Chapter 1: Brighter
(Horizontal lines will always denote a POV change, scene changes will be marked with double line spaces if they don't also involve a POV change)
Our footsteps echoed quietly as the halls of the dungeon stretched out before us, lit by a dim light with no source to be found. The walls were a faint yellow-gray, and whether it was their actual color or that of the light was beyond my ability to tell. The path, both ahead and behind branched and splintered into dozens of winding paths, the dead ends having become ever more numerous the deeper we'd descended into the labyrinthine floors.
For an underground tunnel, it was surprisingly warm, despite how far we were from the surface. Although, perhaps it would be more apt to say it was less cold than I had initially expected a few weeks back when I first clambered down into the hole beneath Babel. A cool draft seemed to pervade every tunnel throughout this part of the dungeon, leaving me with a slight chill even after pulling my kimono tight around me.
Said kimono had been dyed a bright, pure red, a design very similar to the one I had been wearing when I first met Bell. Patterned in black, it was tailored to a larger size to accommodate my now larger frame and chest without issue, in addition to being cut off a little above my knees—about where a medium length skirt would end—and just the right length so that my tail could comfortably poke out from beneath it without pulling it up when moving. My legs were covered by long black stockings that rose up well past the hem of my kimono, and I had chosen to wear more lightly colored, shin-high boots over them.
As for weaponry, a steel katana, only a bit longer than the average broadsword, was sheathed at my left hip.
Walking alongside me through this floor of the dungeon was Bell, wearing his well worn brown jacket—the one with the weird half black, half brown collar—in addition to a light breastplate to deal with any blows to the chest. He wore brown gloves and brown boots, and had a short steel dagger sheathed along his belt.
We'd entered the dungeon bright and early this morning, and must have been wandering it for a number of hours by now. We'd slain a few small groups of goblins and kobolds when we first entered, but had barely encountered any resistance since. So we just continued on, hoping we'd find some more monsters to slay, we had to make money somehow.
It wasn't like our familia was poor or anything, from what our goddess had told us, we had a fairly sizable amount of valis stored with the guild, but Bell and I had decided it would be wrong to coast off the earnings of our predecessors' hard work. Therefore, even if the amount of valis we earned was but a trifle compared to what our familia had previously accrued in exchange for loot from the deep floors, we always wanted to do our best to stay self-sufficient.
Though, really, it was quite strange how few monsters we'd seen so far, typically we'd have found enough encounters on the second and third floors to keep us busy for our full planned shift and then we'd head on back. This time, we'd bumped into one or two encounters on each floor, spending a bit of time looking around for more just to find nothing. Was our luck just that bad today?
As such, we'd ended up here, just peeking our heads into the fifth floor to see if the higher spawn rate compared to the third and fourth floors would give us something to fight. Thankfully after a good half hour of basically nothing we turned a corner and were greeted to the sounds of monsters spawning, four kobolds. Truthfully they weren't much given how long we'd been wandering for and how much stamina we had left, but still, four monsters from a single spawn seemed a bit high. Is this what miss Eina meant by higher spawn rates?
"Haruhime," Bell called out to me, drawing his dagger from his belt and taking it up in a reverse grip. "Can you watch my back?" he then asked as he got ready to engage the dog headed monsters running toward us.
I responded with a simple "Yes" and a nod of my head as Bell focused in on the enemy. This was how most of our fights went, Bell would take point while I'd offer support from behind, taking out any monsters that tried to catch Bell by surprise—something my more acute ears helped with. I was also more lightly armored and a fair bit less skilled with a weapon in hand then Bell was, so hanging back a bit was typically for the best.
Neither of us were completely inexperienced holding a weapon when we first entered the dungeon. Entering without knowing how to fight at all would have been stupid. Even if a freshly given level one status would be more than enough to handle a goblin with relative ease, someone who had no clue what they were doing could easily be maimed by one if they weren't careful.
A number of years back, me, Bell, and a few of the other kids in the village had left to go fishing at the nearby lake. Despite fishing being fairly boring most of the time, it always made a good background activity when I was chatting with Bell, and we also tended to catch quite a few fish around that time of year. Bell's Grandpa, Jove would take our catches and grill them and we'd get to enjoy a delicious meal, proud of what we'd caught. Unfortunately we'd gone a bit ahead of the adults and were ambushed by a group of goblins when we followed the path beyond the village's treeline.
