Author: I was thinking of making a reaction from the public about Yuuya's return but unfortunately, my brain is empty ;-;
I don't know how I should create the reactions and if I follow through with it, it'll just turn out as a filler. So ultimately, I decided against it.
Just imagine the majority of Orario losing their shit's lol.
∆∆∆∆
The morning sun continued its slow ascent, casting a warm, golden glow across the upper floor of the Hearth Manor.
Inside the bedroom, the heavy storm of tears had finally subsided, leaving behind a profound, peaceful stillness.
The monumental weight of a seven year misunderstanding had been thoroughly washed away, replaced by the quiet comfort of a mother and son simply existing in the same space.
Eventually, the quiet rumble of Bell's stomach broke the silence, prompting a faint, genuine laugh from Alfia.
It was time for breakfast.
However, a practical hurdle remained. While the emotional wounds were rapidly healing, Alfia's physical body was still fundamentally weak. The lingering numbness from a seven year stasis deep within the seventieth floor meant her legs were entirely incapable of supporting her own weight.
Yuuya, who had re-entered the room a few moments prior, leaned casually against the doorframe. He looked at the two of them, a soft smirk playing on his lips.
"I could carry you down, Alfia." Yuuya offered smoothly, though his eyes darted deliberately toward the white haired boy sitting on the edge of the mattress. "But I think there's someone else here who is far more qualified for the job. You've carried him enough times in the past. It's his turn."
Bell blinked, realizing exactly what Yuuya meant. He stood up instantly, his eyes shining with a sudden, eager determination. Without waiting for her permission, Bell carefully leaned over the bed. He slid one strong arm smoothly beneath her knees and the other around her back, effortlessly lifting the legendary Level 7 adventurer into a gentle bridal carry.
"Bell, wait—" Alfia gasped, instinctively wrapping her arms around his neck as she was lifted into the air. A fierce blush immediately bloomed across her pale cheeks. The sheer indignity of being carried like a fragile maiden was completely at odds with her terrifying legacy. "Put me down, you foolish child! I am perfectly capable of crawling if I must!"
"No way." Bell replied, his voice completely devoid of its usual stuttering panic. Instead, his tone held a grounded, unwavering confidence. "You're too light, Mom. You barely weigh anything at all. I've got you."
Alfia opened her mouth to issue a scathing reprimand, perhaps a threat involving her gospel magic, but the words completely died in her throat.
She looked up at Bell's face. The boy she remembered was small, fragile, and clumsy. The young man holding her now didn't tremble under her weight; his arms were entirely steady, fueled by the hard earned strength of a Level 3 who had clawed his way through the jaws of death.
He truly had become strong.
Defeated by her own overwhelming pride in him, Alfia let out a soft, defeated sigh. She leaned her head gently against his chest, allowing herself to be carried out of the bedroom and down the grand staircase of the manor.
The dining room of the Hearth Manor was usually a space of boisterous chaos, filled with the clinking of plates, loud arguments over food portions, and Hestia's bickering with Lili. But as Bell carried Alfia through the arched doorway, the room fell into a breathless hush.
The long oak table was already set with a lavish breakfast spread—steaming bowls of stew, freshly baked bread, roasted meats, and scrambled eggs. But no one was looking at the food.
Hestia sat at the head of the table, her blue eyes soft and welcoming. Beside her, Lili, Welf, Mikoto, and Haruhime stood up from their chairs, their gazes fixed entirely on the silver haired woman in Bell's arms. They had all heard Bell's agonizing story in the abandoned church from Hestia. They knew the ghost that haunted his every step. Seeing her in the flesh felt like witnessing a myth stepping out of a history book.
Bell carefully walked over to a plush, cushioned chair near the center of the table and gently set Alfia down. He adjusted the Goliath scarf around her shoulders to ensure she was warm before taking the seat directly beside her.
Yuuya stepped into the dining room, taking a spot leaning against the wall where he could oversee the entire table.
"Everyone." Yuuya began, his voice calm and authoritative, shattering the frozen tension in the room. "You already know the basic facts, but formal introductions are still required. This is the passenger I brought back from the deep floors."
Alfia straightened her posture. Even dressed in an oversized shirt and wrapped in a monster hide, wrapped in the lingering frailty of her stasis, her legendary presence was entirely undeniable. She looked around the table, her heterochromatic eyes scanning the faces of the adventurers who fought beside her nephew.
"My name is Alfia." She spoke, her raspy voice carrying a dignified poise. "Sister of Meteria, and the guardian who raised Bell."
She paused, her gaze narrowing slightly as she addressed the undeniable elephant in the room.
"I am also fully aware of the legacy my name carries in this city. I am the remnant of the Hera Familia. The mage known as Silence."
Welf's breath hitched, his eyes widening in sheer awe. As a smith and a warrior, he knew exactly what that title meant.
"The Level 7... The absolute pinnacle of magic..."
Mikoto immediately dropped into a bow, her discipline demanding absolute respect for a warrior of such unfathomable caliber.
"It is a profound honor to receive you in our home, Lady Alfia."
Haruhime's fox ears twitched nervously, though she offered a deep, graceful bow as well.
"W-Welcome, Lady Alfia. We are incredibly blessed to have you here."
Lili stood silently for a moment, her mind racing to calculate the sheer political and martial weight currently sitting at their breakfast table. But as the small Prum looked past the titles and saw the radiant joy radiating from Bell's face, her expression melted into a soft, genuine smile.
"We have heard a great deal about you, Alfia-sama." Lili said politely. "Bell-sama has missed you terribly. Welcome back to the surface."
Hestia smiled warmly from the head of the table.
"You are family here, Alfia. Whatever happened in the past doesn't matter inside these walls. Eat, rest, and recover. That is an order from the Goddess of this house."
Alfia's rigid shoulders relaxed fractionally. She had expected fear, judgment, or at the very least, severe apprehension. Instead, she found a strange, mismatched family that looked at her not as a monster, but as the missing piece of their family member's heart.
"Thank you." Alfia murmured, her voice carrying a rare, quiet sincerity.
"Alright, the food is getting cold." Yuuya announced, gesturing toward the spread. "Dig in."
The Familia took their seats, and the sounds of silverware and passing plates quickly filled the room.
However, when Alfia reached forward to grasp a spoon for her stew, her fingers violently trembled. The nerve from her prolonged isolation in the crystal made her grip incredibly weak; the silver spoon clattered loudly against the rim of her bowl, refusing to be lifted.
She frowned, a flash of deep, frustrated humiliation crossing her features. She reached for it again, but a hand gently caught her wrist.
"I've got it, Mom." Bell said softly.
Before Alfia could protest, Bell picked up her bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other. He scooped up a portion of the warm stew, blew on it gently to cool it down, and held it out toward her mouth.
Alfia stared at the spoon, her face instantly turning a brilliant shade of crimson.
"Absolutely not." Alfia hissed quietly, her pride flaring like a struck match. "I am not an invalid toddler. I will not be spoon fed in the middle of a dining room in front of a Goddess and her entire kin! The mere thought is a disgrace!"
"But your hands are still shaking." Bell pointed out rationally.
"They will stabilize!" She shot back stubbornly. "Put the bowl down, Bell."
Bell didn't put the bowl down.
Instead, he deployed a technique he had unknowingly perfected over the past seven years. He lowered the spoon slightly, tilting his head. His bright, ruby eyes widened, catching the morning light perfectly. His expression morphed into one of pure, earnest, unadulterated hope—the look of a boy who simply wanted to take care of the mother he had just gotten back.
"Please, Mom?" Bell whispered, his voice incredibly soft and utterly devastating. "Just for today? Let me take care of you for once."
It was a critical, unavoidable strike.
The Silence of Hera, a woman capable of leveling entire city districts with a single spell, crumbled instantly under the sheer, concentrated power of a puppy dog pout.
Alfia let out a long, agonizing groan of pure defeat, burying her face in her hands for a fleeting second before leaning forward and aggressively eating the stew from the spoon.
