by Fujino Omori
He’s speaking from experience, having once belonged to the much larger Hephaistos Familia. There’s that big-brother aura of his, and that all-knowing grin. The balloon of elation in my chest is a bit smaller now.
He’s right…There are many sides to a larger familia.
“Welf, relax, would you? I’ll be talking to each of them one-on-one, figuring out what makes them tick!”
“What…? Y-you’re not letting everyone in?”
The goddess heard everything that Welf said and came to join the conversation.
Honestly, I’m shocked. I thought everyone here was going to be a member of our new family.
“Gods have their own individual tastes and hobbies. That’s what makes each familia different. Think about it, Bell. What would happen if a child who didn’t agree with our way of thinking joins us? There’d be a lot of problems.”
“Well…”
“And don’t forget, I’m a goddess. One quick glance is all I need to determine a child’s personality. And they can’t lie to me, now, can they? I’ll turn away anyone I think would damage our familia.”
I get what she’s saying. It’s the right thing to do.
Our familia’s dignity would suffer if a new recruit turned out to be a drunken bar brawler or a violent criminal. I’m not so sure I could work alongside someone like that, either. Of course, I know that Lady Hestia won’t make decisions based on personal history but on content of character.
It all comes down to whether the deity thinks you can benefit the familia. Nothing else matters. After being rejected from familia after familia when I first came to Orario, I understand this all too well.
But standing here in front of all these people who want to join…I don’t want to turn away a single one of them.
“…And I can’t allow anyone else like that supporter inside these walls. Adding another person who looks at Bell with lustful eyes would send this house into chaos…”
“Lilly can hear you, Lady Hestia.”
The goddess and Lilly keep talking in hushed voices, but I still feel really bad that we can’t accept everyone. I’m not as happy as I was just a minute ago, but I definitely feel much more down-to-earth. Taking a deep breath, I scratch the back of my head.
“Be that as it may, the way Lilly sees it…There are a few demi-humans here today, but since Mr. Bell is the leader of the familia, we are more attractive to humans.”
She’s right.
The goddess chose me to lead, but there’s another reason, too. I’m the only one currently in Hestia Familia who didn’t join by Conversion from another group.
Honestly, I’m a little worried that I’ve been given so much responsibility but…it’s kind of embarrassing being called a leader like this.
Apparently, there are some familias where it’s easier to join if you happen to be the same race as the current commander of the group. Personally, I think of the group leader as more of a figurehead. On the other hand, seeing all the humans here who are inspired to join my familia because of me feels pretty good.
In addition to what Lilly’s pointing out, many of the newcomers decided to dress the part of an adventurer. Swords and spears, shields, light and heavy armor—the mix of fighting styles and weapons is almost overwhelming. Some have the air of a soldier’s discipline while others exude the confidence of a knight. I can already see myself prowling the Dungeon with them, counting on their support. There are even a few supporters equipped with large backpacks in the crowd as well.
I can’t tell if they’re members of other familias who want to change affiliation or if they’re “free” adventurers from outside the city. The one thing I do know, however, is they definitely look the part.
“Well then, shall we start the interviews?”
The goddess calls out to the crowd while I’m scanning the candidates.
I look over at Lilly and Welf. They nod back and we all step off the porch and into the crowd.
The goddess looks around at all the gathered adventurers and is just about to announce the beginning of the interviews when—
“L-LADY HESTIA!”
A shrill scream emerges from inside.
The four of us turn around to face the building as Mikoto bursts out the front door.
“What’s wrong, Mikoto?”
“I-i-it fell…fell from a box…!”
The goddess can’t hide her confusion. Mikoto’s entire body is trembling, color gone from her face.
She holds up a piece of paper in front of us, the goddess, and the recruits, and yells at the top of her lungs:
“A two-hundred-million-valis loan contract !!”
Time seems to stand still.
“Heh-HEM?!”
Lady Hestia gawks at the high-quality paper thrust into her face, clearing her throat.
“What?” Lilly staggers backward. “Two hundred mil?” Welf’s absolutely stunned. I take a look over my shoulder; every candidate looks petrified.
I can’t move.
Every single set of eyes is locked onto the numbers in the middle of the form.
Two hundred millionTwo hundred million valis.
Even as my shaky line of sight works its way back around, I can make out every one of those zeroes. Just above the total, written in big bloodred letters, are the words Loan Contract. What’s worse, just below the zeroes is Lady Hestia’s signature in both Koine and hieroglyphs. This is real and there’s no escape.
But the final blow is the signature next to it. Hephaistos Familia. All the air leaks out of my lungs, but I can’t breathe back in. Everything sounds distant.
It can’t be—
The weapon hanging from my belt has exactly the same one.
I feel the weight of the black knife engraved with “Hφαιστος” as if it’s suddenly made of pure lead.
It’s too much. I collapse.
“Uh…uhhh—”
“M-Mr. Bell!”
“This has to be some kind of joke…”
I can see the blue sky as Lilly’s voice swirls around me. Pretty sure that’s Welf, his voice dropping low.