It didn't go well, I was paralyzed in fear, Bell tried to protect me, but ended up breaking his fishing rod when he struck the first goblin with it. The other kids were right there along with me. There was an older girl with us too, who managed to break me out of my panic and I went running back along with the rest.
In the end, Bell's grandfather had broken away from the fields he'd been sowing and bashed the goblins' heads in with his hoe. Bell ended up with a faint scar on his left forearm and the experience made us realize how naive we'd been to think we could do anything like what we'd read in our Hero stories.
And so, when a recently retired adventurer passed through our village, we made sure to pester him, begging him to train us in as annoying and desperate of a fashion as we possibly could have. In truth, he actually agreed quite readily and so Bell and I began to learn.
His real frustrations weren't with having to train US, no. Instead they were with having to train ME. To put it simply: I was absolutely terrible. "An unbelievable liability holding a weapon", more likely to injure myself and my teammates than any of my opponents. He stayed with us for nearly a whole year from the start of summer to the following snowmelt, but it took the full summer for me to even reach the point Bell started at.
Bell decided to take up a dagger because that was one of the adventurer's backup weapons, and I borrowed his sword as he taught me how to swing it.
Despite how embarrassing it was at the time, I find I take a lot of pride in being able to swing my sword as well as I can now. Even if I'm still a bit of a mess, I'm able to contribute as a reward for my years of (mostly unsupervised) training.
The hallway was straight and narrow, meaning the kobolds approached us head on. I was behind and to the left of Bell, who had taken a fairly wide stance, his knife at the ready to slash the vitals of whichever kobold came into range first. Meanwhile, I had drawn my katana and was holding it two-handed with the tip pointing downwards toward my left foot. Given how narrow the hallway was, I couldn't go for any wide or horizontal slashes, and so I prepared to make an upward slash at any that got past him. Thankfully the situation was simple enough that I wouldn't need to prepare for attacks from any other angle.
The first kobold came into range, and just as planned, Bell unleashed the energy he'd stored in his stance, twisting his waist and unleashing a brutal strike upon the kobold's neck, tacking its head clean off. Slain, its body began turning to dust as its disappearing head flew to the left and struck the wall.
"Eeep!" I involuntarily cried out, along with the dust came a splatter of blood. Even after these past few weeks I still found seeing gore and viscera like this incredibly unpleasant. Despite the fact that the blood and guts I'd see had a tendency to vanish as well, it never seemed to vanish completely, and if it did, I doubt we'd have a need to clean the blood off our blades so regularly. A severed dog-like head was no different, and a small spray of blood was left on the dungeon wall where it impacted.
However, I couldn't afford to be distracted right now, refocusing my eyes away from tracking the blood splatter, I turned back toward the approaching kobolds. Just as Bell, recovering his footing from his last strike, flipped his grip on his knife around and slashed back at the new rightmost kobold, leaving a non-fatal wound across its chest, the middle kobold broke under his guard and came right for me.
Too bad. I was more than prepared—although with how obviously I was holding my stance, any being smarter than a kobold or goblin would have probably made a different approach—all I had to do was swing my blade upward in the direction it was already facing with all the force I could muster and-
Hey! There wasn't any blood that time! The kobold was bisected at an angle and vanished to dust instantly. I think I may have cut through its magic stone. I suppose that's not ideal. Despite my appreciation for the lack of blood, the magic stone, our only reward for beating the monsters, was destroyed in the process. We wouldn't be getting paid for this one…
In the time it took me to strike the second kobold down, Bell had slain the third with a forceful stab through the chest. With the dagger still embedded Bell lifted his right foot to the kobolds gut and kicked it off his blade after which it flew back a meter or two and writhed on the ground in pain before its movements ceased.
That one's dead.
Unfortunately for me, there was still one kobold left. It had been just behind the one I'd killed and was moving up against the left wall. Perhaps still thinking about the kick I'd just seen Bell execute, and with my body weight still shifted to my right from my slash, I stopped the kobold's approach with a sharp kick to the side with my left foot. With force I rarely remembered my status now let me exert, the kobold crashed into the wall, dazed. Bell, having dealt with two of them, looked over toward me to help, but I didn't think I'd need it.