Yuuya turned his head toward the wall, biting the inside of his cheek to suppress a massive burst of laughter. Across the table, Welf was doing the exact same thing, while Lili just shook her head in sheer amusement. Bell, entirely oblivious to his own terrifying charm, simply beamed a bright, happy smile and scooped up another spoonful.
As breakfast continued, the natural rhythm of the Hestia Familia slowly reasserted itself. Welf began loudly regaling a story about his latest failure in the forge, Hestia and Lili engaged in a rapid fire bickering as usual, and Haruhime quietly offered everyone more tea. It was a loud, chaotic, and entirely undisciplined environment.
Yuuya pushed off the wall and walked over to the table, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He looked down at Alfia, who was methodically chewing the food Bell provided her.
"So, how are you holding up with the environment?" Yuuya asked, his tone shifting into a more observant register. "I know your history perfectly well, Alfia. You are a lover of silence by nature. Back in the day, you were notoriously famous for blasting your own Familia members through walls if they breathed too loudly or disrupted your reading. Are they too noisy for you?"
The table quieted down slightly, suddenly hyper aware of the fact that they might be irritating a woman who could vaporize the entire manor.
Alfia swallowed her food, her gaze sweeping over the mismatched group of adventurers. She listened to the clinking of the plates, the shifting of wooden chairs, and the lingering echoes of their laughter.
"They are incredibly noisy." Alfia stated flatly. "They possess absolutely zero refinement, their voices overlap terribly, and this dining room feels more like a chaotic marketplace than a proper household."
Welf grimaced, and Mikoto looked down apologetically.
"However..." Alfia continued, her voice dropping into a solemn, heavy quiet that commanded the complete attention of the room. "It is entirely bearable."
She looked down at her hands, the memory of the deep abyss flashing briefly behind her eyes.
"For the majority of my life, I sought silence." Alfia murmured, her tone devoid of its usual bite, replaced by a lingering, haunting sorrow. "I believed that silence was the only true sanctuary. But for the last seven years, I was trapped in a crystal on the seventieth floor. I could not move. I could not speak. The only thing I had was the absolute, crushing silence of the abyss. It was an ocean of sensory deprivation that slowly drowned my mind."
She looked back up, her heterochromatic eyes locking onto Yuuya's, radiating a profound realization.
"The silence I so desperately sought back then no longer feels like a sanctuary, Yuuya. It just reminds me of my long isolation. It reminds me of the cold, and of death."
Alfia turned her gaze back to the Familia, her expression softening into something incredibly raw and honest.
"So, at least until I recover my mental fortitude entirely... I do not mind the noise. In fact, I believe I prefer it. It reminds me that I am alive, and that I am home. I will continue to bear it without complaint, even after my strength fully returns."
A collective breath of relief washed over the table. Bell smiled brightly, scooping up another spoonful of stew for her, clearly thrilled that she was accepting his new family so easily.
"Well, that's good to hear." Yuuya chuckled, taking a sip of his coffee. "I was worried I'd have to rebuild the walls every other week. Perhaps, every single day even."
"Do not misunderstand me, Yuuya." Alfia interrupted, her eyes suddenly narrowing into a dangerous, glacial glare that sent a chill running down the spines of everyone at the table. Her voice dropped back into the terrifying tone she was well known for. "This unprecedented tolerance is strictly reserved for the people sitting in this exact room."
She elegantly wiped her mouth with a napkin, her aura flaring with a fraction of her former, terrifying glory.
"If a single outside adventurer, an arrogant god, or a bureaucratic fool tests my patience with their meaningless clamor... I make absolutely no promises regarding my restraint. I will happily reduce them to ash before they can finish their sentence."
Yuuya threw his head back and laughed aloud, the sound echoing warmly through the dining room. Bell simply sweatdropped, offering an awkward, apologetic smile to the rest of the table, though he didn't stop feeding her. The legendary monster of the Dark Age had returned, but as she sat surrounded by the chaotic warmth of the Hestia Familia, it was clear that her terrifying power was now calmed down by the one thing that truly mattered.
Then out of nowhere, the peaceful, albeit fragile, domesticity of the dining room was shattered without a single shred of warning.
The side doors leading to the courtyard didn't just open; they practically burst off their latches with a dramatic swirl.
Standing in the threshold, completely unannounced and grinning from ear to ear, was the traveler god himself.
Hermes adjusted the brim of his feathered hat, his bright orange eyes scanning the room until they locked directly onto the silver haired woman sitting next to Bell.
"Well, well, well! I just had to see it with my own two eyes!" Hermes announced, his voice booming across the room with his signature, theatrical volume. "Alfia! You've truly returned from the dead! Wait until the rest of the—"
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
To Hestia and Lili, the open windows facing the main street loomed like a death sentence. The public could absolutely not find out about Alfia yet.
Operating on pure survival instinct and completely unaware that Yuuya had already cleared the air with Hermes in the prayer chambers, the Goddess and her advisor moved as a single, terrifying unit.
Before Hermes could even register the shift in the room, two figures blurred across the dining floor.
BAM.
Hestia's small, divine fist and Lili's tightly clenched, panicked hand connected simultaneously and squarely into the exact center of Hermes' solar plexus.
The traveler god's orange eyes practically bulged out of his skull. The air left his lungs in a single, pathetic, wheezing 'Oof'. His entire body instantly folded in two like a cheap lawn chair.
For a half-second, he hovered in mid-air, completely winded, before crashing face first onto the polished hardwood floor with a tragic, hollow thud. His feathered hat rolled mockingly away from his twitching fingers.
"Lili! He saw her! He knows!" Hestia shrieked, instantly dropping to her knees beside the crumpled god and grabbing her own pigtails in pure panic. "The windows are wide open! Do you think the neighbors heard him shout her name?!"
"Calm down, Goddess! We cannot let the panic compromise our security!" Lili hissed back, her face pale as she violently pulled the heavy velvet curtains shut over the courtyard doors. She turned around, her eyes darting frantically from Hermes' twitching back to the kitchen entry. "We need to neutralize the leak immediately! Where should we hide his body?!"
"Is he dead?!" Hestia wailed, poking Hermes' shoulder with the tip of her index finger. "I think we winded him too hard! Can a god die from a dual gut punch?!"
"He's a god, he'll survive! But his mouth won't stay shut!" Lili countered aggressively, already scanning the dining room for anything resembling a binding agent. "Should we tie him up? We have to keep him contained! How many days are left until the Denatus?! Can we keep a major deity hostage in the manor for that long?!"
While the two of them sprinted around the crumpled traveler god in a frantic circle of pure paranoia, Haruhime quietly stepped forward from the side of the table. She held a steaming ceramic teapot securely against her chest, her fox ears tilting at a polite, thoughtful angle as she looked down at the groaning deity.
"Um... if I may offer a suggestion, Goddess Hestia, Miss Lili." Haruhime spoke up, her voice entirely sweet, calm, and terrifyingly innocent given the context. "The basement is quite spacious. The stone walls are remarkably thick, so if we were to secure him down there, it should completely muffle any... unseemly noises until the Denatus."
Welf nearly choked on his piece of roasted meat, coughing violently as he stared at the Renard.
"Haruhime?! Where did that come from?!"
Mikoto, ever the loyal companion, simply nodded.
"A sound assessment. I will fetch the heavy duty rope from the equipment shed."
"Wait, wait! Everyone, stop!" Bell yelled, completely frozen in his chair with the spoon still hovering halfway to Alfia's mouth.
His ruby eyes were wide with a mixture of sheer panic and utter bewilderment at his Familia's sudden transition into a criminal syndicate.
"We can't kidnap Lord Hermes! Put the rope down, Mikoto-san!"
From his spot against the wall, Yuuya raised a hand and slowly dragged his palm down his face, letting out a heavy, exhausted sigh.
