The morning air over Orario carried the crisp scent of mid autumn, though the city itself was still recovering from the strange shudder that had rippled through its foundations two days prior.
To the average citizen, life resumed its rhythm as the eastern sun crested the towering walls, painting the bustling streets in a warm, amber glow.
Early risers swept their doorsteps, market vendors arranged pyramids of sun-ripened fruit, and the cheerful chirping of sparrows echoed off stone facades.
For the adventurers of the city, however, time remained frustratingly suspended.
The Dungeon remained locked down by the Guild, leaving restless veterans to nurse lingering hangovers in the dim, smoky corners of local taverns.
In a modest, rundown room, Bell was experiencing a hangover of an entirely different sort.
Groaning softly, the white-haired boy clutched his temples as if trying to physically contain a fracturing skull.
It had been an exceedingly long time since he had suffered a fever this high....a vicious, throbbing side effect of his carelessness.
"Ugh... just why did I do that? Why am I such a coward?" Bell grumbled miserably, pressing his face deep into the cushions of the sofa in a futile attempt to suffocate his own echoing remorse.
Just recalling the events of two nights ago sent a fresh wave of embarrassment flushing hot beneath his skin.
It had all started innocently…..or rather, disastrously...when Hestia had delivered the life-changing news that he had finally unlocked his own magic.
Eager, impatient, and intoxicated by the sudden acquisition of power, he had completely ignored his goddess's stern, repeated warnings.
In the dead of night, slipping past the curfew of common sense, he had snaked his way into the Dungeon.
Once inside, high on the novelty of his newfound strength, he had gone wildly overboard.
He had cast and cast until his mind was drained dry, plunging headfirst into the terrifying state of mind down.
Reflecting on it now, the cold sweat pooling at the nape of his neck felt entirely justified.
Had lady luck not intervened with absurd benevolence, he would have been digested in the belly of some wandering crawler long before midnight.
But the absurdity of his survival wasn't even the worst part.
When consciousness had slowly bled back into his limbs the following morning, he hadn't been sprawled on the cold stone of the dungeon floor.
Instead, he had found himself resting in a secure, unfamiliar room within the Guild.
And inches away...so close he could have counted her eyelashes....sat the undisputed object of his deepest adoration: Ais Wallenstein.
The cognitive dissonance had short-circuited his brain.
For one breathless, terrifying second, he had convinced himself it was all an impossibly cruel fever dream.
But then, with the gentlest rustle of fabric, Ais had reached out, her cool fingertips pressing softly against his fevered brow.
"Are you feeling better?" she had asked, her voice like wind chimes in a summer breeze.
Bell's internal workings had seized entirely.
His mind, already fragile from his recovering state of mind down, simply could not compute the reality of the situation.
The girl of his dreams, was touching him, tending to him, breathing the same air.
His hormones, whipped into a frantic tempest by a mixture of shock and panic, completely rebelled.
He had screamed.
A high, undignified shriek that rattled the rafters.
He had jolted straight up like a spring-loaded trap and bolted out the door, leaving a bewildered Ais sitting alone, her hand hovering awkwardly in empty air where his forehead had been.
After that, he had fled into the blinding sunlight, wandering the labyrinthine streets in a delirious, guilt-ridden fugue state.
It wasn't until he literally collided with a frantic, teary-eyed Hestia near the central plaza that reality had finally crashed back down.
By then, the sun was already high at its zenith.
Collapsing into his goddess's worried embrace was the last thing he remembered before blacking out properly, waking up only this morning to the slow, agonizing drip-feed of recovered memories.
"Aaaaah... I wish I could turn back time," Bell groaned, rocking back and forth on the sofa like a pendulum of despair.
"Miss Ais must think I'm completely insane."
"Huh? What on earth is wrong with you, Bell? Don't tell me you wet the sofa," a cheerful, teasing voice chimed in.
Hestia stood in the doorway of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a cloth as she appraised him with bright, inquisitive eyes.
Seeing that his fever had finally broken, the heavy knot of worry that had tied up her stomach for the past two days finally began to untie.
"No, I did not!" Bell squawked defensively, scrambling upright to salvage whatever shred of dignity he had left.
"Yeah, whatever you say," Hestia giggled, though her expression shifted subtly, the playful light in her eyes dimming into something more serious.
"That aside... you seem a lot better now. But I have to ask, Bell... where did you go two nights ago? I woke up because of that awful tremor, only to find out you weren't home."
