"I suppose you aren't entirely wrong but there is no way I could ever not be interested in such wonderous falnas. Why your falna for example, so very many dark aspects, cursed energy, hell's forge, hell fire, blessing of black, soul gaze, your race. If I didn't know any better I'd swear you were almost a true demon." the god said with a victorious grin.
"No need to threaten me god, you have plenty of weaknesses I can grasp as well. Your precious familia for example. It would only take me a mere moment , the lightest touch and two words to disfigure them, transform them into monsters to be slaughtered on sight. Such a tragedy it would be hmm?" I sent back causing his face to darken.
Oh yes Hermes was a manipulative bastard without a doubt but he also definitely knew that I wasn't merely bluffing at this point. One look at my status and the sort of harm I could cause if properly incentivized was crystal clear. The best part is that it would be almost impossible to stop me if I truly followed through with this set of actions unless he was willing to permanently leave Orario and he knew this.-
"Of course I believe it best if we try to play nice so you keep what you should to yourself and keep your manipulating hands away from us and we'll get along just fine." I added while a smile that didn't extend to my eyes.
He sighed "Fine fine, I know when to gracefully bow out and I am the one at a disadvantage this time. Perhaps however now that we've gotten that bit of unpleasantness out of the way we can discuss future cooperation?" he said with a smile flipping the mood one eighty.
"Gonna be honest here that's up to her, you want something made talk to her. Oh right I should add that teaming up in the dungeon is off the table since my flames don't play well with others. Too much risk of getting my partners caught up as collateral damage when I go all out." I said with a casual shrug without getting thrown off by his sudden switch in mood at all.
"That is unfortunate to hear but not a deal breaker if your creations live up to your falna. So Hestia, dearest Hestia how's about we have a chat about how we can both make a vast amount of valis?" the god said with a wide smile.
It was extremely amusing to watch my goddess go from basically sitting back and letting me handle everything to having to deal with an eager Hermes. I did have to warn him a few times when I saw his eyes wander to places they shouldn't during the conversation but otherwise there wasn't anything weird about the conversation. There was however a VERY annoying few days after this investigation that we had to deal with.-
First and foremost was that we were the talk of the city for a few days before the gods got bored and turned their attention elsewhere. What that meant was a lot of attention from, jealous, ill meaning, fans or fame seeking people when we were in public. The jealous ones were all spite and no bite. The ill meaning ones tended to have sinful souls that I gratefully reaped for stats in secret and if they didn't tended to vanish in the dungeon after following me in. I felt nothing when I killed these people nor when I left them crippled in front of monsters to get killed that ways since that was a loophole in my skill.-
The fans came in three flavors of increasingly annoying levels. The first was the amazons that wanted to mate with Bell and I for our talents. Mostly this involved a lot of seduction attempts to some even bluntly asking to fuck. Bell turned into a tomato more often than not in the face of these girls which was hilarious to watch. I myself just rejected their advances casually since I didn't want to waste time like that.-
The second type was the newbies to Orario who all hoped to be the next us and shoot to fame by leveling up at rocket speeds. These fans were unfortunately not likely to ever accomplish that if my soul gaze was to be trusted. I saw very very few souls that shone quite as bright as Bells and mine did and according to Syr/Freya that was how she knew how talented someone was. I should probably mention that I was taking lessons on how to best use my soul gaze from her as well and in the process that my own version was slightly different than hers.-
For example I could see the sins of staining a soul but she instead could see the emotions of the soul when she looked at it instead but not the sins. Hers gave her a way to better manipulate people and understand what they were thinking at any given time thanks to this difference while mine allowed me to more or less judge someone's past actions and make predictions on their future actions as a result. It was fascinating how similar yet different the same ability worked in two different people. Anyways the third type was the "apprentice" type.
Adventurers that sought Bell, Hestia or myself out to try and learn under us or join our familia for that reason. They were by far the most annoying to deal with as they had a problem taking "no" for an answer. You know the sort of people that think that if they learn from clearly talented or successful people that they themselves will become talented, irritating buggers the lot of them. Finally came the fame seekers, adventurers that came to challenge Bell or myself to combat to prove try and use us as stepping stones by publicly defeating us.-
More often then not we ended up just rejecting their challenge and the matter ended there but for the few who tried to insult us or even worse our familia to pressure us, we curb stomped them. The trick was that only those who just leveled up to level two or those at level one could use this method and good fucking luck finding anyone else at that developmental stage as monstrous as us. Hell I ended up even putting mid level twos to the dirt with sheer physical stats alone much less beginner level twos like me(I didn't kill them btw).