Beside him, Alfia stared down at the twitching, wheezing form of the god on the floor. Her heterochromatic eyes held a mixture of deep disgust and mild amusement at the sheer, uncoordinated chaos of the Hestia Familia. She elegantly took another bite of the stew Bell was holding, entirely unbothered by the divine hostage crisis unfolding at her feet.
"Can someone... please get the number of the chariot that just ran me over?" Hermes wheezed from the floor, his fingers twitching against the hardwood as he slowly rolled onto his back. He clutched his stomach, his face still twisted in a grimace of pure agony. "I am a messenger of heaven... a god of travel... I shouldn't be subjected to synchronized assault before noon."
"Stand down, both of you." Yuuya said, finally stepping forward from the wall and waving a dismissive hand at Hestia and Lili.
He reached down and effortlessly hoisted the groaning deity back onto his feet.
"He isn't going to leak anything. I already went down to the prayer chambers and cleared the situation with him, Ouranos, and Fels this morning. Hermes is actively handling the information control to rewrite public perception."
Hestia blinked, her jaw dropping as she looked between Yuuya and the wheezing god.
"Wait... he already knows? You mean we didn't need to ambush him?"
"A warning would have been nice, Yuuya!" Hermes lamented, gingerly rubbing his bruised midsection as he retrieved his feathered hat from the floor and dusted it off. "I come here out of the goodness of my divine heart to personally check on an old acquaintance, and your Familia tries to turn me into a permanent basement resident!"
Lili let out a long, deflated sigh, her shoulders dropping as she aggressively smoothed down her skirt.
"You should have knocked like a civilized person, Lord Hermes. Sneaking into our manor and shouting the name of a classified individual is a sequence of actions practically begging for a violent response."
Mikoto silently stepped back toward the door, subtly sliding the coil of heavy-duty rope behind her back— looking suspiciously disappointed. While Haruhime offered a deeply apologetic bow, her fox ears drooping in embarrassment over her surprisingly good kidnapping suggestion.
With the misunderstanding resolved, the thick layer of criminal panic completely evaporated from the dining room, allowing the members of the Hearth Familia to tentatively return to their breakfast.
Alfia, however, didn't spare a single ounce of sympathy for the suffering deity. She leaned back against the plush cushions of her chair, her heterochromatic eyes narrowing into an ice cold stare as she watched Hermes attempt to regain his lost dignity.
She knew this specific god entirely too well. Long before the dark age of Orario, back when the Zeus and Hera Familias stood at the absolute pinnacle of the world, Hermes had been a constant, irritating fixture around their quarters.
He wasn't just a casual associate; he had been Zeus's ultimate partner in crime, a degenerate accomplice who spent an absurd amount of time helping the old god scheme, plot, and execute elaborate operations to peek into the women's bathhouses. Alfia had lost count of the number of times she had been forced to unleash her sound magic just to blast both Zeus and a frantically fleeing Hermes through the outer walls of the compound.
True to her nature, the lingering vulnerability she had shown to Bell completely vanished, replaced instantly by the sharp, tongue lashing personality Hermes knew from the golden age.
"You are still just as loud, obnoxious, and utterly lacking in basic decorum as I remember, Hermes." Alfia remarked, her raspy voice dripping with absolute disdain. She elegantly tilted her chin up, looking down her nose at him. "Seven years in the dark, and the first thing I am forced to endure upon my return is the grating sound of your voice echoing through a private residence. Some things truly never change."
A collective shiver ran down Hermes' spine. A massive bead of nervous sweat formed on the back of his neck as he looked at her sharp features and the authority radiating from her posture.
'And you're still as incredibly bitchy as I remembered.' Hermes thought to himself, a dry, completely panicked smile freezing onto his face. 'A literal seven year stasis on the seventieth floor, her lungs are half ruined, she can't even hold her own spoon, and she still possesses the exact same terrifying, dragon like temperament. Some things really never change.'
Alfia's left eye twitched. Her gray and green gaze locked onto his shifting pupils with the precision of a hunting hawk, her intuition picking up on the sudden, subtle shift in his aura.
"Did you just think of something incredibly insulting regarding me, Hermes?" Alfia asked, her voice dropping into a dangerously quiet, low register that caused the temperature in the dining room to plummet.
"What!? Me? Never! Not at all, Lady Alfia!" Hermes frantically exclaimed, his hands waving in front of his chest in a desperate display of denial.
He took a step backward, his boots clicking nervously against the floorboards as cold sweat began to drench his collar. He knew perfectly well that even if her physical body was currently immobilized, the chantless speed of her Gospel magic could still launch him straight through the dining room window and into the main street before Yuuya could even attempt to intervene.
"I was merely reflecting on your radiant and completely unchanged presence! Truly, the light of the Hera Familia remains completely undiminished by time! Ha... ha... ha..."
Alfia didn't press the matter any further, recognizing that executing a god over a silent thought would complicate Yuuya's carefully structured political plans with the Guild. But she didn't break her gaze either. She maintained a piercing glare that remained locked onto Hermes' face like a loaded crossbow, silently letting him know that if he took a single step out of line, his divinity wouldn't save him from a swift, agonizing lesson in silence.
∆∆∆∆
Right after that, the dining room table was swiftly cleared of its breakfast spread, the plates and bowls replaced by an atmosphere that is thick and heavy.
Alfia remained seated in her chair, her posture rigid despite her physical weakness.
Standing a few feet away, Hermes leaned against the wall, his usual jovial demeanor completely erased. His orange eyes were narrowed, intensely focused on Yuuya.
As an associate of Zeus, Hermes knew exactly of Alfia's incurable disease. He had stayed behind entirely for this moment, desperate to witness how this anomaly of an adventurer planned to cure an impossible illness.
Surrounding the table, the members of the Hestia Familia stood in a tense, protective circle. Bell stood closest to his mother, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. Lili, Welf, Mikoto, and Haruhime held their breath, their eyes locked on Yuuya.
Yuuya stood directly in front of Alfia, a faint, pure white light already beginning to gather in the palms of his hands.
'Back when I first created this magic to heal Bell, I only intended it to be a one time use.' Yuuya thought, his internal monologue steady as he looked down at his glowing hands. 'That was the absolute minimum requirement for me to be able to conceptualize and create this magic. So when I successfully forged it, I was surprised as to why the system indicated it could be used twice. Back then, the system and I thought it must be a glitch, or a hidden bonus, and I never thought about it ever since.'
He looked up, meeting Alfia's guarded, heterochromatic eyes. While his mind views the new chant for the spell.
'But now... looking at her, as well as the full chant in my mind, I now understand why. The universe truly has a twisted sense of humor.'
Yuuya can't help but chuckle a bit.
'This spell really is made for you, Alfia. Even the chant is a contradiction of Genos Angelus.'
Yuuya took a steadying breath.
'This will be quite painful.'
And looked toward the Goddess of the Hearth.
"Let's begin, Goddess." Yuuya said, his voice quiet but echoing with authority.
Hestia nodded solemnly. She retrieved a small, sterilized silver needle from her pocket. She pressed the needle down. A single, perfectly spherical drop of glowing, divine blood welled up on her skin and fell through the air.
But before the drop of ichor could even land on Alfia, Yuuya raised his hands, and the room was instantly swallowed by a blinding wave of mana.
•O Primordial Silence, the canvas upon which the Gods first carved the world, hear the plea of the fleeting and the heartbeat of the one born in shadow.•
The drop of Hestia's blood halted in mid-air. It was immediately drawn into the radiant light glowing between Yuuya's hands, absorbing the divine property and igniting the spell with a pulse of pure energy that rattled the very foundations of the Hearth Manor.
•I call upon the Root of the Great Tree and the source of the silver river that flows through every soul.•
•The boundaries are drawn, the seals are set, and the destiny of the twin stars was written in tragedy.•
Yuuya's voice swelled, the white light illuminating the entire room.