Right on cue, a chorus of gasps rings out across the front lawn.
“—Cassandra, we’re leaving.”
“Eh…huh, Daph?”
Clomp, clomp. The ground shakes as over fifty pairs of boots turn and leave like the receding tide.
The dark side of Hestia Familia that even the members didn’t know about had been revealed. A bomb lurking in the darkness in the form of debt.
This makes that earlier scene of excitement and energy seem like a lie. All the candidates are gone.
The last thing I see before the blue darkness overtakes me is the goddess, standing like a statue in silence.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
Lilly presses for answers.
Everyone has gathered in the living room at the back of the first floor. The room is still littered with mounds of open and unopened boxes. A space in the center had been cleared for a table and a small sofa. Antique candles light up the dim room, but they use magic stones rather than flame to produce light. We’re sitting around them, our faces illuminated in the darkness.
I’m the only one lying down, letting out the occasional pitiful moan. My head still hurts. Lilly, Welf, and Mikoto are sitting in a ring around the candles while my goddess sits in the middle.
Surrounded by Lilly and the others, Lady Hestia is wearing a terribly troubled face.
The ticking from the clock on the wall echoes, indicating that the sun is setting right now.
Half a day has passed since the disaster on the front lawn, and by now there is almost no light coming in from the windows. Night is upon us.
“We were delayed by cleanup and taking care of Mr. Bell, but please tell Lilly the truth. The truth about that contract.”
“Oh, that involves only me. So it doesn’t affect the familia at all…”
“Thanks to that ‘harmless’ loan that shouldn’t affect the familia
at all, we have zero new members. Lilly thinks that it had quite an effect. As our goddess, it’s your responsibility to keep us informed about these matters.”
I’ve never heard Lilly’s voice so sharp before. She’s taking the role of our representative. The rest of us are staying quiet.
Mikoto was the one who forgot herself and announced everything in front of the candidates. I can tell she feels bad about it, but even she is waiting for an explanation. Welf is sitting cross-legged, eyebrows low and eyes locked firmly onto Lady Hestia.
The goddess looks to all of us in turn, cornered in every sense of the word. At long last, she starts mumbling her story.
“The truth is…a lot of things happened when I asked Hephaistos to make Bell’s knife…”
And so begins the whole story behind the Divine Knife—my knife.
First, she practically forced her friend Hephaistos to forge it.
It’s the only one like it in the world, and the goddess of the Forge is probably the only one capable of making it. Therefore, it’s extremely valuable.
That was why Hestia had to pay such an absurd amount of money. In the end, she had agreed to the terms of Hephaistos’s loan.
Welf, a former member of Hephaistos Familia, presses the inner corners of his eyes as he listens to the goddess. “Always wondered who forged it, hieroglyphs and all…So it was her.” The words quietly slip out of his mouth. Mikoto’s eyes are wide, the truth about the loan sinking in. On the other hand, Lilly looks like she found the missing piece to a puzzle. She’s known me since I was a bottom-of-the-barrel adventurer, one who carried a weapon far too valuable for my Status. “So that’s why…” I hear her whisper under her breath.
The goddess is just sitting there, nervously twiddling her thumbs and waiting for our reactions.
“…Lilly heard many things when she went out earlier to buy medicine for Mr. Bell. Many rumors are being spread around the city by other gods and goddesses…They say that Hestia Familia is about to crumble under the weight of debt. Word is traveling fast.”
“If that is true, then…”
“Yes, the possibility of any new recruits is zero.”
Lilly raises her face and informs us what’s going on in the city. Mikoto cautiously followed her train of thought, so Lilly clarified. I feel like I’m gonna cry.
This is exactly how it was before, when my goddess was rejected at every turn…
“Our real problem is…the two-hundred-million-valis debt. That’s crazy.”
“Exceedingly crazy, indeed.”
There’s a great deal of tension in Welf’s and Mikoto’s voices. Both of them look to Lilly.
She’s become our accountant of sorts and has a better understanding of our finances than anyone else.
“Almost all our winnings from the War Game have been spent. There’s almost nothing left in our savings.”
“…”
“Also, due to our victory and Mr. Bell’s ranking up once again, the Guild has elevated our familia rank to ‘E,’ which means we must pay more taxes. Lilly’s expecting somewhere in the range of one million valis per year. Please prepare yourselves.”
“……”
“In other words…to repay the debt, we must spend more time prowling the Dungeon than ever before.”
A chill runs through the air as a hush falls over us.
We’re doomed to a life of poverty if we don’t start working twice, three times as hard as before. The reality still isn’t sinking in.
The goddess jumps to her feet, unable to stay still any longer. She looks at all our glum faces and practically explodes.
“D-don’t get the wrong idea! This is my loan; I’ll pay it back by myself! No, I have to pay it back by myself!”
Grabbing the contract off the table, she smacks her chest with her free hand and yells loudly enough to make all of us jump. Lady Hestia insists that this debt has nothing to do with us.