The kobold was vulnerable, now was the time to finish it! My sword still off to the right from my first slash, I adjusted my stance, bringing my left leg back to get space from the wall, before slashing to the left and bisecting the last kobold. Was this going to be a thing with me, now? This feels weirdly brutal.
For better or for worse, I didn't destroy its magic stone. It was dead instantly, but I was rewarded with another streak of dark red blood splattering against the wall before the small shard dropped to the ground. Clink. And with that, our first fight in a little while was over.
Watching as Haruhime finished off the last kobold, I flicked the blood off my blade and sheathed my knife. It really was strange how easy things had been for us today. We were a full floor deeper into the dungeon than we'd ever been before, but were encountering less monsters than we normally would a floor above. As I was contemplating this, Haruhime had cleaned and sheathed her katana as well before she approached me, pocketing the three magic stones along the way.
"So. What next?" her voice chimed. Just as I began to think of how to answer her, I saw her ears twitch, and then I heard it too. Footsteps, loud, heavy, thundering, fast footsteps. Then, turning in their direction I saw it.
A massive frame rounded the turn at the end of the hall the kobolds had come after us from. Far bigger than any kobold. Far bigger than any monster I'd ever seen before. It was a wall of muscle, encased in dark skin, and covered in darker hair that was as thick as fur in places. In each of its hands was a massive cleaver, each bigger than my arms. Lastly, sitting atop that wall of muscle, like with the kobolds we'd just fought, was an animal head. But, unlike the small heads of the kobolds, unintimidating enough that if they weren't snarling they might be cute, was instead the head of a ferocious bull, adorned with sharp devastating horns, and with steam seeping from its mouth and nostrils.
This was a foe we never should have encountered. Perhaps the lack of threats on our dive so far was the dungeon's way of setting up this kind of sick joke.
"We run. We run as fast as we possibly can." I told Haruhime. Instead of the light smile that I loved that had begun to appear on her face, it was now blank, her tail was rigid, her ears pointed as straight up as I'd ever seen them, and her eyes were swimming with fear as she stood there straight as a board. I probably wasn't faring much better as I stopped noticing the sounds around me.
The minotaur took a single step towards us and in that instant I'd turned 180°, had grabbed Haruhime's hand and was sprinting, dragging her along with me before she regained her wits and started sprinting right alongside me.
"MoooOOOoOoOOwooowoO!" An unearthly bellow echoed down the hallway and the thundering footsteps began to slowly close the distance. We rounded one corner, and then the next, doing our best to follow the way we'd come, but it would not stop gaining on us, each corner we turned would buy us a little bit of time, but it would gain on us even more with each straight away. We just weren't fast enough.
"Haruhime!"
"Y-yy-Yes?!"
"Your magic! Can you- Can you use your magic right now?!"
Unlike me, Haruhime had access to magic. And since she was a renart she had access to particularly special magic. Her magic was unique, it wasn't healing but neither was it offensive; at least not strictly. Her magic was called Enchanted Flames and it was unlike any other magic I'd heard of. It allowed her to summon an aura of harmless golden flames that could be imbued with an effect, and the one she had access to came from her skill Status Exchange which allowed her to freely manipulate her status by redistributing her total magic stat to other stats. Really, it was like nothing else out there, and was supremely useful. She could even spread the aura to other individuals so long as they shared the same falna, or rather, familia. That meant that she could also spread it to me.
It was a magic we made very frequent use of and the overall mind cost was very low, requiring a small amount to initially call upon and then only a very miniscule drain afterwards. Oftentimes she could have it active nonstop for nearly an hour with no issues, but that was also because its mind drain was in proportion to how many magic points were redistributed and she didn't really have that many yet in the grand scheme of things. Since we were still level one, even with her relatively high magic stat from such constant usage, the mind cost had remained miniscule.
"Okay! I-I'll try my best." She responded and then began casting.
"O flames, I offer thee my heart.
I call upon thy force for me and for my brethren.