•I stand at the precipice of the end as the final guardian of a miracle that must not be forgotten. O Great Spirit of the Beginning, lend me the ink to rewrite a single line of existence.•
The incurable disease inside Alfia's body flared violently, fighting back against the encroaching light. She grimaced, clutching her chest, while Bell immediately placed his hand over her shoulder.
•I look upon the 'Blessing of the root of evil' and I call it a Lie!•
Yuuya commanded, the mana pressure cracking the wooden floorboards beneath his boots.
•I look upon the 'Curse of birth' and I name it a Trial that is now Concluded. The 'Original sin' that devoured half of your body shall be cast into the abyss!•
The dark, corrupted veins that had faintly marred Alfia's pale skin for years began to aggressively recede, boiling away under the purifying light.
Hermes gasped, pushing off the wall. The sheer scale of the incantation was already dwarfing the standard boundaries of mortal magic. Alfia's eyes widened in disbelief as she listens at the chant. Specifically, how it includes parts of the chant of her Genos Angelus.
•It is no longer hard. There is now purification. There is now salvation. The resonance of this heavenly sound is no longer your sin, but your sanctuary. O trumpet of gods, find a new melody. O lyre of spirits, strike a chord of life!•
Tears pricked at Bell's eyes as he felt the agonizing, deathly cold aura that had haunted his mother's body his entire life finally begin to shatter.
•The melody of light is no longer a seal, but the dawn of a day that never ends. You are no longer loved by a miniature garden that demands your death; you are loved by the world that demands your survival!•
Yuuya's expression tightened into a grimace of exertion. The spell was reaching its end, and the toll was demanding its payment.
•I reject the price. I deny the 'compensation' that demands your blood for your power. The 'Limit' is shattered, but the 'Cost' is erased. Remain at the pinnacle, stand atop the clouds of the highest heavens, but walk upon the earth with the breath of the living!•
The light intensified into a blinding, miniature sun in the center of the dining room.
•Let the 'Gif Blessing' be stripped of its thorns; let the roses of your strength bloom without the blood of your heart. I sever the link between your magic and your mortality. I tear the shroud of the 'Shattered Destiny' and weave a cloak of eternal health!•
Without breaking the chant, Yuuya drew a sharp, silver edged dagger from his belt with his right hand.
•Through my flesh,•
Yuuya aimed the cold edge of the blade directly at his own left wrist.
•The vessel of this final miracle; through my blood,•
With a swift, unflinching motion, he sliced the blade across his veins.
Blood sprayed into the air, but it did not fall to the floor. The moment the red droplets left his skin, they were absorbed by the blinding white light of the spell, merging the mortal sacrifice with the divine catalyst.
•The ink for this final script!•
•Through my soul, the bridge that will now crumble into dust!•
Yuuya roared, his face paling significantly as the spell actively reached into his chest, tearing away a literal, metaphysical fragment of his own soul to bridge the gap.
Hermes removed his hat, staring in reverent awe. He was watching a mortal perform an act of divine salvation that even the heavens would deem impossible.
•This is the last light of my spirit, the final spark of my divinity!•
Yuuya's voice boomed, carrying the weight of a decree.
•For the boy who carries the bell, and for the woman who guarded the tower—let the silence of the sickroom be replaced by the roar of the living! Cry no more, O holy bell tower, for the tolling of death has been silenced forever!•
Yuuya lunged forward, slamming his bleeding, glowing hands directly onto Alfia's chest, right over her heart.
•I offer my beginning and my end to grant you your today. Collapse, O walls of fate! Arise, O Unfettered Maiden of Silence!•
The magic reached its absolute breaking point, the mana density exploding outward in a shockwave that blew the velvet curtains straight off their iron rods.
•Soul Heal: Aeterna Redemptionem!•
The words left Yuuya's lips not as a shout, but as a absolute decree that shattered the silence of the room.
The blinding column of white light surrounding Alfia suddenly fractured, bursting into millions of microscopic, crystalline shards that swirled through the dining room like a blizzard.
Inside Alfia's body, the change was instantaneous. The pitch black, corrupted veins of the illness suddenly ignited with an ethereal, silver fire.
The dark corruption didn't just recede, it shattered. The silver fire consumed the curse from the inside out, turning the incurable disease into a glittering, radiant mist of stardust. This mist poured out of her pores, dissipating harmlessly into the morning air. A profound, pristine shockwave of pure mana rippled outward, rattling the windowpanes and clearing the heavy scent of copper from the room.
Alfia gasped, her chest heaving as the suffocating weight that had crushed her lungs since the day she was born vanished entirely. Her heterochromatic eyes, once cloudy and shadowed by the dull film of chronic pain, flared with a brilliant, crystalline clarity.
The deathly, translucent pallor of her skin was instantly replaced by a healthy, porcelain luster. Her soul, which had been tethered to a rotting vessel for decades, was suddenly untethered, floating in a state of unblemished purity.
The blinding light faded, leaving the dining room in a dead, breathless silence.
Yuuya stood perfectly still in front of her, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged intervals. A soft, emerald green light began to flicker around his sliced left wrist—his innate, passive regeneration skill instantly activating to knit the severed flesh and replenish his depleted mana pool.
"It's done..." Yuuya rasped, his voice incredibly hollow, sounding as though it were echoing from the bottom of a deep well. "The disease... is completely gone."
He took a single step backward, intending to reassure the trembling Bell, but his legs suddenly turned to water.
Thud.
Yuuya collapsed heavily onto his knees, his palms slamming against the hardwood floor to catch his weight. The moment his hands touched the ground, the light around his wrist shattered like brittle glass. The half healed laceration tore right back open, dark red blood beginning to sluggishly ooze across his skin once more.
"Yuuya?!" Hestia shrieked, her voice thick with immediate panic as she took a step forward.
Before anyone could reach him, a wave of unnatural heat erupted from the core of Yuuya's being. His skin flushed into a burning crimson, and visible wisps of steam began to rise from his collar and shoulders. A sudden, lethal fever was consuming him.
He clutched his throat with his right hand, his back arching as a violent, hacking spasm racked his chest.
"Cough! Cough!"
He doubled over, his forehead nearly touching the floorboards as the coughing fit escalated into a desperate, choking gasp. A second later, he convulsed, violently vomiting. But what splattered heavily across the floor wasn't food or stomach acid—it was a thick, dark pool blood.
This was the true recoil of the miracle. To completely heal Alfia's incurable disease, Yuuya hadn't just drained his mind to the brink of Mind Down state. He had willingly surrendered a literal, metaphysical fragment of his own soul, flesh, and blood. The fever, the failed regeneration, the internal hemorrhaging—it was the bare minimum payment the world demanded for fracturing the laws of fate.
"No, no, no!" Bell cried out, his voice cracking as he reached out, completely torn between supporting his mother and rushing to his captain.
"Yuuya!"
Alfia's voice, now clear and devoid of the raspy weight of her illness, pierced through the ringing in Yuuya's ears. Across the table, a loud crash echoed through the room.
Alfia, watching the young man who had just granted her salvation drown in his own blood, completely forgot her pride. She didn't wait for Bell to carry her. She didn't care about the onlookers. But while her internal biology was completely cured, her external muscles, simply could not respond to her commands yet.
With a desperate, panicked grunt, Alfia pitched her entire upper body forward, throwing herself completely out of the cushioned dining chair. She slammed heavily onto the hard floor, the Goliath scarf unraveling from her shoulders as she hit the wood.
She didn't hesitate for a single fraction of a second. Digging her fingernails fiercely into the cracks of the floorboards, Alfia dragged the dead weight of her lower body across the room, leaving a faint trail of dust behind her as she clawed her way toward him.
"Yuuya!" She rasped, her voice trembling with a raw, desperate terror she hadn't felt since the fall of the Hera Familia. "You fool! What have you done?!"
She reached his side, her pale hands slamming onto his burning shoulders to hold him upright. The moment her skin made contact with his, she violently flinched. The heat of his fever practically scalded her palms, yet she refused to let go, gripping his shirt with all the strength she could muster.
