The house where Hermes lived was very modest for a man of his powers. He did not immediately take them to the orchard and instead first welcomed them to his drawing room. There he served a glass of fruit juice and honey water to Monika and just a glass of plain water to the other three girls.

Seeing that Monika complained that he was being rude to her friends and after hearing that Hermes very unwillingly prepared the same for the other girls. But the face he made while serving them was as if he was getting forced to do something heinous.

Elena and the other girls did not like it at all and they immediately rejected the drinks. Hearing that Hermes' face turned livid in anger for a moment but he soon composed himself and sat down on a sofa.

The atmosphere became very awkward and little Monika did not know what she should do. She knew that her grandfather was a bit grumpy to outsiders but as he was very kind to her she had thought that it was just him acting shy and inside he was truly a very kind person.

But today she understood that it was nothing but her delusion. She had never expected her grandfather to act so rude toward such good people like Elena, Eldriana and Dalia. She was not feeling very apologetic for bringing them here. Elena was the one to break this uncomfortable silence.

"We heard from Monika that you have a big orchard and even had the opportunity to enjoy some of your fruits and I found them to be extremely delectable. Then we heard that you might be willing to sell some of those delicious fruits to us so we imposed upon your dear granddaughter to be our guide. We did not force her in any way. So, I would like to ask. Are you willing to sell the fruits to us ?"

Hearing Elena's to the point question he clicked his tongue in front of her and made a very grumpy face. With his handsome face many girls might like that kind of expression on him but Elena just felt irritated and her anger meter was rising. She knew the reason for him to be so grumpy with not only them but with other outsiders too. But that did not make his rude behaviour acceptable. But Elena did not want to lose her temper and beat this pathetic loser up in front of Monika who was a good girl so she tried to control herself.

After showing his dissatisfaction in full, Hermes finally stood up and waved at the girls to follow her and he took them to his orchard. On the way Dolia asked Elena if she was fine with that brute's behaviour as in her eyes someone like Elena who could take them to a different world was a person of great prestige. So, something acting so rudely toward her was unacceptable for Dalia who respected her from the bottom of her heart.

Hearing the dissatisfaction in Dalia's voice, Elena smiled kindly and patted her head a little to calm her down a bit. But she did not tell her to stop disliking the way Hermes was behaving as that was a normal response and finding it acceptable was just spinelessness. While having this conversion, they quickly reached the orchard.

After seeing this place, Dalia and Eldriana gasped. That's just how beautiful this place looked. Fruits of various kinds and various colours were hanging on the tree making the place look very bright and cheerful. Various parts of the garden had different seasons too, probably by the means of some high level magic. That gave this place a mystical and heavenly feeling.

Some part of the garden was frozen in ice showing off the winter season and some other part was filled with blooming flowers indicating the spring season. All in all, it was a beautiful place to look around.

But obviously Hermes had no intention to allow the girls to enjoy the sight of his orchard and asked Elena what fruits she wanted. Elena already knew what she wanted and immediately answered -

"I want 3 fruits of all types you have here."

Hearing that Hermes smiled mockingly and gave Elena a disdainful look. Then he said with derision -

"Hmph, foolish girl. Do you even know what type of fruits I have here. Some of them could help even rank 5 in healing. Tsk, even if the three of you weaklings sell your somewhat useful bodies for all your life you could still not affor..."

But before he could finish his words Elena's fist magnified before his eyes and his face was smashed. 7 or 8 of his teeth were broken and his head was buried to the ground. Obviously this man might be a scum but Elena was not down bad enough to allow innocent Monika to see this sort of violence, so before punching Hermes, Elena had made Monika lose her consciousness.

Elena had held back enough to not kill this guy and she did not allow him to lose consciousness either. So after getting a punch from Elena he was bewildered. Hermes was born with a very useful ability called the "Eye of Truth" which allowed him to see a person's status. This useful skill always allowed him to judge who he could make an enemy of and against whom he should act cautiously, so she never really made any big blunder in his life except for one time.

That was the reason why he was so rude to Elena and the other girls as after seeing their status, he was sure that they were not a threat to him and he could behave any way he wanted and they would not be able to protest. But this time he made another blunder.

...

When Hermes was an explorer, he once teamed up with two more teams to raid a ruin together. In their time together, he became closer to the other people joining them and stopped using his Eye of Truth on them just as he did not use it on his party members.

Eye of Truth not only had the ability to show his status of other people but it was also capable of detecting lies. But as he stopped using it on the other parties, he was unable to detect when they started to lie to him.

So, when these two parties betrayed him and his team for a rare item, he was caught unaware. Two of his teammates were killed and others were barely able to run away with severe injuries. From that day onward he had become very distrustful of everyone other than the person he knew and started to always judge everyone with his Eye of Truth.

So far whatever he did was fair and nothing was wrong. But after this incident he started to find success in his exploring career. Very soon he became one of the rare rank 5 explorer who had conquered various ruins and his ego and pride started to grow. He started to insult anyone with a lower power level and became very prideful and grumpy.

Soon one of his party members became pregnant with his child and he retired. His wife wanted to live a happy and simple life as a restaurant proprietress so that opened a restaurant. His wife was unaware that she was cursed by a random activation sudden death curse and one day it took her life. Since that day, Hermes became even more grumpy especially because he was unable to detect the curse even with his Eye of Truth.

And now after so many years here he was still as arrogant as ever and with the same bad attitude which was getting some much needed change by Elena's hand at the current time.

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