Volume 2
Chapter 1: Orario's Warm Welcome.
...
Kihara said his goodbyes to the girls, packed his things, and prepared to cross into a new world. Unlocking the mine was unambiguously his top priority, so he chose the dungeon world first.
He stepped through the gap.
The corridor between worlds shifted and churned around him in its usual kaleidoscopic chaos — and before he'd even had a chance to get his bearings on the other side, a blinding white light exploded in his face. He threw his arm up to shield his eyes.
Then came the noise. A dense wall of overlapping voices, murmuring and speculating all at once.
Kihara lowered his arm and looked around in genuine surprise. He was standing at the centre of a large, circular chamber built entirely of stone, ringed by an audience of figures whose collective presence pressed against his senses like a physical weight — every single one of them radiating the unmistakable pressure of something that was emphatically not human.
A white-haired elder in black robes raised his hand, and the chamber fell instantly silent.
"Traveller from another world. State your purpose in coming to the divine realm."
"The divine realm??"
Kihara resisted the urge to pinch himself. He was already mentally composing the very pointed conversation he intended to have with Yukari the moment he got back — specifically, several questions about where exactly she had sent him — when something in his peripheral vision made him stop.
A small figure stood among the gathered gods. Petite build. Impossible to overlook. Blue ribbon. And a chest that defied all reasonable expectations for someone her size.
...Hestia?
It clicked into place all at once.
This is the world of 'Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon'.
The moment he recognised the goddess who had once taken the internet by storm, his entire approach to the situation reorganised itself with crystalline clarity. He turned to face the assembled deities, meeting their curious stares without blinking.
"I came here for the Goddess Hestia."
The silence lasted about half a second.
"Hestia?"
"Is this one trying to pull what Poseidon and Apollo pulled? Confessing to Hestia in person?"
"A mortal pursuing a goddess — and brazenly barging into the divine realm to do it. How entertaining."
The chamber dissolved into exactly the kind of noise you'd expect from a gathering of divine beings who had just been handed gossip. Gods leaned toward their neighbours, exchanging commentary that ranged from amused to dismissive to openly hostile, none of them making the slightest effort at discretion. The sacred assembly hall had, within seconds, achieved the ambience of a particularly lively street market.
Hestia herself had never been on the receiving end of anything quite like this. She had no particular ill feeling toward Kihara — he'd said nothing offensive — but the weight of every divine eye in the room found her anyway, and the teasing looks from her fellow gods were more than enough to send heat rushing to her face. She fled the chamber.
Ouranos brought the room back to order with a measured word.
"Enough. Traveller — your intentions are naive at best. However, as you appear to have no designs on disrupting this world, I will allow you to proceed to the lower realm. Establish something worthy there and prove your capabilities before the gods."
He raised one hand in a gesture of dismissal. Kihara felt the world shift around him — and the god's form dissolved into motes of light.
A dim room. A single throne, strange and austere, with no other furnishings.
Kihara studied Ouranos where he sat upon it, and raised an eyebrow. "Something about the way you're sitting tells me you're not on that throne by choice. You're suppressing something, aren't you?"
Ouranos was quiet for a moment. "You can perceive the function of this throne?"
He hadn't anticipated that. A single glance, and this traveller had identified the altar being used to hold back the monsters of the dungeon. Clearly, he had misjudged the man.
"I know of an emperor who sits on a golden throne suppressing a dimensional demon," Kihara said. "Though your situation has him beat by a considerable margin — you're still alive, and you can even send an avatar to move among the other gods. That emperor is barely clinging to consciousness, kept going by sheer spite, reduced to expressing ten thousand years of pent-up frustration exclusively through sacred profanity."
"Hearing it described that way," Ouranos said, something close to dry amusement entering his ancient voice, "I find I have very little to complain about."
He let a beat of silence pass — a flicker of genuine sympathy for that unknown emperor — then shifted to the matter at hand.