Yuuya's vision was rapidly failing, the edges of his sight being swallowed by darkness. The agonizing toll on his soul was pulling him under, but with the very last ounce of his fading consciousness, he forced his heavy eyelids open. He tilted his chin up, his dull, dark eyes locking onto her face one last time.
The proximity brought their gazes into a silent mirror.
In his fading, dark eyes, Alfia could see her own reflection—her brilliant gray and green eyes wide, wild, and completely terrified, filled with a desperate, frantic panic for his life.
And in her newly clarified, beautiful eyes, Yuuya saw himself—broken, bleeding, and entirely spent, yet his face held nothing but a quiet, profound sense of triumph.
A weak, blood stained smile twitched on Yuuya's lips. He reached up, his fingers leaving a faint red smudge on her cheek as he brushed a stray hair away.
"I knew it..." Yuuya whispered, his voice barely a breath, fading against the frantic shouts of the Familia gathering around them. "Your eyes... they look so much more beautiful... without that illness..."
He didn't see the tears that finally spilled from her eyes. He didn't hear Bell's frantic shouting or Hestia's command to get the healers. The bridge of his soul had finally crumbled into dust, and as the darkness claimed him, his last thought was a simple, quiet satisfaction.
The Silence was gone, and the woman was finally free.
His hand lost all its strength, falling limply to the floor with a soft slap. His eyelids fluttered shut, his consciousness completely severed, rendering him entirely unconscious as the room dissolved into absolute chaos.
Unbeknownst to the frantic members of the Hestia Familia inside the dining room, the sheer density of the spell Yuuya had just unleashed did not remain confined within the stone walls of the manor.
The moment the curse shattered, the excess mana had nowhere else to go but up. A blinding, pure white pillar of concentrated magical energy pierced straight through the ceiling, phasing through the roof tiles and shooting directly into the clear morning sky of Orario.
To anyone standing on the bustling streets, the visual was unmistakable and utterly terrifying. It looked exactly like the divine pillar of light that erupts when a deity is fatally struck and forced to return to the heavens.
For three breathless seconds, the entire labyrinth city completely stopped. Merchants dropped their crates, adventurers froze mid-step, and the gods lounging in their towering penthouses spilled their wine as they rushed to their balconies. The epicenter of the blast was immediately identified.
Within moments, a tidal wave of panic and morbid curiosity began surging toward the Hearth Manor.
Inside the ruined dining room, the heavy, suffocating scent of ozone and spilled blood completely overpowered the aroma of their abandoned breakfast.
Alfia sat frozen on the floor, her arms wrapped instinctively around Yuuya's collapsing frame. His head rested heavily against her shoulder, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by a thick, unnatural sweat. The heat radiating from his skin was no longer just a fever; it felt like holding a living furnace.
Before Alfia could even attempt to shift his dead weight, a flash of white and gold blurred past her vision. Haruhime, completely abandoning her usual timid and reserved nature, dropped sharply to her knees beside them. The Renard didn't ask for permission. She reached out, pressing her soft, delicate palm directly against Yuuya's forehead. Haruhime hissed, instantly recoiling as if she had just touched an iron stove.
"His internal temperature is too high!" Haruhime cried out, her fox ears flattening against her head in terror.
Without waiting for a single order, she scrambled to her feet, her sandals slapping frantically against the floorboards as she sprinted toward the kitchen to secure a basin of ice water and clean rags.
"Move, Bell, give us space!" Welf ordered. He slid across the floor, his knees hitting the wood right beside Yuuya's bleeding left arm.
Mikoto was right behind him. She didn't waste a second on panic. She immediately clamped her hands down hard just below Yuuya's elbow, acting as a human tourniquet to slow the blood flow. Welf frantically tore a long, thick strip of clean linen from the inner lining of his smithing coat, rapidly binding the deep, self inflicted laceration across Yuuya's wrist that refused to trigger its usual regeneration.
"It's not stopping." Mikoto gritted her teeth, her hands slipping slightly against the sheer volume of crimson coating his arm.
Lili stood a few feet away, her small hands trembling as she watched the captain of their Familia bleed out on the dining room floor. Her mind, usually sharp and calculated, was fracturing under the weight of the crisis.
"Goddess!" Lili shouted, spinning around to face Hestia, her voice pitching into a desperate, frantic squeak. "We cannot handle this! I need to run to the Dian Cecht Familia immediately and drag Airmid or one of their elite healers back here!"
Hestia's eyes wide with horror as she stared at the pool of blood expanding beneath Yuuya, nodded her head in a rapid, jerky motion.
"Yes! Yes, go, Lili!" Hestia commanded. "Take the emergency funds from the vault! Pay them whatever they want, just get a healer here right now before he—!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The sudden, deafening sound of heavy fists hammering against the iron gates of the manor courtyard severed Hestia's sentence.
The entire Familia froze.
From beyond the shattered windows, overlapping roar of voices suddenly washed over the property. The sound of armored boots stomping against the cobblestone street echoed like thunder.
"Open the gates!" A deep, commanding voice shouted from the front line of the crowd. "Did a God just return to heaven?! Is the Hestia Familia under attack?!"
"Stand back! Let the Ganesha Familia secure the perimeter!" Another voice roared over the din of the chaotic mob. "Did anyone see who cast that light?!"
The blood drained entirely from Lili's face. She looked toward the courtyard, then slowly turned her head back to the silver haired woman sitting on the floor in the center of their dining room.
Alfia. The Silence of Hera. A woman the entire world believed to be dead, who was currently the most highly classified and dangerous secret in the entire city.
"No one leaves this room."
A calm, chillingly serious voice suddenly cut through the panic.
Hermes stepped away from the wall. The god had completely dropped his usual persona. He pulled the brim of his feathered hat low over his orange eyes, his gaze sweeping over the terrified Familia with the sharp, calculating precision of a master manipulator.
"Lord Hermes?" Hestia whispered, her hands shaking. "But... Yuuya is dying!"
"If you bring a healer into this manor right now, you will kill him faster." Hermes stated bluntly, his tone devoid of any sympathy, operating purely on cold, hard logic. He pointed a steady finger toward the open courtyard. "Listen to that crowd. Half of Orario is currently standing outside your front gate because they think a deity just died. If you run out there screaming for a Dian Cecht healer, you instantly confirm that a event just occurred inside these walls."
Hermes took a slow step forward, his eyes locking onto Lili.
"If a healer comes, the Guild comes. If the Guild comes, they will demand a full investigation of the premises to secure the area." Hermes explained.
He gestured directly toward Alfia, who was still silently holding Yuuya against her shoulder.
"And if they search this house, they will find her. The panic it will cause will not only destroy your Familia, but it will unravel every single political safeguard Yuuya just spent bleeding for."
Bell stepped forward, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were completely white. His eyes were wide, welling with fresh, desperate tears.
"Then what do we do?!" Bell pleaded, his voice cracking violently. He looked down at Yuuya's pale face. "We can't just let him die! He gave up his own soul for my mother! There has to be something we can do!"
Hermes looked down at the unconscious adventurer. He saw the pool of blood, the searing fever, and the complete shutdown of the boy's monstrous physical body. But Hermes also knew exactly what kind of terrifying anomaly Yuuya truly was. A mortal who could dive to the seventieth floor and return in four days did not possess a fragile constitution.
"You do exactly what he has always done for you, Bell." Hermes said quietly, his orange eyes softening just a fraction. "You trust him. Yuuya is an absolute monster of survival. His body is currently tearing itself apart to pay the toll of the magic, but once the debt is settled, it'll all be fine again. Keep his fever down, keep the pressure on his wrist, and let his body fight the war."
Haruhime rushed back into the room, sliding across the floorboards with a wooden basin of freezing water and several clean towels. She immediately wrung one out and pressed it gently, yet firmly, against Yuuya's burning forehead.
Hermes turned his back on the desperate medical effort and walked over to Hestia, placing a firm hand on her shoulder.
