Is it Wrong to Have a Harem in Danmachi

Babel's lower floors smelled like leather and oil and the money I was about to spend. The equipment district took up floors two through four, stalls and shops crammed together along corridors wide enough for adventurers in full kit to pass each other without losing elbows. I needed new arm guards. The last pair had cracked on Floor 9 when a Silverback had caught my forearm instead of my face, which was a trade I'd take every time but it meant my left arm guard was held together by a strap and optimism.

I browsed the open racks first. Standard Guild-approved gear, decent quality, mass-produced stuff every mid-level Familia equipped its rookies with. The prices were fair and none of it was what I was looking for.

I went to the Hephaestus Familia counter.

The clerk was a dwarf with a braided beard who looked like he'd rather be forging than selling. Behind him, the display wall held weapons and armor arranged by price and tier, the expensive stuff under glass, the mid-range on open racks. Near the edges, pushed to the periphery, a few pieces sat with minimal display. Good leather. Clean stitching. Priced lower than they should have been for the quality.

"I'm looking for Welf Crozzo's work," I said.

The dwarf blinked. "The Crozzo kid?"

"Is there more than one?"

"No, but-" He scratched his beard. "Nobody asks for his stuff by name. Most people don't know it's his."

"I know."

The dwarf opened his mouth and then closed it and went to get the pieces from the edge display. While he was pulling them down, a voice came from the back of the shop, loud enough that the dwarf's shoulders went up.

"Because you PUT it on the edge! Nobody can see it when you shove it behind the Goliath-horn set! I've told you four times this week-"

A redhead came through the curtain separating the back room from the sales floor. Tall, broad-shouldered, younger than his voice suggested. He had red hair that stuck up in the front and he was carrying a breastplate in one hand and gesturing with the other and his face was flushed to match his hair.

"Ah, Crozzo," the dwarf said. "Customer for you."

Welf Crozzo stopped mid-sentence. He looked at the dwarf. He looked at me. He looked at the pieces the dwarf was setting on the counter.

"You asked for my work?" he said.

"Your arm guards. They caught my eye last time I was here."

"They were in the back last time you were here."

"I have good eyes."

He stared at me. Dark blue eyes, a little wide. I knew this moment from the anime. The smith nobody wanted, the Crozzo name that drew the wrong kind of attention, the guy who made good weapons and watched Hephaestus Familia sell them from the corner of the display case.

"Bell Cranel," I said, and put my hand out.

He shook it. Good grip, calloused, the kind of hand you get from holding hot metal. "Welf Crozzo." He said his own name like he was bracing for a reaction.

I didn't give him one. I picked up the arm guard and turned it over. The leather was treated with something that made it darker than standard, more flexible. The buckles were smithed, not stamped. The stitching was tight and even and the interior was lined with a mesh that would breathe during long fights.

"This is better than the Guild-standard stuff on the main wall," I said.

"It's not-" He stopped himself. Took a breath. "Yeah. It is."

"How much?"

He named a price that was low. I'd have paid more. I didn't say that.

"I'll take both. And I need a weapon assessment." I pulled the Hestia Knife from my belt and set it on the counter. The blade caught the shop's lamplight and the edge glowed faintly, the way it did after Dungeon use. Living metal, still warm.

Welf went still. His hand hovered over the knife without touching it. His jaw was working.

"This is a Hephaestus piece," he said. "A personal piece. She made this herself."

"She did."

"This is a living weapon." He still hadn't touched it. "Do you have any idea what-"

"Two hundred million valis and a goddess's hair. Yeah."

He looked up from the knife. The sales floor was busy around us. Adventurers were browsing, the dwarf was helping someone else, and Welf Crozzo was staring at me with the same look Riveria had given me last night at the Hostess.

"I have a proposal," he said.

We went to his forge.

It was a small space three blocks from Babel, in a row of workshops that backed up against the western wall of the Daedalus district. The forge was hot and cluttered and smelled like charcoal and the particular acid bite of quenching oil. Tools hung from pegs on the walls in an order that looked random but probably wasn't. An anvil sat in the center, blackened and dented with use. The floor was swept clean, which told me more than the clutter did.