Bell froze.
"Tremor?" he echoed blankly.
Hestia's eyes narrowed into suspicious slits.
"You didn't know?"
Everyone in Orario knew about the tremor that had shaken the city's foundations, and the heavy rumors that something catastrophic had occurred deep within the dungeon.
Yet her child, was looking at her with genuine, unfeigned confusion.
Sensing the gathering storm of his goddess's wrath and knowing full well that lying to a deity was about as effective as trying to hold water in a sieve, Bell swallowed hard and began his confession.
Word by agonizing word, he laid it all out: his reckless defiance of her warnings, his midnight descent, the manic over-exhaustion, the blacking out, and the mortifying, heart-stopping awakening in the guild with Ais.
When he finally finished, head bowed in submission, Hestia's face was a sight to behold.
First came astonishment, then relief that he wasn't dead, quickly followed by a towering, incandescent rage.
She scolded him with a passion that could have melted iron.
She yelled until her throat grew hoarse, tearing into his stupidity, his recklessness, and the
agonizing terror she had felt when she realized he had gone missing during a city-wide emergency.
But beneath her fury...and perhaps driving a good portion of it…..was a festering, irrational jealousy that he had spent the entire night in the close, personal care of the Sword Princess, even if he had been unconscious for ninety nine percent of it.
Bell offered no defense.
He simply sank to the floor, folding himself neatly into a textbook dogeza, taking the verbal lashing like a penitent monk absorbing the sins of the world.
It wasn't until Hestia had completely exhausted her supply of pent-up frustration that her shoulders slumped, her angry tirade finally petering out into a long, exhausted sigh.
She rubbed her temples, muttering something about gray hairs before her gaze finally drifted away from the trembling boy on the floor.
Her eyes landed on the ornate bound volume resting on the low wooden table...the fancy book Bell had hauled back to their home two days prior, right before everything went sideways.
"Ahem," Hestia cleared her throat, suddenly speaking in an unnaturally casual tone.
"Well... you seemed to have learned your lesson. Now go grab our breakfast from the kitchen, but before that...are you done with reading that book. Can I take a look at it now?"
"Ah... sure, go ahead," Bell mumbled as he rose to his feet.
Hestia had the morning off; her shift at the Hephaestus familia stall didn't start until noon...an indirect consequence of the Guild keeping the dungeon bolted shut.
Eager for a distraction from her lingering anxiety, she picked up the book, turning it over in her small hands to examine its craftsmanship.
"Hmmm... the more I look at it, the stranger this binding is," Hestia murmured, tracing its spine. "It's exotic... really exotic. This should be interesting."
Settling herself comfortably into the far corner of the sofa, she flipped the cover open.
Within three pages, the color completely drained from Hestia's face.
Her eyes dilated, glazing over with a look of soul-crushing horror.
It looked as though she had just been handed a tax bill for the entire wealth of a neighboring city.
Her pupils spun frantically, trying to deny reality.
"H-Huh? goddess-sama? What's wrong?" Bell asked in worry.
He had only just returned from the kitchen area with a modest plate of potato puffs and cheese, but the sight of his deity petrified like a statue made his stomach drop.
"B-Bell..." Hestia stammered, her voice trembling like a leaf in a gale.
"I... I think this might be a grimoire."
Bell blinked, his brain stalling on the unfamiliar word.
He searched the dusty archives of his memory, coming up entirely empty.
"A... grimoire? What is that?"
"Ugh!" Hestia shrieked, violently snapping the book shut and tossing it onto the cushions as if it were a venomous snake.
"It's an extremely rare item! A book that enables its reader to magic"
Bell's breath hitched.
Suddenly, the strange, lingering memory of his exit from the Hostess of Fertility two days ago flashed back into sharp, vivid relief.
He remembered the heavy, assessing looks the three beast-kin men had thrown his way, and the cryptic words one of them had tossed over her shoulder:
'Cherish that book, kid. Study it well. It just might help you survive out there along with your journey.'
"It takes someone with absurd magic control possessing the Mystery development ability, just to manufacture a single copy..." Hestia continued, hyperventilating slightly as she paced around the room.
But Bell wasn't listening to the technical explanation anymore.
His mind had zeroed in on the most terrifying concept known to a deity-and-familia pairing living in poverty.
Cost.
"Aaaaah... now it all makes sense!" Hestia wailed, grabbing her pigtails in agitation.