"As for us, Goddess Hestia." Hermes said, his lips curling into a deeply cunning smile. "You need to put your best divine game face on. We have an angry, panicked mob outside, and we are going to walk out there and lie to them so completely that they'll feel utterly foolish for ever doubting the safety of your home."
Hestia looked down at Yuuya one last time, her expression hardening. She wiped the lingering tears from her eyes and nodded.
"Right." Hestia breathed out, her voice steadying. "Let's go send them away."
Just then, as Haruhime continued on relentlessly swapping out the water soaked towels on his forehead, his ragged breathing began to level out into a deep, exhausted slumber.
The bleeding from his slashed wrist slowed to a halt, the thick bandages Mikoto and Welf had applied finally holding firm as his dormant passive skills fought to stabilize him. Fortunately, he wasn't dying. It's gonna take more than that for him to die. He is simply paying his own penalty for his actions once more.
Alfia refused to move from the floor. She sat with Yuuya's head resting heavily in her lap, her newly clear, heterochromatic eyes fixed entirely on his pale face. Her fingers gently brushed the damp hair away from his burning forehead, her expression completely devoid of her usual terrifying edge. For now, she was simply a woman fiercely guarding the one who had given her a second chance at life.
With Yuuya's immediate survival secured, the burden of protecting his monumental secret fell to the two deities marching toward the front gates.
The heavy iron gates of the Hearth Manor rattled against their hinges, threatening to buckle under the force of the assault.
Members of the Ganesha Familia were desperately trying to form a barricade with their shields, holding back a surging, panicked crowd of adventurers, merchants, and standard citizens.
But the source of the metallic rattling wasn't a monster or an angry mob—it was a single, furiously irritated Goddess with fiery red hair.
"Shrimp! Open this damn gate right now before I kick it off its hinges!" Loki roared, her boots slamming repeatedly against the iron.
Her eyes were narrowed into dangerous slits, her teeth bared in an aggressive snarl.
"I saw that light! The whole city saw that light! Did someone just get sent back to heaven in your living room?! Where is that anomaly of a vanguard of yours?!"
The wooden front doors of the manor swung open, cutting off Loki's tirade.
Hestia marched down the cobblestone path of the courtyard, completely ignoring the fact that her hands were trembling just moments ago. She crossed her arms tightly under her chest, her twin tails bouncing as she adopted an expression of profound annoyance. She glared through the iron bars, looking exactly like a homeowner who had just been rudely awakened from a pleasant nap.
"Are you completely incapable of using a knocker, Loki?!" Hestia shouted back, her voice easily carrying over the murmuring crowd. "What in the world is wrong with you? Some of us are trying to have a peaceful breakfast!"
"A peaceful breakfast?!" Loki shrieked, gripping the iron bars and shaking them. "A pillar of light just shot through your roof and pierced the clouds! It looked exactly like an ascension! Don't you dare play dumb with me, Shrimp! What did Yuuya do this time?!"
Before Hestia could attempt to weave a believable excuse, a smooth, chuckle echoed from the manor steps.
Hermes strolled down the path, adjusting his feathered hat with a calm, unbothered grace. He completely ignored the frantic tension radiating from the crowd, stepping up beside Hestia with a bright, charming smile plastered across his face.
"Now, now, Loki, there is absolutely no need to cause a public disturbance." Hermes chimed in, resting a casual hand on the iron gate. "No one has ascended. The divine roster remains perfectly intact. You are simply overreacting to a scheduled, supervised procedure."
Loki stopped shaking the gate, her eyes snapping toward the god.
"A procedure? What kind of procedure blasts a hole in the sky, Hermes? And why are you even here?"
"I am here in my official capacity as a Guild overseer." Hermes stated smoothly.
With a practiced flourish, he reached into the inner pocket of his clothes and withdrew a roll of parchment. He snapped it open with a sharp flick of his wrist, holding it up so the front line of the crowd—and the Ganesha Familia—could clearly see the contents.
At the bottom of the parchment, stamped in brilliant, undeniable gold wax, was the personal seal of Ouranos.
Hermes possessed a highly specific, closely guarded secret. Because his Familia acted as a secret operative for the Guild from time to time, he always carried a blank, pre-stamped document authorized by Ouranos himself.
It was a failsafe, a "get out of jail free" card designed to cover up his more questionable activities. Today, however, it was being repurposed to hide the greatest miracle in Orario's history.
"As you all know, the adventurer Yuuya recently returned from an unprecedented dive into the deepest layers of the Labyrinth." Hermes announced loudly, his voice echoing. "During his expedition, he acquired several highly unstable, unmapped magical catalysts. What you just witnessed was a controlled, Guild sanctioned mana discharge experiment to neutralize those deep floor anomalies."
The crowd instantly fell silent, the collective panic shifting into murmurs of awe and confusion.
"A mana discharge?" A Ganesha Familia adventurer asked, stepping forward and squinting at the golden seal.
"Precisely." Hermes nodded, rolling the parchment back up. "The catalysts required a massive, sudden expulsion of raw magic to render them inert. Lord Ouranos explicitly authorized the procedure to be conducted on the surface to prevent irritating the dungeon. Yuuya executed the discharge flawlessly. The light you saw was just excess mana venting into the atmosphere. It was loud, it was flashy, but it was entirely harmless."
The adventurer of the Ganesha Familia visibly relaxed, dropping his shield and signaling his squad to stand down. An official mandate from Ouranos was absolute law. If the supreme god of the Guild had sanctioned the event, there was no longer a crisis to manage. The crowd began to disperse, the citizens grumbling about the lack of a proper warning, but the sheer terror of a dead deity completely evaporated.
Loki, however, did not move a single inch.
She stared at Hermes, her eyes burning with a mixture of deep skepticism and outright fury. She had known the traveler god for centuries. She knew exactly how slick his tongue was, and she knew the distinct smell of his absolute nonsense.
"You expect me to believe that?" Loki hissed. She leaned her face against the iron bars. "A scheduled experiment? A mana discharge? You are lying through your teeth, Hermes. There is no way in hell Ouranos authorized a magical blast that mimics a divine ascension right in the middle of a residential district. I know you're hiding something massive in there."
Hermes didn't drop his smile. He leaned in slightly, meeting her terrifying glare with perfect calmness.
"Liarsayswhat."
"What?" Loki snapped instinctively, her brows furrowing in genuine confusion.
Hermes gasped loudly, taking a dramatic step back and clutching his chest in mock horror.
"Loki! I cannot believe you would lie to my face like that! Right in front of the Goddess of the Hearth, too! Have you no shame?!"
For two solid seconds, the bustling noise of the street behind them seemed to fade away.
Loki froze. Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as her brain finally processed the sequence of words. The Goddess of the Loki Familia—had just fallen for the oldest, cheapest, most utterly pathetic playground trick in the history of the lower world.
A heavy, agonizing silence hung between them.
Hestia had to violently bite down on her lower lip, turning her head away as her shoulders shook with a desperate attempt to hold back a burst of laughter.
A deep, shade of red exploded across Loki's face, completely matching the color of her hair. The sheer humiliation of the moment short circuited her composure entirely.
"You..." Loki stammered, her hands gripping the iron bars so tightly the metal actually began to groan. She bared her teeth, her entire body vibrating with an unholy, volcanic rage. "You absolute, miserable snake! You think this is a joke?!"
"I think you should respect an official Guild operation and go back to your own manor, Loki." Hermes replied cheerfully, tipping his hat.
"I am not buying a single word of your garbage!" Loki screamed, kicking the gate one last time. She spun around on her heel. "I am going straight to the Guild! I am marching right into Royman's office, and I am getting a signed search warrant to tear this entire dilapidated shack apart! You hear me, Shrimp?! I'm coming back with the authorities!"
Loki stormed down the street, aggressively shoving her way through the lingering crowds and leaving a trail of terrified adventurers in her wake.