Unravel my power and grant us new strengths!
Enchant!"
In addition to its extremely versatile effect, the chant was quite short, and was considered weak enough of an effect that Haruhime had successfully managed to cast it while undertaking simple actions like running within only the first two weeks of receiving her status. Perhaps this was because all it did was move pre-existing power around rather than produce anything like conventional offensive magic did.
The translucent golden flames surrounded us, seeming to ignite from thin air around our legs as they gently smoldered. Just as they were summoned I could feel myself becoming lighter and we managed to start gaining distance from the monstrosity chasing us. Haruhime had successfully tacked an extra 90 points onto each of our agility stats, more than doubling our agilities, if not necessarily doubling our speeds.
But this would never prove enough for us to outrun a high level two class monster like a minotaur, our only hope was to keep bobbing and weaving around corners and forcing it to restart its charge. Before long, we barely had any space remaining between us and the beast.
"Urrrroooooarrrrrrr!"
"Eeeeeek!" Haruhime shrieked in terror.
Quickly checking to my right, "Haruhime! Are you alright?!" Shoot. She was starting to lag behind. For the last five years we'd done just about everything together, so in terms of physical fitness we weren't too different. But in just these past two weeks our skills had begun to noticeably diverge. Even as level ones, the difference in the kinds of excelia we'd earned showed. While her magic ability was leagues ahead of my lowly 0, my base agility had gotten way higher than hers from constantly flitting about the front line. That and constantly fleeing, but she was usually in the same boat as me there. I suppose she didn't think to try matching our agility stats when casting that spell.
Only a minute or less had passed since we were spotted and the minotaur was now right on our tails—or one of ours—waving its landform cleavers around like mad.
"I-I'm a-alright, Bell!" she replied, panting, and with a slight tremble in her voice.
Shoot, we wouldn't last much longer.
Shoot again. When did that crack get there?
With an inglorious THUNK, I face planted right into the rocky floor of the lower fifth, a raging Minotaur raising its cleaver in hopes of bisecting me straight along my spine.
"BELL!"
Haruhime, having caught up to me after my fumble, and with strength I didn't quite know she had in her, grabbed me by my forearm and quickly pulled me out of the way and around a nearby corner just before the Minotaur's blade could strike me with force enough to shatter an anvil.
Ouch, I think she dislocated my shoulder with that. Though that was the least of my worries right now.
With her pulling me along, I quickly scrambled to my feet and took off again, somewhat thankful for my fall as the Minotaur struggled to pull its blade out of the 15 centimeters of solid rock it had bitten into. What ridiculous strength…
That didn't last long though. My dumb luck bought us a surprising amount of space—nearly ten meters—but it was hot on our tails once more, a quick glance behind showed that it was quite literally fuming with rage.
I'd slowed down, Haruhime was now taking the lead, she could actually be pretty impressive when she put her mind to it.
We made it a few more turns before.
"Dammit! Dead end…" I had to skid to a stop to avoid crashing right into Haruhime, falling on my butt in the process.
"I- I'm so sorry…" Haruhime murmured.
"Don't worry about it, if it wasn't for you back there, I'd already be in two pieces." I was breathing heavily now too. I turned around and stood up, any hope of getting out of this particular predicament blotted out by the silhouette of the minotaur blocking our path. Stock still. Its furious gaze burned straight into Haruhime, the one who prevented its kill.
"It. It's stopped?" I questioned. What was it doing?
"No. No, it's going to charge us." Her ears drooped back even further than before as a feeling of despair was added on top of her fearfulness.
Just as Haruhime said that, the Minotaur lowered itself, spreading its arms wide to block our path, and aiming its horns straight on.
Haruhime whimpered, but put herself into a ready stance, unsheathing her steel katana in a vain hope she might be able to do at least something. I followed suit, knife in hand.
It's left foot struck the floor as it prepared to do just as she said, and then it was off.
Ten meters.
I'm so, so, sorry goddess. We won't make it back.
Nine meters.
I'm sorry Eina. I should have listened to you. We went in too far. What the hell were we thinking?
Seven meters.
It was accelerating.
Three meters.
I'm sorry Gramps. You were right, I couldn't make it. I couldn't even protect Haruhime.
