Ch.2
Orario hit me all at once when I climbed out of the Dungeon entrance.
The light first. Actual sunlight, warm and yellow, after the Dungeon's sick blue-green glow. I stood at the base of Babel tower and let my eyes adjust while people flowed around me, adventurers and merchants and civilians packed into the plaza like rush hour but with swords. The tower went up and up, white stone and glass catching the afternoon sun, taller than anything I'd ever seen in my old life. Taller than it had any right to be.
Then the sound. Voices layered over each other, bartering and arguing and laughing, cart wheels on paved stone, metal on metal from somewhere I couldn't pinpoint. A food vendor had set up near the Dungeon entrance selling skewered meat, and the smell of it hit my empty stomach so hard I almost stopped walking. I didn't have money. Or I did, maybe. Bell's pockets. I'd check later.
I walked.
Every street confirmed it. The architecture was wrong for any city I'd ever been in, a mix of medieval European and older, rougher stone, buildings with arched doorways and balconies hung with laundry and banners from Familias I half-recognized. An Amazon in a leather halter walked past me carrying a greatsword across her shoulders like it weighed nothing. Two dwarves argued about gemstone purity in front of a jewelry stall. An elf, tall and pale and irritated, sidestepped a human kid chasing a ball and kept walking without looking down.
This was Orario. I was walking through it covered in dried Minotaur blood and nobody gave me a second look. Apparently that was normal here.
Bell's body memory got me to the Guild. Hazy, like following directions from a dream I'd had once, but my feet knew the turns. The Guild building was large, institutional. Columns out front. Wide doors. Adventurers going in and out.
I went in.
The interior was open, high-ceilinged, with a long counter dividing the public side from the staff side. Clerks behind the counter in matching uniforms. Boards on the walls covered in quest postings and notices. The place smelled like paper and wood polish and, underneath that, the faint copper of old blood from adventurers who hadn't cleaned up before coming in. Like me.
I found her partway down the counter. Brown hair, shoulder-length, tucked behind ears that came to slight points. Half-elf. Glasses. Green eyes that were already looking at me with an expression that was halfway between concern and the urge to start lecturing.
Eina Tulle. My advisor. Bell's advisor.
"Bell." She stood up from her stool when she saw me. Her eyes went to the blood on my shirt, my face, my hands. "What happened? You were only cleared for Floors 1 through 4. Please tell me you didn't go deeper."
"I didn't." I put my hands on the counter. The wood was cool. "A Minotaur got loose from a returning expedition. Found me on Floor 5."
"Floor 5 is past your-" She stopped. Processed. "A Minotaur? On the upper floors?"
"Loki Familia's expedition, I think. It escaped upward. One of their people killed it before it killed me."
Eina took off her glasses, cleaned them on her sleeve, put them back on. "Are you injured?"
"Ribs. Bruised, maybe cracked. I'll be fine."
"You need to see a healer."
"I'm going home after this. My goddess can-"
"Bell." She put both hands flat on the counter and leaned forward. "You should not be on Floor 5. Your registration is for Floors 1 through 4. Even if you didn't go there intentionally, the fact that a Middle Floor monster reached you means the upper floors weren't safe today, and you were alone, without a party, without potions, with-" she glanced at my belt, "a beginner's knife."
Bell squirmed through this lecture in the anime. Stammered apologies and stared at his shoes.
I looked at her. Let her finish. Then I said, "You're right. What should I be carrying if I want to survive that kind of encounter?"
She blinked. Her mouth, which had been open for the next sentence of the lecture, closed. She pushed her glasses up her nose.
"You... want to know what to carry?"
"Potions, backup weapons, what else? I don't want to be that unprepared again."
Eina sat back down. Slowly. She pulled a form from a stack beside her and started writing. "You'll need a minimum of two health potions per floor trip. A secondary weapon in case your primary breaks. A map of every floor you intend to visit, which you should have memorized before entering. And a supporter or party member. Ideally both."
"Eina."
She looked up. The pen stopped.
"Thank you. For taking this seriously."
The tips of her ears went pink. Faint, easy to miss if I hadn't been looking, but the half-elf ears gave her away. She looked back down at the form and her pen moved faster.
"It's my job," she said. "I don't want my adventurers dying because they weren't properly briefed."
Behind her, a girl with pink hair leaned around a filing cabinet, eyes wide. She'd been listening. When I caught her looking, she didn't even pretend she hadn't been. Just grinned and mouthed something to Eina that I couldn't read from this side of the counter.
Eina's ears went from pink to red. "Misha, don't you have filing to do?"
"Done with it," Misha said brightly. She leaned further around the cabinet. "Hi! You're Eina's adventurer, right? The new one? She talks about you."
"She does?"
"Misha." Eina's voice had a sharp edge. "He needs to go home and rest."
"I'm just saying hi!" Misha waved at me, still grinning, and ducked back behind the cabinet. I heard her laughing quietly as she went.
Eina finished writing. Tore the form off the pad. Handed it to me without meeting my eyes. "Equipment checklist. Follow it before your next Dungeon entry. And please, Bell, go see a healer about those ribs."
I took the paper. "I will. Thanks, Eina."
She adjusted her glasses again. "It's... you can call me Advisor."
"I know. Eina's easier."
Her mouth opened. Closed. She sat very straight in her chair and picked up her pen and started on the next form in the stack. "Go home, Bell."