Hermes watched her go, keeping his confident smile perfectly intact until the red haired Goddess completely disappeared around the corner of the district. The moment she was out of sight, he let out a long, heavy exhale, the tension finally leaving his shoulders.
Hestia slumped against the iron gate, burying her face in her hands.
"She's actually going to do it." Hestia groaned, her voice muffled by her palms. "She is going to bring Royman and half the Guild back here by this afternoon."
"Nah we'll be fine."
SLAM.
The solid marble counter of the Guild's main lobby groaned under the sheer force of Loki's palms.
"I want a warrant, Eina! A full blown, tear down the walls, search and seizure warrant for the Hearth Manor!" Loki yelled, her sharp features twisted into a mask of pure suspicion. "Right now! Chop chop!"
Behind her, leaning heavily against a decorative stone pillar, Finn looked like a man who had completely given up on the concept of joy. He was dressed in a casual, unarmored tunic, his hair slightly messy, and his thumb was aggressively massaging his temples to fight off a brewing migraine.
Next to him stood Riveria who looked even more miserable. She had been dragged directly out of her private quarters mid morning, and her posture practically radiated a desire to freeze the entire room in solid ice.
All in all, Finn and Riveria were supposed to be having their day off. Keyword, "supposed."
"Loki..." Riveria sighed, her voice flat and dripping with exhaustion. "It is our only collective day off this month. The Ganesha Familia is already handling it. There is no political reason for us to be hovering here."
"Shut it, Riveria! This is a matter of municipal security!" Loki shrieked, turning back to the counter and rattling a set of official request forms. "I know what I saw! That shrimp is hiding something massive!"
Eina sat perfectly still behind the marble counter. Her glasses were resting precisely on the bridge of her nose, but her emerald eyes were entirely devoid of life. It was a terrifying, hollow, completely deadpan stare—the look of a bureaucrat who had gazed into the infinite void of paperwork and found that the void was staring back.
'Yup... Yuuya is probably the one behind it...' Thought Eina. 'Won't be doing anything crazy soon my ass.'
And she wasn't alone. Every single Guild employee within a fifty foot radius shared the exact same zombie like expression.
From three desks over, a sharp, loud snap suddenly echoed through the quiet lobby. A junior clerk looked down at his hand, staring blankly at the fountain pen he had just violently broken in half with his bare fingers. Ink rapidly stained his palms, bleeding across a pristine stack of incident reports. The clerk didn't even try to clean it. He simply dropped his forehead onto the wood with a dull thud, his shoulders shaking as he whimpered silently.
"Just kill me... please, gods, just kill me already... not another sector report..."
Eina didn't even blink at the sound of her coworker's spiritual collapse. She slowly lowered her gaze to the warrant request Loki had pushed into her face.
At this point in her career, Eina was completely desensitized to Yuuya's logic defying antics. If her rogue adventurer walked into the lobby tomorrow carrying the severed head of a Floor Boss while riding a tamed dragon, Eina wouldn't ask how he achieved the feat. She would simply ask if the beast counted as an oversized item so she could determine which color ink to use on the entry ledger. Her primary concern was no longer the cosmic balance of Orario, or the secrets of the Hestia Familia.
Her sole, driving purpose in life now was to prevent the accumulation of more paperwork.
"A search warrant..." Eina said, her voice a completely flat, emotionless monotone. "On the legal grounds of... a highly visible light show."
"It wasn't a light show! It was a ascension flare!" Loki barked, tapping her fingers aggressively against the marble. "The paperwork writes itself, Eina! Just hand over the authorization so I can go break down their front door!"
'No, it doesn't write itself.' Eina thought, her left eye twitching imperceptibly behind her lenses. 'I write it. In triplicate. And then I have to explain to the Pantheon why the Loki Familia initiated a diplomatic crisis over a bright flash of mana.'
Eina looked at the warrant request again, then slowly at Finn.
"Mr. Deimne." Eina said, her voice a flat, monotone drone. "Are you aware that every time Yuuya Mitsukuji breathes too loudly, I have to fill out a Form 12-B?"
"I... I can imagine, Eina-san." Finn said, offering a sympathetic, albeit helpless, smile.
"This warrant..." Eina continued, picking up the paper as if it were a piece of rotting fish. "Requires a signature from the Director of Operations. If I take this back there and it gets approved, it means an investigation. An investigation means interviews. Interviews mean reports. Reports mean... more paper." Eina stated, her voice completely devoid of hope as she quietly slid her chair back and stood up.
She picked up the parchment, turning toward the wooden double doors that led to the upper administrative offices. The moment Eina took her first step, the entire atmosphere of the Guild hall drastically shifted.
Dozens of pairs of bloodshot, sleep deprived eyes followed her. Their collective gaze was heavy, silent, and desperate. It was a telepathic plea from the very pits of administrative hell.
'Destroy it.' Their eyes pleaded in desperate, unified agony. 'Burn it. Shred it into confetti. Drop it in the incinerator. Claim a Kobold snuck into the lobby and ate it. Eat it yourself if you have to, Tulle. Because if that warrant gets approved, we will be filing property damage assessments and structural magic evaluations until the turn of the century.'
Eina reached the door to the inner sanctum, looked back at the Loki Familia, and then at her weeping coworkers. She didn't say a word, but the way she gripped the warrant suggested she was contemplating whether "losing" a document was a fireable offense or a heroic act of mercy for her people.
"I will... see what can be done." Eina said, the words sounding like a funeral dirge.
"You better!" Loki shouted. "I want that signature by lunch!"
The moment the door closed behind Eina, the clerk in the back put his head on his desk and began to sob openly.
"He cleared the 70th floor solo, Loki! Just leave him alone! My hand can't take any more signatures!"
Finn sighed, looking at Riveria.
"Maybe we should just go get some pancakes, Loki. I don't think the Guild is emotionally stable enough for a scandal today.
A few moments later, the wooden double doors of the upper administrative wing slowly creaked open.
Eina stepped back into the main lobby, holding the warrant parchment in her hands. The fog that usually hung over her shoulders seemed to have lifted entirely. For the first time in weeks, a genuine, albeit faint, spark of human vitality flickered behind her spectacles, and the hollow glaze in her eyes had completely vanished.
Loki immediately leaned over the counter, her face practically pressed against it.
"Well?! Did Royman sign it?! Give me the good news, Eina!"
"The request for a search warrant has been officially and permanently denied." Eina announced. Her voice, previously a dead monotone, actually carried a light, rhythmic bounce. "And it wasn't rejected by Director Royman. Lord Ouranos himself personally intercepted the document and struck it down."
Loki's jaw dropped so low it nearly hit the counter.
"What?! Ouranos?! The old man actually woke up just to veto my warrant?!"
"Yes." Eina replied, smoothly sliding the parchment into a nearby filing cabinet, never to be looked at again. "Lord Ouranos explicitly stated that the Hestia Familia's activities this morning were completely permitted and fully synchronized with the Guild. He confirmed that the documentation Lord Hermes presented at the front gates was entirely authentic. The matter is closed, the discharge was legal, and no further investigation will be tolerated."
A collective, trembling gasp rippled across the crowded lobby floor.
The junior clerk who had previously broken his fountain pen slowly lifted his ink stained hands toward the high ceiling. His eyes were wide with a profound, almost religious reverence as a single, crystal clear tear tracked through the dust on his cheek.
Another clerk who had been sobbing at his desk suddenly bolted upright, his eyes wide with religious fervor.
"Praise be to the heavens!" He wailed, throwing a handful of blank forms into the air like confetti. "Ouranos-sama has saved us! We're going home at five! WE'RE GOING HOME AT FIVE!"
"Thank the heavens..." Another clerk clerk whispered, his voice cracking with pure emotion. "A miracle... an absolute miracle..."
Within seconds, the entire front office erupted into a subdued but incredibly intense wave of celebration. Two auditors in the back row silently embraced each other, weeping tears of unadulterated relief into each other's shoulders.
