't the architecture.
It was the noise.
People shouting. Merchants advertising their goods. Animals. Carts. Arguments. Laughter. The sound of metal, pottery, footsteps, and voices layered on top of each other until the entire city felt alive.
And then there was the smell.
Wine, sweat, animals, smoke, food, and things I didn't want to identify.
"This is disgusting… so different from the modern cities I'm familiar with," I muttered under my breath.
Not only that, the social hierarchy was very obvious. Soldiers and nobles walked with confident strides, while slaves followed behind wealthy citizens, carrying goods or lowering their heads when spoken to.
A very clear distinction.
After walking for a while, I encountered no problems. That was expected, considering how I looked and dressed.
Speaking of looks—I didn't notice it until I saw my reflection in water earlier, but I was… handsome. Blue eyes, bright like jewels, and blond hair, almost golden, cut short in a style uncommon for this time.
There were no accidents, no trouble—but then a different problem appeared.
Money.
"Great. A powerful angel with no money," I muttered.
I looked around, thinking. Then I remembered hearing somewhere that gambling was popular in ancient Greece. I didn't know if that was entirely accurate, but it didn't matter. What mattered was getting money and a bed.
So I immediately started planning.
How do I get money? That was the first question. The second answer came immediately: I had abilities.
Smite wasn't necessary here.
Telekinesis, however… that would work.
While walking around, I spotted someone who looked like a wealthy merchant. How did I know? Because he was obese—and in this time period, there was definitely a strong correlation between wealth and food.
I activated telekinesis. The bag tied around his waist loosened and quietly floated into my hand, as if an invisible hand had picked it up and delivered it to me.
I quickly looked around to see if anyone noticed.
No one.
Or at least, that's what I thought.
Behind me stood a girl, looking directly at the bag in my hand with a surprised expression.
I turned and looked at her—and immediately, Perception of Truth gave me an answer.
A witch.
That surprised me, but it also delighted me. I didn't expect to meet one so soon.
"You know stealing is wrong," she said. "Also… how did you do that?"
"Do what, miss?" I replied calmly. "I think you are mistaken. I haven't stolen anything."
She stared at me. I smiled slightly.
"Alright," I said. "You caught me. I lost my money while traveling and needed to replenish it. Besides, that man doesn't look like he's going to suffer much from losing a small bag."
"So you're a traveler," she said slowly. "Are you a witch? And how did you do that?"
"No," I replied. "And no."
She frowned, clearly confused. "Then what are you? You're obviously not normal."
I could feel a bit of fear from her, mixed with curiosity. Understandable. The unknown is always the most frightening thing. In her understanding of the world, supernatural power meant witches—servants of nature.
"Well, it's possible," I said. "As for who I am, that's not important right now. If fate allows us to meet again, I will tell you."
With that, I quickly disappeared into the crowd.
I didn't see what she did afterward, but she stood there for a while with a thoughtful expression before walking toward the center of the city.
Right now, I had other priorities.
I was in what could be called a gambling house—though it was more like a loud room with tables, bowls, and dice.
I used telekinesis to slightly turn the dice before the bowl was lifted. Combined with Perception of Truth, which allowed me to know how the dice were positioned inside, winning was easy.
I made sure not to win every time. I used a pattern—win three times, lose once, win twice, lose once. Just enough to look lucky, not suspicious.
I quickly made a small fortune and left.
Of course, some people tried to cause me trouble afterward.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this," was all I said before the men in front of me collapsed, their eyes burned by divine light.
It was already getting dark, but I still managed to buy a room. Yes, buy. This wasn't 2000 years in the future—things were much cheaper, and I now had more than enough money.
And since this Divine Body didn't need sleep, food, or water to survive, my expenses would be very low.
"Well," I muttered, "this was certainly not a very angelic way to act… stealing and cheating."
I wondered if that would affect my synchronization rate.
I opened my panel to check if anything had changed—and there was a difference. But not the one I expected.
╔══════════════════════════════╗
║ TEMPLATE SYSTEM ║
╠══════════════════════════════╣
Current Template:
Archangel – Michael
Age: 18
Race: Angel
Synchronization Rate:
6.5%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Current Power:
Tier 9-C
True Power:
Tier 8-C
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Current Abilities:
• Smite
• Telekinesis
• Perception of Truth
• Dream Walking
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Equipment:
• Michael's Sword (Sealed)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Notice:
"Divine authority restricted.
Output limited to preserve world stability."
╚══════════════════════════════╝
"So my synchronization rate increased quite a bit…" I muttered. "I thought it would take years, maybe decades. Or did I misunderstand?"
Meg had said that timeline growth was slow if I did nothing. But if I acted, it would increase faster. Still, 1.5% in one day was a lot. If it continued like this, I would reach full synchronization in a few months—which was obviously impossible.
So what caused it?
"Act like an angel…" I said quietly.
The idea hit me like a bolt of lightning.
Judging a sinner. Executing punishment. Acting according to angelic nature. That must have given a large one-time increase because it was my first time doing it. After this, the increase would probably be much smaller—maybe 0.0001% each time.
But I frowned slightly.
I wasn't completely sure yet.
There was still one ability I hadn't tested.
And this was the perfect opportunity to verify it.
I closed my eyes.