"That's how you learned magic so suddenly! Just how on earth did you get your hands on this?! You didn't steal it, did you, Bell?! Tell me you didn't steal!"
"Of course not!" Bell protested, waving his hands frantically.
"I borrowed it from a friend! She said it was left behind by someone else at the tavern!"
"A she?" Hestia's eyes narrowed with a fresh spike of suspicion, though Bell's expression was far too pale for her to pursue that particular thread of jealousy.
"Uhm….goddess-sama..." Bell whispered, his voice trembling as the worst-case scenario began to take root.
"...How much is it worth?"
Hestia stopped pacing.
She looked at him, swallowed hard, and held up a trembling hand.
"More than the price of the highest-quality weapon forged by Hephaestus herself...Possibly... much, much more."
Bell momentarily forgot how to breathe.
His vision swam, a dizzying cascade of zeros spinning before his eyes like a slot machine hitting disaster.
'I have to return this immediately,' was his immediate, panicky thought as his fingers reached out to gently cradle the book as if it were made of spun glass.
"By the way," Hestia added, driving the final, lethal nail into the coffin.
"A grimoire can only ever be used once. The moment the reader acquires magic, the text loses its power entirely. It becomes.....well, an ordinary piece of trash."
Bell's knees buckled.
He collapsed backward onto the floor with a dull thud.
"Ah... we're dead. We are genuinely dead."
The horrifying prospect of owing some stranger, at least three hundred million Valis...if not substantially more...was enough to induce total systemic failure.
Hestia wasn't faring much better; she stood paralyzed, staring blankly at the floor with the hollow, vacant expression of someone who had just been informed the world was ending in five minutes.
They were barely scraping by, even with Bell's increased income.
Now, on top of everything, Hestia was silently reminded of the staggering two hundred million Valis she already owed Hephaestus for Bell's custom dagger...a debt she still hadn't had the heart to confess to him.
As they both sank deeper into the murky, suffocating swamp of financial despair, Hestia suddenly snapped out of her stupor.
Her eyes locked onto Bell with an intense, manic gleam of survival.
She marched over, dropped to her knees, grabbed him by both shoulders, and forced him to look straight into her eyes.
"Listen to me very carefully, Bell," she whispered, her voice tight with desperate urgency.
"You met the owner of this book by pure accident. And….this is crucial…..you returned the book before you ever opened it. The grimoire was never, ever here in this house. Even if someone claims otherwise, the book was already used before it ever touched your hands! That is our official story. Got it?!"
Bell blinked, bewildered by the rapid assembly of a conspiracy.
"B-But, goddess... isn't that... lying? Isn't that wrong?"
"Shut up and listen!" Hestia hissed, giving his shoulders a firm shake.
"The mortal world isn't all flowers and rainbows, Bell! There are dark, ugly things out there. I've seen them with my own eyes! Being cast out of your home, forced to freeload, getting kicked out again onto the streets with nowhere to go...I was so dirt-poor I couldn't even afford the cheapest potato puffs, all while drowning under a mountain of crushing debt! The world is full of terrible injustices!"
Bell leaned back slightly, a flicker of doubt crossing his wide eyes.
"Um... wasn't all of that mostly your fault, though?"
Hestia's eye twitched.
She opened her mouth to argue, realized he was entirely correct, and quickly closed it again with a sharp cough.
"Ahem! Regardless! That's not the point!"
Ignoring her sputtering, Bell carefully scooped the book, clutching it tightly to his chest like a shield.
Determination flickered to life in his chest, cutting through the fog of his fever and the terror of debt alike.
"Anyway," Bell said firmly, standing up and heading straight for the front door, "I'm going to go straight to the pub, find the person who lent it to me, and explain everything honestly."
"Wait! Bell, stop!" Hestia scrambled to her feet, lunging forward in a desperate attempt to grab his collar.
"Please, for the love of the gods, don't try to act like a noble hero right now! Just listen to your goddess! This is a matter of life and death, bankruptcy and….!"
Her frantic pleas dissolved into the background as Bell swung the door open, letting the bright morning sunlight flood down the stairs.
He spared her one apologetic, deeply nervous smile, but his stance remained resolute.
"I have to do the right thing, goddess-sama," Bell said softly.
Before Hestia could launch another tackle, he slipped through the threshold and bolted out of the church, leaving his frantic deity alone with her worst nightmares and a rapidly expanding panic attack.