Two meters.
I'm sorry Haruhime. I couldn't keep you safe. I shouldn't have brought you with me. I dragged you into my own mistake.
Then just as I was about to give in fully to despair, the minotaur was stopped in its tracks. The next moment, a line shot across the creature's torso.
"Huh?"
"Wha…?"
"Uoohhhh?"
Seems it's just as confused as I am…
The line doesn't stop there. It travels through thick pectoral muscles, across the raised leg, up the thigh, to the shoulders, and finally out the Minotaur's neck. The blade seemingly teleporting from place to place it was moving so fast.
In mere seconds, the monster Haruhime and I couldn't even have hoped to scratch was rendered nothing more than a pile of meat.
An instant later and a virtual fountain of blood poured over me, coating me from head to toe. My white hair dyed a red far darker than my eyes.
The Minotaur's remains then burst into a plume of ash, and before us, Haruhime and I could see our savior.
"Are you two… okay?"
Even a pair of level one newbies like us know who's standing before us.
There's no mistaking Loki Familia's Ais Wallenstein. A level five, first class adventurer. A Hero. An icon of what we so fervently wished to be.
"Bell!" I cried out, "Bell! Bell stop! Why are we running?!" It was only on my third cry that he actually seemed to notice me.
A powerful adventurer, Ais Wallenstein, had saved us from the minotaur that was chasing us and I couldn't have been more thankful. In a moment of utter despair, when I felt certain I was going to die and my life began to flash before my eyes, I was rescued.
What if my life had ended there?
How distraught would our goddess have been? It doesn't even bear thinking about.
My life would have felt so meaningless. For all the good times I've spent at Bell's side, I haven't even managed to steal a kiss yet! For all our promises and dreams to have culminated in that; our lives sputtering out mere weeks after our potential was set free.
Perhaps it would have been better to keep living a peaceful life in the village. Even with grandpa gone, we're old enough to start handling things. The other villagers and townspeople would have helped. Maybe we could have even started a family together.
Although that would have required more courage than I've ever seemed capable of mustering…
But we weren't dead, and I still had a chance. And as I was reveling in my new lease on life, Bell snatched my hand and dragged me past Miss Wallenstein's side and off into the tunnels of the dungeon once again as he ducked past the arms of a powerful looking werewolf adventurer who had appeared at the end of the path.
I was still worn out from fleeing the minotaur and it already felt like we were running for our lives again. In what felt like an instant the adrenaline that was starting to clear out of my system spiked again and before I knew it we were climbing the final stairwell out of the dungeon.
It took the arrival of the surface's safety for me to realize: I had no idea what we were even running from.
Finally, we came to a stop, just outside the entrance to the dungeon with Bell seeming set on running off toward the guild headquarters.
"Huh?" Bell finally responded. "What is it, Haruhime?" He was panting heavily from exertion just like I was, and his eyes were wide. But more than anything…
"..." His entire front was covered in blood as he looked at me with a cute head tilt. Now I was stuck in a weird middle ground between absolute revulsion mixed with fear and thinking he was absolutely adorable for somehow not noticing he looked like he'd poured a bucket of blood over himself. He reeked too…
Looking around I saw a bunch of adventurers of all kinds of different races and group sizes looking over at us in a mix of curiosity, amusement and distress. But Bell seemed completely ignorant of the scene he was creating.
Trying to think about what to do, I quickly stood in front of him and blocked the crowd's view of him. A small group of five adventurers walked past, not even trying to hide their stares as they gawked at the sheer amount of blood.
"Bell."
"Yes?" The head tilt. My heart… It can't take the mixed signals any longer!
"You fool!" I yelled at him under my breath, doing my best to scold him, balling my hands up at my sides and straightening up as I brought my face close to try and prevent everyone from hearing—probably not that effective with the advanced hearing of adventurers, but it was worth a try.
"You're covered in blood from head to toe! Your hair is a deeper red than your eyes! It looks like somebody used you as a mop to clean up a murder scene!" I shouted.
There goes whatever composure I thought I had.
"Come with me! You're getting a shower and I need one too!" I grabbed him by the hand and dragged him away. And hey, this works perfectly. I now have an excuse to keep holding his hand, AND I don't have to look at his bloody face!