I left. Outside the Guild, the afternoon light had shifted toward orange. A stray cat sat on the steps cleaning its paw, completely unbothered by the armed adventurer walking past it. Its ear flicked when my shadow crossed it. Nothing else.
The church was exactly what it looked like: abandoned. Broken windows, overgrown courtyard, a sanctuary that hadn't seen a service in years. But there was a hidden door at the back, and behind that door were stairs going down, and at the bottom of those stairs was where I lived now.
The basement was small. A couch that doubled as a bed, a low table, a few shelves with sparse supplies. A curtain for privacy that didn't really provide any. It smelled like old wood and candle wax, and underneath that, faintly floral. Her.
I didn't make it past the bottom step.
"Bell!"
The voice came first. High, worried, cracking on the second syllable. Then the impact. A small body hit me at center mass and arms locked around my waist and a face pressed into my chest. My ribs flared and I locked my jaw to keep the wince off my face.
She was tiny. I knew that from the anime, knew it from Bell's body memory, but knowing it and feeling it were different. The top of her head came up to my sternum. Black hair in twin-tails that fell past her hips, tied with ornaments that clinked when she moved. She was warm in a way that didn't make physical sense, like she was running a few degrees hotter than a person should. Maybe that was a god thing.
"You're hurt." She pulled back and looked up at me. Blue eyes, huge, wet. She'd been crying. "You're covered in blood, what happened, are you okay, I was so worried, you were gone too long and I couldn't-"
"Hestia." I put my hand on top of her head. Her hair was softer than hair had a right to be. "I'm fine. Most of this isn't mine."
"Most?" Her voice pitched higher. "What do you mean most?"
"A Minotaur got loose in the upper floors. Someone from Loki Familia killed it. I caught one hit to the ribs but I'm walking, I'm talking, I'm here."
She stared up at me. The tears were still there, sitting at the edges, and her lower lip was doing a thing where it couldn't decide whether to tremble or firm up. Four foot seven, thousands of years old, and she'd been sitting in this basement crying because her one adventurer came home bloody.
I let my hand stay on her head.
"I need a falna update," I said. "If you can."
She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. Sniffed. Straightened up, and even that didn't add much height. "Lie down. Shirt off. Face down."
I pulled the shirt over my head. The blood had dried and the fabric peeled off my skin with a faint tug. My right side was dark purple from the ribs down, the bruise spreading wider than I'd expected. Hestia made a sound in her throat when she saw it but didn't say anything.
I lay face-down on the couch. The cushion smelled like her.
She climbed onto the couch. Her knees settled on either side of my hips and her weight barely registered. She pricked her finger, took a small sharp breath, and then her fingertip touched the center of my back.
Warmth. Faint at first, then spreading outward from the point of contact, sinking into my muscles. The hieroglyphs activating, the Falna responding. The writing on my skin like a sunburn in reverse, heat without pain.
She was quiet while she read. Her finger traced the lines, following the script, and each pass left a trail of warmth that faded slowly. My stats, laid bare. All I-0, the absolute bottom of everything. Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Agility, Magic. Rock bottom across the board.
Then her finger stopped.
Long enough for me to feel the absence of the tracing. The warm spot on my back where her fingertip rested without moving. Her breathing caught, a half-started word swallowed.
I kept my face in the cushion. Waited.
Liaris Freese. She'd found it. I knew this part. The skill that made Bell the record-breaker, the one that scaled off how badly you wanted it. Hestia would see it and decide to hide it. Right now, on my back, in this basement.
Her finger moved again. Continued tracing like the pause hadn't happened. When she finished and pressed her palm flat against my back to seal the concealment, her hand lingered there.
Her fingers sat against the small of my back for longer than the update needed. Warm. Warmer than the Falna. Each fingertip distinct against my skin.
She was protecting me. I'd watched her do this on a screen. The lying, the hiding, the fierce little goddess who'd burn down the world for Bell Cranel before she'd let anyone take him. She was doing it right now, sitting on my hips with her hand on my bare skin.
"All I-0," she said. Her voice was steady. Almost. "No skills yet. No magic."
I didn't call her on it.
"Figured," I said into the cushion. "Guess I've got work to do."
She climbed off. I sat up, and she was standing beside the couch looking at me. Her jaw was set, her eyes still damp. She'd decided to protect me whether I wanted it or not, and it was all over her face.
"You'll get stronger," she said. "I know you will."
"Yeah." I pulled the shirt back on. It was stiff with dried blood. I'd need to wash it, or get a new one. "I plan to."
She went to the kitchenette to heat water for tea. I sat on the couch and listened to her move around the small space, opening cabinets, the click of a ceramic mug on the counter. The church basement settled around me.
I was Bell Cranel. Level 1. Zero across the board. One goddess who'd just lied to protect me, one half-elf advisor who was going to make me memorize floor maps, and a body that could dodge a Minotaur once before getting swatted into a wall.
I'd start tomorrow. Tonight I'd drink tea and let the goddess fuss over my ribs and figure out what the hell came next.
The tea was bad. Too hot, slightly bitter, the kind of thing you drink because someone made it for you. Hestia sat across the table with her own mug held in both hands, watching me over the rim, and the basement was quiet except for the sound of her blowing on the surface to cool it.
I drank it all.