Surviving the Sirens' temptation did not mean the end of trouble.
After that, the Argo arrived at the island of the Phaeacians, where they were received by King Alcinous.
However, another group of Colchian warriors who had been pursuing Medea finally tracked them down as well.
Incidentally, although the Argo was known as the world's first great ship capable of long voyages, Colchis was not counted among them.
With the Mystra Academy in existence, the level of technology and civilization in Colchis had long surpassed what would be considered normal.
Although the Argonauts had never feared battle, there were only a dozen or so of them now.
Facing an army from Colchis was still too much, especially in a naval battle.
Individual valor could not replace ships, and even with their numbers, operating the Argo was already a strain.
If fighting broke out at sea, they would absolutely not be Colchis's match.
Just as the two sides were preparing to clash, King Alcinous stepped in to mediate and declared that he would arbitrate between them.
During the truce, the king announced that, in accordance with the teachings of the Goddess of Love, true love should not be torn apart.
Thus, he proclaimed that if Medea were still an unmarried maiden, she should be returned to her father for judgment; but if she had already become Alaric's wife, then they should not be separated.
Faced with conditions that clearly favored them, the Argonauts naturally did not push their luck by refusing.
As for the Colchian pursuers, before they had even set out, King Aeëtes had already received hints from the Mystra Academy.
Thus, his pursuit of the Argonauts was little more than a formality; only the gods and heroes had been kept in the dark.
In truth, they had never intended to catch up with the Argonauts. Unfortunately, during the chase, their warships enjoyed smooth sailing all the way.
Even when they strayed from the route, various circumstances would guide them back onto the correct course, and sea nymphs even appeared to show them the way, it was obvious that the Olympian gods were deliberately interfering.
Therefore, in order to end this mission as quickly as possible, they naturally did not refuse this condition.
Afterward, the queen conveyed the king's intentions to the Argonauts.
That very night, the Argonauts held a wedding for Alaric and Medea. Aphrodite even appeared at the ceremony in a perfunctory manner, putting the final touch on her prank.
Thus, the next day, King Alcinous ruled that Medea could not be handed over to Colchis and that he would provide protection to the Argonauts.
In this way, the Argo once again survived a crisis of pursuit.
Next, the Argo arrived at the island of Crete, which was guarded by a mechanical giant known as Talos.
This terrifying mechanical giant was made entirely of bronze.
Of course, while it was called bronze, it also contained the legendary metal, orichalcum.
Orichalcum was a mysterious metal from Atlantean legend. Alongside adamantine, mithril, and cold iron, it was regarded as one of the most precious magical metal materials.
Talos was a powerful mechanical being composed of bronze alloyed with orichalcum, a technological creation far beyond its era.
Its existence was closely tied to the true Greek pantheon.
In fact, although during the Age of Gods every corner of Earth was filled with deities, the origins of these gods were clearly diverse.
Most gods originated locally, but there were many exceptions.
For example, the Mayan/Aztec pantheon of the Americas were originally extraterrestrial lifeforms that descended upon Earth hundreds of millions of years ago; over in the Celestial Dynasty, various Outer Gods ran rampant; while the Greek gods were another mechanical civilization that arrived on Earth.
These secrets were revealed to Alaric by Artemis.
Among the gods Alaric knew, Hecate was a human who ascended to godhood, Aphrodite was born from the essence of Uranus, Athena was too young, and only Artemis had truly witnessed the downfall of that powerful mechanical civilization.
According to her, sixteen thousand years ago, during the battle against a wandering star, the mechanical civilization was almost completely annihilated along with other primordial gods.
Under such circumstances, they abandoned most of their original mechanical civilization and instead devoted themselves to mastering the power of local gods, gradually becoming no different from them.
The so-called rebellion of Zeus and his brothers against their father, Cronus, was in fact a dispute over the future direction of the mechanical civilization.
The former advocated abandoning machinery and becoming true indigenous gods, while the latter hoped to preserve their existence by integrating themselves with machines.
If the latter had won, then every one of the Artemis, Athena, and others Alaric now saw would likely be gigantic mechanical bodies.
As for Aphrodite, she herself was derived from the essence of the first-generation ultimate creation of the mechanical civilization: the Sky Lord, Uranus.
It was said that Uranus had once been the ruler and ultimate power of the mechanical civilization, his very existence comparable in scale to present-day Mount Olympus.
Such a powerful mechanical creation was practically equivalent to a space carrier.
As for Aphrodite's birth, after Uranus was destroyed, the consciousness of its control core was formatted, transforming from a virtual digital lifeform into a biological soul, and was then granted divinity by the world.
Her birth itself stemmed from the mechanical civilization's initial experiments in transforming itself into gods.
The difficulty in converting mechanical life into true life lay in endowing absolutely rational mechanical beings with emotion.
Because Aphrodite was the first successful example, the divinity she was granted was love, though in truth, its essence was extreme emotion.
Of course, the greatest reason she was able to become a goddess was the immense computational power of Uranus's main brain.
Such an enormous mechanical body naturally required extraordinary computational power.
Even if it could not rival the Mooncell, it was still an incredibly powerful existence.
A soul formed from such computational capacity, combined with other factors, allowed her to gradually gestate into a goddess.
Though as perhaps the only being born purely from the transformation of mechanical life, her gestation period was exceptionally long, far exceeding that of Zeus and the others.
It was precisely because of the success of this experiment that Zeus and the others finally resolved to abandon the plan of integrating themselves with machines and instead commit fully to the path of the gods.
Even so, remnants of mechanical civilization technology still remained, powerful weapons and creations were scattered throughout the Greek divine domain.
And Hephaestus himself was the one most familiar with the previous civilization within the Olympian pantheon.
Yet even he could no longer grasp the true essence of that original mechanical civilization.
Talos itself was one of the surviving creations left behind by the Olympian mechanical civilization.
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