"Traveller from another world. If you can accomplish three things for me, I will sanction your taking the Goddess Hestia with you when you leave."
"How do I know you're not just dangling something in front of me with no intention of following through?"
"Because I am the creator god of Orario. The chief deity of the Adventurer's Guild. The strongest among all gods."
The confidence in Ouranos's unhurried tone carried the particular quality of a statement that has never needed to be defended.
"If you still have doubts, we can formalise it with a contract."
"No need." Kihara shook his head. "Anyone who can sit on a throne like that — for the same reason as that emperor — isn't the kind of god who goes back on his word. I trust you. Tell me the conditions."
Ouranos outlined the three tasks.
When he had finished, he sent Kihara on his way once more. The moment the traveller was gone, a figure materialised from the shadows — wrapped head to toe in black, hands gloved in dark leather etched with intricate patterns, moving through the room like a displaced piece of darkness.
"Why assign the tasks to him? I thought a candidate had already been selected."
"Our chosen candidate has not yet grown into the hero we need, Fels." Ouranos's voice was unhurried. "This traveller, on the other hand, carries the weight of a world already saved. He is a genuine hero, in the truest sense of the word."
"All I see is a soul whose light is buried beneath endless darkness."
"Hm." A quiet sound, not quite a laugh. "That is not necessarily a problem. The tallest tree draws the strongest wind — but even if he fails, we have our contingency. Don't we?"
After rather more complications than he'd been hoping for, Kihara finally arrived in the city of Orario.
He stood at the outskirts and looked toward the centre of the city, where a great white tower rose above the surrounding walls and seemed to push against the sky itself. Below that tower, he knew, lay the great dungeon — the inexhaustible labyrinth from which monsters endlessly emerged, and which would, in time, become Pelican Town's mine.
As a newcomer, he didn't rush straight to the Adventurer's Guild to register. There was a prerequisite he needed to address first: in this world, becoming an adventurer required joining a Familia — a divine household — and receiving a Falna from a god. The Falna was, in Kihara's estimation, essentially a game-style cheat code built directly into a person's body, allowing them to accumulate experience through activity and steadily improve their capabilities. Simple, blunt, and remarkably effective.
The Familia he intended to join was, naturally, the Goddess Hestia's. The problem was that he'd just seen her upstairs in the divine realm — which meant she hadn't descended yet and hadn't begun building a Familia of her own.
No rush. He had time.
He checked the exchange rate for his gold coins against the local currency — one to one thousand — confirmed that his funds were more than sufficient, and set off to explore Orario at a comfortable pace.
After asking around, he established that he was currently on the main commercial street, lined on both sides with shops and clothing stores. He ducked into one and picked out a few outfits in the local style as gifts for the girls, then headed back out toward the Hostess of Fertility — the city's most well-known tavern — for something to eat.
Shinobu's voice surfaced quietly from within his shadow.
[Master. You're being followed.]
[I know. Let them come.]
He'd expected this. His clothes marked him as someone who clearly wasn't an adventurer, and the way he'd spent money in the shop without a second thought had apparently drawn the attention of a pair of individuals with flexible morals. They were trailing him at a distance under the cover of their cloaks, clearly waiting for him to take a shortcut through one of the quieter side alleys before making their move.
Obligingly, Kihara chose the quiet alley over the longer route along the main road.
The two cloaked adventurers exchanged a glance. Slow, predatory smiles spread across both their faces as they moved to block both ends of the alley.
"Hey there, fri—"
One of them had barely gotten the first syllable out before Kihara became a blur of motion. Two precise elbow strikes, two crumpling bodies, and it was done. He stripped them of their equipment with brisk efficiency, tucked everything into his dimensional bag, and continued down the alley toward the Hostess of Fertility, whistling cheerfully.
"The people of Orario are remarkably generous," he observed to no one in particular. "Selling off their own gear just to buy a stranger dinner."
....
Thank you for reading.
(T/N: I might not be able to update for 2 days)