“Actually, this contract is a beautiful jewel that shows just how much I love Bell! It’s not going anywhere!”
“As if a debtor’s contract can be a crystal of love.”
I’m not sure why Lady Hestia is bragging about all those zeroes, but Lilly looks far from amused.
Even Welf and Mikoto are looking at the goddess with ice-cold stares. The goddess starts mumbling even more things, trying to ignore the sharp gazes. “It’s because of her scheme that it’s this expensive…Hephaistos is a good friend, so she’s always trying to use some excuse to make me work hard…”
Twin black ponytails shaking as she wipes her face, the goddess takes a deep breath and says with a lot more force:
“The point is, none of you need to worry about this loan. Everyone here knows I’m working at a part-time job, right? Everything I make there is going toward paying off the knife. It’ll take a couple hundred years, but I’m paying it back in full.”
“…”
“I’m sorry for hiding this…but I promise, it won’t cause any trouble.”
She adds it might be too late for any new recruits, but…Her eyes look really apologetic. “Please don’t worry about it,” she says as a final plea.
The rest of us exchange confused glances, trying to figure out how it’s possible for us to ignore something like this.
“…But.”
I take the damp cloth off my forehead and sit up.
I look at the goddess from my spot on the furry rug.
“You…took out a loan to get this knife, all for me?”
“…”
She doesn’t answer, but I know what her silence means.
A twinge of guilt runs through my chest.
The Divine Knife has saved me more times than I can count. It’s thanks to the goddess that I’ve been able to survive so many battles, all because she gave me this knife.
She willingly took on that kind of debt so I could become who I am today.
“…Please don’t make that face, Bell. It was my decision…”
Seeing her gentle smile, hearing her kind words, I can’t stay on the floor.
Climbing to my feet, I take the Divine Knife off my belt and make eye contact with my goddess.
“Goddess…I want to help. Let’s pay it back together.”
Her pure blue eyes tremble.
I can tell she’s surprised, but I mean every single word.
This knife…It’s the symbol of our family, our bond.
“Please, let me do this.”
“…”
The goddess freezes as I express my earnest desire—and she grins.
Her right hand reaches up to the base of one of her ponytails.
“As your goddess, it would put me in an awkward position if I accept your help to fix my own mistakes…”
Her delicate fingers lightly touch the first present I ever gave her.
Blue hair bands. They’re decorated with a blue ribbon tied to look like a flower and small silver bells. They ring softly as she taps one of them.
The sound fades and the goddess smiles once again.
“I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll pay off the loan. What I want the four of you to do is…support me.”
Now it’s our turn for our eyes to tremble. Everyone, including me, is looking at Lady Hestia with similar faces.
Support her. Basically, put warm food on the table, manage the familia, and make our home a happy place. She wants us to protect the things that make us smile, together.
That’s what she’s saying.
“I’m a goddess with debt…Is that okay?”
“O-of course!”
Her smile is radiant, even in the dim light. I bow and nod out of reflex.
She’s a little stubborn and refuses to accept our financial help, but she depends on us, believes in us. If all five of us work together and support one another, we’ll find a way.
Looking at that smile of hers, I swear to myself:
“…If those are the words of our goddess, we can’t exactly go against them.”
>
“Hee-hee, this is true.”
“Please don’t do anything like this again.”
The others get to their feet with smiles of acceptance on their faces. Lilly makes sure to get in a warning before the mood overtakes her as well. “I won’t! I won’t!” responds our goddess as she expresses her gratitude to each of us in turn.
Then we begin talking about what to do next while standing in a circle above the magic-stone candles.
“This is the state of our familia. First and foremost, we need to make enough money to live comfortably and save enough to pay the Guild’s tax when the time comes. We must avoid taking out another loan at all costs.”
“This means that from now on, our activities shall be spearheaded by even more trips to the Dungeon?”
“To raise our efficiency and performance on future hunts, we all need to get stronger, ASAP.”
“It might be hard…but we can keep putting in effort toward recruiting new members…right?”
After Lilly got the ball rolling, Mikoto, Welf, and I each add our own opinions.
Lastly, Welf says it’s my responsibility as the leader to bring this familia meeting to a close. It’s a little embarrassing, but I stick my hand into the center of our circle. Everyone else, including our goddess, puts their right hands on top of mine. “Let’s do this!” I say with as much confidence as I can muster.
Everyone responds together with a short, hearty cheer as we all look toward our familia’s future.
“All right! Now that that’s settled, let’s stuff our faces tonight to prepare for tomorrow!”
“How can Lady Hestia say that when we need to save as much money as we can?! Your financial skills are horrible!”
“Hey, now, don’t be so stingy! One night’s not going to make much difference!”
“Absolutely not! Lilly can no longer trust Lady Hestia! Lilly will handle all money matters from now on!”
The goddess and Lilly go back and forth a little more, but we still end up pulling out all the stops for dinner tonight.
All of us make full use of our big kitchen to prepare many dishes, using different types of meat and fish at the goddess’s request.