Three days after Nick created the rainstorms over the war bands to shoo them away Hephaestus eagerly approached him. "I have completed all of the tomes within your archive , I would like to use the crafting rooms now." she said eagerly. Nick froze mid quill stroke when he heard this "I'm sorry I think i miss heard you. Did you say you completed everything in my library?" He asked in disbelief. "Indeed! I would like access to the crafting rooms now." she said eagerly. Nick frankly didn't believe her but after asking a few questions he couldn't deny that she actually read through the whole collection of information he had in the library.-
"Fine , you may use the crafting rooms but try not to destroy anything in the process , some of that equipment was hard to get after all." Nick said with a sigh and the goddess practically skipped out of his office in joy. 'I hope she doesn't go too crazy in there.' he thought worriedly. He had a lot of valuable materials stocked up and really didn't want them to get destroyed because the goddess decided to craft a weapon to split the sea or some such other needlessly overpowered item.-
No more than an hour later the redhaired goddess came back to the office with a confused expression. "Is something the matter?" Nick asked concerned seeing this. "I can not understand the purpose of many of the tools you have in the forging room. I require assistance." she said honestly. "Give me a moment to finish up here and I'll try to explain them all." Nick said calmly before turning his attention back to the paperwork that he had to do. Running a settlement took a lot of work after all. -
About ten minutes later Nick finished his work and got up to head over to the forge room. Hephaestus followed him closely and to his surprise looped her arm under his own to hold his hand. "What are you doing!?" he exclaimed while distancing himself from her in shock. She looked confused "Are you not hosting me in the attempt to mate with me?" she asked casually and Nick shook his head. "What on earth gave you that idea?" he asked fearing there may have been some sort of misunderstanding. "I fail to understand why else you would be willing to inconvenience yourself like this otherwise." she said honestly.-
Nick finally understood where the problem was when she said this and sighed. "I should have considered that the way the world worked in your time was different than it currently does. While I will freely admit to feeling attracted to you that has nothing to do with why I am allowing you to stay here. The truth is simply because it made the most sense to do so. At this moment there is probably only a handful of beings that can even understand you on this planet and out of all of them I trust a single one not to try and use you for their own agendas." Nick explained seriously.-
She frowned at this "I fail to understand." she admitted honestly. "Perhaps you are unaware of it but at this exact moment there is not a single being on the entire planet that could stop you if you wanted to do something. While I am not entirely sure which tier you as a god are at I do know that the highest being alive other than you at the moment is merely a low tier five. Rather than allow you to be used for others gain I figure it would be best to keep you here out of the worlds attention and unburdened by expectations that you don't deserve." Nick said honestly.-
"In other words I want nothing from you at all in exchange for you staying as a guest." he added to clarify. "But you do find me attractive then , despite this." she said while motioning to her scarred face. "Out of everything i just said you focused on that? Yes you are attractive , annoyingly so considering I don't have the time to entertain such a thing." Nick said with a huff.-
"I have not been desired before .... it is pleasant." she said with a smile. "Ha~ Whatever floats your boat I guess." Nick said before leading the way to the crafting room with her hanging off his arm pleased with herself. After getting there he spent the next few hours explaining the equipment to her which she understood after a single example of it in use was given. She then proceeded to make him feel bad by pointing out how horrible the high end equipment was compared to the forge she used to have.