Welf sat on a stool and put the breastplate he'd been carrying on the workbench. I leaned against the doorframe. The heat from the forge pressed against my face.

"I want a contract," he said. "Exclusive smith. I make all your weapons, armor, maintenance, repairs. In exchange, you take me into the Dungeon as a party member."

"Why can't you find a party in Hephaestus Familia?"

His jaw set. "Because I'm a Crozzo."

He told me the story. I already knew it, but I let him talk.

The first Crozzo had saved a Spirit. The Spirit had given the family the ability to forge magic swords, weapons that could unleash elemental destruction in a single strike. The descendants had sold those swords to Rakia. Rakia had used them to burn the elven forests. The Spirit and the elves had cursed the Crozzo line. The swords that had once been legendary became fragile and unreliable, broke after a few uses. Most Crozzo descendants lost the talent entirely.

Welf was the first in generations to get it back.

"They all want me to make magic swords," he said. He was looking at the forge fire while he talked, not at me. "The Familia. The other smiths. Rakia sent people after me when I left. Three times. Everyone who hears the name Crozzo sees the same thing. A magic sword factory."

"That why nobody parties with you?"

"That's part of it." He turned the breastplate over on the bench. Tapped a rivet with his thumbnail. "The other part is that everyone assumes if they dive with a Crozzo, eventually he'll forge a magic sword for them. And when he doesn't, they get pissed."

"You won't make them."

"I can't make them." He corrected himself. "I won't. I can. I choose not to."

"Why?"

"Because a magic sword breaks." He looked at me. His voice had gone flat. "Every magic sword I could make, no matter how strong, would shatter after a few uses. I refuse to forge a weapon that abandons the person holding it. That's not what a smith does."

A pigeon landed on the forge's windowsill, pecked at something, and flew off. The charcoal popped.

"Use your talent however you want," I said. "Nobody gets to tell you otherwise."

He stared at me. His hands had stopped moving on the breastplate. His mouth was slightly open.

"You mean that."

"I need a smith who takes his weapons personally. That's you. I don't need magic swords. I need a guy who'd rather starve than send someone into the Dungeon with a blade that's going to break."

He was quiet for a long time. The forge hissed. Heat pressed against us from the left and the alley air pushed in from the right and neither of us moved.

"Deal," he said.

We shook on it.

Lili was waiting at the Dungeon entrance when we arrived. She took one look at Welf, assessed him from boots to hair in about two seconds, and turned to me.

"Bell-sama recruited a man."

"A smith."

"A tall man. Who eats."

"He also forges and fights."

"Lili's budget is already tight." She looked at Welf again. "How much do you eat?"

"Normal amounts," Welf said.

"Define normal."

"Three meals a day?"

"Three large meals or three regular meals?"

"Is this-" Welf looked at me. "Is she always like this?"

"She manages the money," I said. "Answer her questions."

Lili adjusted her backpack straps and walked into the Dungeon. Welf and I followed. He had a greatsword on his back, his own make, and he moved with it comfortably. Good balance. Long stride. He kept scanning left and right at intersections, which meant he'd been in the Dungeon before, even if not recently.

Floors 7 through 10 went fast. Goblins, Killer Ants, a War Shadow that Lili spotted before either of us. Welf fought with the greatsword two-handed, heavy swings that covered a wide arc. He wasn't fast but he was strong and he read monster armor instinctively. When a Hard Armored came at him on Floor 11, he didn't try to cut through its shell. He angled his blade to catch the joint between plates and levered the whole plate off, then put the blade through the gap. The Hard Armored dropped.

"Nice," I said.

"Smiths know where the seams are," he said, and grinned.

Floor 12. Imps, Orcs, a second pack of Hard Armoreds that Lili kited into a bottleneck so Welf and I could take them one at a time. She was already managing us. Issuing positions through hand signals, adjusting the formation when corridors widened or narrowed, keeping track of drops and crystal pickups with a running count she muttered under her breath.