Unlike before, we didn't need to sprint, but I still wanted to get him fixed up quickly so that the stares would stop. So we briskly climbed the short flight of stairs up to the floor with the showers and I unceremoniously shunted Bell into the men's room, hopefully he'd get my point once he took a look in the mirror.
I went into the women's myself and removed my kimono to take a look at it. After a quick once over, I was glad to see that my clothes had made it out of our ordeal almost completely unscathed. Just a small splatter of dried blood here or there that would come out with a quick wash. I, myself, was still fairly sweaty from all the running around we did and so I disrobed the rest of the way and tied up my hair into a bun before climbing into the shower.
I'd learned from experience that my hair doesn't like getting wet if I don't have the hair product and a brush to take care of it immediately and also that the free guild showers don't exactly provide many amenities besides lukewarm water and some towels. I'd make sure to take a more thorough, hopefully hot shower once I got back home.
After I'd confirmed that Bell wouldn't think I smelled bad once he got his nose cleared from the scent of minotaur blood, I opened the curtains and got out of the shower myself, drying myself off with the less than soft towels the guild had stacked piles and piles of in the corner of the shower rooms.
After pulling on my underwear, I was reminded of the fact that stockings are a huge pain to put on when your legs aren't completely dry as tends to happen when using cheap towels. Yet another frustration I encountered when using the guild showers.
Lastly, I didn't bother rebinding my breasts before I put my kimono back on as I only made sure to do so before heading into the dungeon to make fighting easier. As such, I placed the unwanted cloth into my pack with the vain hope that having my breasts be more pronounced and cleavage visibly peeking out might make Bell more likely to notice me. It had never seemed to work before, but maybe it would work someday. A girl had to hold out hope!
I let my hair back down and exited the shower rooms before making my way to the nearest common area. There I found Bell waiting, his snowy hair damp and loosely swept back out from in front of his rubellite eyes, and wearing his short sleeve black undershirt. The undershirt was thankfully clear of any bloodstains as he'd had his jacket buttoned up when we were in the dungeon; said jacket was now folded up under his right arm.
Walking over to him, I got his attention with a short hug around his left side, glad to see him looking like his normal self again after such a harrowing incident. Then I released him.
Dang it. Not even the slightest blush. Have I hugged him too many times over the years and he's just completely desensitized from it? Our goddess has even given him a few hugs and he's blushed for her! Oh no. Was I too greedy too early? Is this MY fault?!
Urk… Now's not the time…
Shaking myself from my disappointment I spoke.
"Phew, I'm glad to see you looking okay now that you got that blood off, Bell."
"Mhmm. Sorry about that. I had no idea how bad it was. I looked in the mirror and thought I was looking at a monster for a moment." Bell joked. So cute. At least he seems apologetic. That, and it looks like the shower helped him cool his nerves a bit. I know it helped me, even if the water temperature could have been hotter.
I took his hand and walked him over to a bench where we both sat down. I then released him and crossed my arms over my lap.
"Haaaa… I really thought we were going to die for while there. My heart only just stopped racing." I admitted to Bell. "Did your life seem to flash before your eyes too?"
He leaned his head back and nodded ever so slightly. "My breathing only really settled once I got into the shower." He answered before waiting a bit. "...I just... I just had the faces of everybody I'd felt I had disappointed flash through my head…"
"I wouldn't use the word disappointed… But yeah… They'd definitely be sad."
"Our goddess would have been in a terrible state."
"Mhmm."
"I don't think she's going to want us going into the dungeon again tomorrow."
"Well… I'm not quite sure if I'm ready to go to the dungeon tomorrow."
"I want to be stronger."
"..." His last words felt like a plea. I knew how he felt, but the voice coming out of him felt so incredibly earnest. The words were simple, but they felt like deeply personal words not meant to be spoken in a public space like this. "I do too…" For a moment it felt like I could see straight to his heart.
We sat together in silence for a few minutes. I made sure to subtly lean against him in support, but he didn't look my way the whole time; instead just looking slightly down at his upturned hands resting in his lap. He didn't get like this often, but the few times I'd seen him this way, it felt like he was somewhere far beyond my reach. Like that promise we'd made could never come true.