Typewriters began to clack with a manic, joyful energy, and several receptionists slumped back into their chairs, looking as though they had just been granted spiritual enlightenment.
The bureaucratic apocalypse had been averted; there would be no extra incident reports, and no property damage assessments.
Loki, however, looked like her entire world had just collapsed.
"This is a conspiracy!" Loki wailed, slamming her fists against the counter as she genuinely began to cry tears of pure, childish frustration. "It's unfair! It's totally, completely, unbelievably biased! The Guild is just playing favorites because the Hestia Familia has an absolute freak of nature who managed to climb all the way to Level 6 in just four months. You're all just coddling them because Yuuya is your golden boy!"
Eina simply maintained her polite, professional smile, completely unbothered by the Goddess's tantrum now that her desk was clear of impending paperwork.
From behind the weeping deity, Finn let out a long, heavy sigh and stepped forward. He reached out, gently but firmly grasping Loki by the elbow. On her other side, Riveria moved like warden, locking her hand around Loki's wrist to prevent her from throwing herself onto the floor.
"Alright, Loki, that's enough." Finn said, his tone incredibly calm as he smoothly began to guide his furiously resisting Goddess toward the main exit. "The supreme god of the Guild made his decree. Pushing the matter any further will only cause a diplomatic headache we really don't need on our day off."
"Let go of me, Finn! I want answers! I want to break down that shrimp's door and see what she's hiding!" Loki screeched, her boots dragging uselessly against the floor as Riveria effortlessly hoisted her forward. "They're hiding something! I know it in my divine bones!"
"What you need to do is accept defeat for today." Riveria remarked dryly, her eyes fixed firmly on the exit doors. "My patience has reached its absolute limit, and if I have to spend another minute in this lobby discussing the Hestia Familia, I will personally cast a freezing spell on your private wine cellar."
Loki whimpered, her resistance instantly weakening at the threat to her alcohol supply.
"Come on. Let's go enjoy the rest of our day off before Yuuya inevitably breaks another law of physics tomorrow." Finn added.
∆∆∆∆
The iron gates had barely clicked shut behind Hermes and Hestia before the remaining members of the Familia sprung into motion. The urgency in the room was palpable, a quiet, vibrating panic that dictated every movement.
Bell stepped over the pool of dark blood on the floor, his face set in a look of grim determination. He leaned down, carefully sliding his arms beneath Yuuya's limp frame. The heat radiating through Yuuya's clothes was alarming, almost painful against Bell's forearms, but the white haired boy didn't flinch. With a grunt of exertion, he hoisted his captain into a secure carry.
"I'm taking him up to his room." Bell announced, his voice tight as he looked at Welf and Mikoto. "Haruhime, bring the water basin and the fresh linen up there."
"Right behind you." Welf replied, already picking up the medical kit.
Lili stepped forward, her eyes darting toward the silver haired woman still resting on the hardwood floor.
"Lili will prepare the master bedroom on the east wing for Alfia-sama. It is the quietest room in the manor, and the bed is—"
"No." Alfia interrupted.
Her voice was quiet, raspy from the lingering effects of the stasis, but it carried a terrifyingly finality that froze Lili mid sentence.
Alfia braced her palms against the floor, managimg to prop her upper body up, her vibrant gray and green eyes fixed entirely on Yuuya's pale face as Bell began to carry him toward the stairs.
"Alfia-sama?" Lili blinked, tilted her head in confusion. "But you need proper rest. The east wing is completely isolated from the noise of the main street. It will be much better for your recovery."
"I said no." Alfia repeated, her gaze never wavering from the unconscious adventurer. She looked up at Bell, who had paused on the first step of the grand staircase. "Take me to his room, Bell. Put me in the same bed."
Bell turned his head, his ruby eyes wide with surprise.
"Mom? But Yuuya's room is right next to the central corridor. And his fever... he's incredibly hot right now. It might make you uncomfortable."
"The boy tore a fragment of his own soul out of his chest to cure me." Alfia said, her tone dropping into a low, fierce register that silenced any further protest. "He is drowning in the recoil of a miracle meant for me. Do you truly believe I care about a bit of heat or a noisy corridor? I will not be locked away in some isolated corner of this house while the architect of my life force lies bleeding in the dark. Put me with him."
Defeated by the raw, protective instinct radiating from his mother, Bell offered a soft, understanding nod.
"Alright. Let's go."
The master bedroom belonging to Yuuya was bland to say the least. It has no designs and is completely devoid of unnecessary luxury.
Bell carefully laid Yuuya down on the left side of the mattress, pulling the sheets up to his chest. A second later, Mikoto and Welf worked in tandem to adjust the pillows, while Haruhime set the wooden basin of ice water on the bedside table.
Turning back to the doorway, Bell lifted Alfia into his arms once more. Her body felt fundamentally different now; the cold, deathly aura that had defined her existence for decades was completely gone, replaced by a soft, natural warmth. He carried her across the room and gently deposited her onto the right side of the bed, right beside Yuuya.
"Do you need anything else, Lady Alfia?" Mikoto asked softly, bowing her head out of respect.
"No." Alfia murmured, her eyes already tracking the shallow, rapid rise and fall of Yuuya's chest. "Leave us. Keep the rest of the house secure. If Loki returns with the Guild, ensure Hermes handles it."
"We'll take care of everything." Welf promised, giving a firm nod. He gestured for the others to follow him. "Come on, guys. Let's give them some air."
The door clicked shut with a soft, muted thud, leaving the room engulfed in a profound, heavy silence.
Alfia didn't lie down. Despite the immense fatigue pulling at her muscles and the lingering numbness in her legs, she forced her spine straight, sitting up against the wooden headboard. She shifted her weight slowly, dragging her uncooperative legs beneath the covers until she was positioned directly beside Yuuya's torso.
She looked down at him. The fearless, enigmatic, and completely selfless adventurer who had challenged the depths of the seventy floors looked incredibly fragile in the dim light of the curtained room. His face was flushed a deep, unnatural crimson, and fine beads of sweat continuously formed along his hairline. Around his left wrist, the white linen bandages Welf had applied were already stained with a faint, damp circle of blood.
Slowly, deliberately, Alfia reached her pale hands out from beneath her sleeves. Her fingers were no longer trembling with the tremors of the incurable disease, but they shook now from pure emotion.
She placed both of her hands gently over his right hand, which lay limp and cold against the mattress.
The moment her skin connected with his, the sheer intensity of his fever caused her to flinch slightly. It felt like touching an active forge fire. Yet, she didn't pull away.
Instead, she tightened her grip, wrapping her slender, cool fingers completely around his palm, trying to offer whatever natural coolness her body possessed to soothe his burning skin.
In the quiet sanctuary of the room, her heterochromatic eyes silently traced every line of his face. She remembered the dark, triumphant look in his eyes right before he collapsed—the way he had smiled at her, entirely unbothered by the fact that his own body was tearing itself apart from the inside out.
"Your eyes... they look so much more beautiful... without that illness..."
The words echoed continuously through her mind, striking a chord deep within her soul that she thought had died along with her sister. For seven years, she had accepted her fate as a monster of the past, a tragic footnote in the history of Orario. She had expected to rot in the silence of the abyss.
But Yuuya had looked at her fate, called it a lie, and dragged her back into the light of the living.
Alfia squeezed his hand tighter, her breath catching in her throat as she watched a stray wisp of steam escape his collar. She didn't speak. She didn't chant. She simply maintained her silent, unyielding vigil, her brilliant clear eyes reflecting the figure of the young man who had given up a piece of his own soul just to grant her a today.
∆∆∆∆
Author: and that's it for today.
It took me quite some time since this is 28k words.
The next chapter would be the reveal of Yuuya's past to the Hestia Familia. That would take me quite some time since it's basically me trying to summarize an entire book in one chapter. At best, I'll be able to release it on Sunday. It'll probably even surpass my 30k word chapter (and here I am, who used to think 10k word chapters are a lot. Now I'm writing more than that lol.)
Later folks.