She'd been running parties since Soma Familia. The ones before this hadn't deserved the effort.

We cleared Floor 12 in three hours and turned back before the fatigue could catch us. Welf was breathing hard on the stairs up. I was tired but the Falna was doing its thing, the post-combat buzz that meant excelia was accumulating. Lili was carrying twice her body weight in drops and looked annoyed that we hadn't gone deeper.

"Tomorrow we push Floor 13," she said.

"Bell-sama's smith can keep up?"

Welf looked down at her. She was shoulder-high to his elbow. "I kept up today."

"Today Lili was compensating." She shifted her pack. "Tomorrow, Lili compensates less."

We sold the drops at the exchange and split the earnings three ways. Lili counted the coins, divided them, looked at Welf's share, looked at hers, and made a small sound in her throat that might have been approval.

Hestia was already cooking when we got back. She'd bought extra groceries, which meant she'd known I was bringing someone home, which meant her divine perception had picked it up from my face that morning. She'd made jagamarukun and rice and a stew that filled the basement with steam and the smell of simmering meat.

"You brought a boy!" she said when Welf ducked through the low doorway. "A boy! This is wonderful! A boy!"

"Is it that unusual?" Welf said.

"The last three people Bell brought home were girls," Lili said from behind us. "Lili, Syr at the door once, and Anya who wandered in looking for food."

"That's-" Welf looked at me.

"Don't look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you like anything."

"You're looking at me like I'm a problem."

"You brought home three girls and a goddess was already here. I'm looking at you like you're a statistic."

Hestia set bowls on the table and started ladling stew. Her twin-tails bounced with each scoop and she was humming, which she only did when she was genuinely happy. The church basement was crowded now. Welf sat at the table and his knees hit the underneath and he shifted the chair back and his shoulder bumped Lili's pack hanging from a hook on the wall.

"This place is cozy," he said.

"This place is undersized," Lili said. "Lili has mentioned this."

"This place is HOME," Hestia said firmly, setting down the biggest bowl in front of Welf with a thump. "Eat."

Welf ate. He ate a lot. Lili watched his portions with narrowed eyes, visibly recalculating the weekly food budget.

I ate my stew. It was good. Hestia had put something in it that she hadn't last time. Ginger, maybe. She was experimenting. She'd started cooking more since the Familia had grown past two, like the extra mouths justified the extra effort.

Her hip bumped mine when she reached across the table for the salt. The bump was accidental and then she left her hip against mine and it wasn't accidental anymore and she held it there for one breath before pulling back to her chair. The fabric of her dress was thin. The warmth of her body through it was specific and familiar.

Welf was telling Lili about his forge. Lili was asking about overhead costs. Neither of them was paying attention to the place where Hestia's hip had been.

I ate my stew.

After dinner, Welf went home to his workshop. The door closed behind him and the basement felt smaller with three again. Lili washed bowls. Hestia dried them. I sat at the table and cleaned the Hestia Knife with a cloth and checked the edge.

"He's good," I said.

"He eats too much," Lili said.

"He's a GOOD BOY," Hestia said. "A nice, normal, non-threatening boy who doesn't have breasts or long hair or a way of looking at my Bell that makes me want to-"

"Goddess."

"I'm just saying. A boy. Finally. One person in this Familia who isn't going to-"

"Goddess."

She dried the last bowl and put it on the shelf. She looked at me over her shoulder. Her blue eyes were warm and her lips were curved and the twin-tails hung past her shoulders and brushed the small of her back.

"Welcome home, Bell."

"I've been home for an hour."

"And I've been waiting to say it." She turned back to the shelf and her bare feet padded across the stone floor and her dress swung at her thighs with each step.

Lili dried her hands. Her brown eyes tracked Hestia's bare legs and then tracked to me and her expression was blank. Deliberately blank.

I finished cleaning the knife. Put it on the table. Lay down on the floor.

The church was quiet. Hestia took the couch. Lili took the cot. The Dungeon hummed underneath.

Party of three now. Plus a goddess. The church basement was getting crowded.