In the end he did turn toward me again. "We should head to the guild and turn in our magic stones." He forced a slight smile as he said so. It wasn't nearly as charming as his usual one. "I also have some things I'd like to ask Eina about. That was what I was planning to do when we were leaving the dungeon."
"I'm not sure I'd say you 'planned' much of anything." I responded. "Why did you run from Miss Wallenstein, anyhow?"
I leaned away from him as he stood up. I then followed suit as he thought over my question. He picked up his jacket and stowed it under his arm once again turning back to me before he began to walk out of the guild's section, still mulling over my question.
"I guess I was scared."
"Of Miss Wallenstein? She saved us."
"Seeing how easily she killed that minotaur… I didn't know what to think…" We had just reached the entrance to Babel and the afternoon sun finally came into view. "She was just too bright."
Author's Notes:
If you didn't notice, I deleted the chapters besides Sunsets. The first chapter from 6/14/21 was because this chapter is a rewrite of it, the second from 4/17/22 because it just wouldn't work for the pacing I wanted. I only really figured out how I TRULY wanted to approach this story after uploading that chapter and realizing the pacing was WAY too slow.
I cannot believe how much time writing this has been wasted on minor crap like spending 48 hours running over exactly how Haruhime's adventuring attire should look and trying to come up with the logic of what she'd be wearing at this time, based on price range and experience instead of just continuing forward and writing the actual plot. I also spent a stupid amount of time trying to find what the exact details were for how the given floors of the dungeon looked and what monsters appear there in order to be consistent with canon, but it's such a pain in the ass that I kinda want to start making shit up.
I mean according to the list on the DanMachi wiki, there are no monsters that spawn on the 5th floor, so what the hell am I supposed to do? I just decided that floor 5 has the same spawns as floor 4 and threw some kobolds in. I'm terrible at writing stuff like this, if you've read any of my previously uploaded chapters you'd probably notice that my strengths lie in imagery for environments and long internal monologues about character relations. Exposition is like, all I know how to do, so trying to keep track of what monsters appear where, in the upper levels of the dungeon, which all can generally be described as dank, labyrinthine caverns really puts me off my game and kind of makes me wonder why exactly I'm writing a DanMachi fanfic whenever I have to do it.
I mean, I don't really have any other stories I feel like writing, and there are good stories executing well on compelling ideas in pretty much every fandom I've actually considered writing for (except for Re:Zero but there's so much great side content written by the actual author of that story anyhow, that writing fanfiction seems pointless and everything I've seen in that fandom has for obvious reasons failed to live up to that level of quality side content).
On the topic of Bell and Haruhime's relationship. It is not currently romantic. They are very close friends and Haruhime has been completely in love with Bell for years but given that he was completely unreceptive back when he was like 11 and hadn't really gotten romance yet, she's never been able to properly build up the courage to just go for it, and is too scared and self deprecating to try changing their relationship. Bell never quite seemed to comprehend the fact that his feelings toward Haruhime were changing in nature and despite, objectively being attracted to her, he's basically actively friend zoning both her and himself. They are both being idiots.
Yes. This is mostly just because I find writing pre-Orario difficult and want an excuse to give them a really melodramatic first kiss scene later on. I also think this awkwardness in their relationship will allow me to more easily build a new relationship dynamic between Haruhime and the rest of the familia down the line.
Anyhow, I wasn't originally going to end this chapter here, but the ending line fit too well, and I'm still not sure if the planned next chapter would actually have enough content. Either way I'll probably start work on Chapter 2 right after I upload this as I actually have it mostly planned out. The real chapter that's liable to take ages is the planned interlude chapter where I give the details on what Bell's promise to Haruhime was.
Next chapter should be out in less than a week barring disaster, but given my track record I'd give my prediction a 70% accuracy.
Also, please do leave a review, I read all of them. Honestly, getting a review or seeing that somebody has favorited or followed this story does an enormous amount for giving motivation. I don't tend to interact with too many people outside of my very small friend group during the Summers and that little bit of interactivity feels great.
Current true word count because long Author's notes:
4630 + 5684 = 10,314
