Bell Cranel, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia

Bell still remembered the words grandpa gave him.

'Bell… you know if you become a true hero, you'll get loads of women falling for you!'
'Woah! Really! Like, even two or three?!'
'Yup! You just gotta become a true hero first, and the ladies will be lining up!'
'I'll do it! I'll become a true hero and get a really cool girlfriend!'
'Gah-ha-ha! Will ya? I'll look forward to that!"

It was those words that drove him to Orario after grandpa's death. It was a well known fact that all the best heroes in the world were found in this city. The top-classes, the creams of the crop, the number ones. The kinda guys that he promised grandpa he would become.

Of course, dreaming about being a true hero… that's the kinda thing that kids do, you know? He was grown now, so he couldn't act like a little kid anymore. He was still going to be a real hero, like he promised grandpa, but maybe not tell people why if he could avoid it. He wasn't going to lie! Lying was wrong, but… maybe he could avoid talking about it and it'll never come up.

Of course, the first step to becoming a hero was to find a god willing to take him and join their familia. All the best heroes are the children of gods, after all, so he needed to be one before he could even start his journey up.

…That part of the journey was rough. He could understand it, for certain. He was just some ki-young man from outside the city. A scrawny farmboy bumpkin like him, just the clothes on his back and a dagger? Not exactly hero material there. So he was turned aside for a while…

Like a week. He was running really low on rent money in his savings by the time Hestia-sama found and took him in. A newly descended goddess, she had her pick of the best in the city no doubt, and she ended up picking him! That much generosity was a lot for someone like him. How could he do anything but his best to make it up to her? For enabling his silly dreams in the first place.

It was obvious how short he fell compared to the people Hestia-sama could be recruiting, because she found another member the very next day.

Laughter in front of him as the giant, supposedly only a few years older than him, threw a hand forwards and punched through the open maw of the Kobold, fist erupting out the other side in a spray of viscera. It honestly made him a little queasy to watch what was effectively a dog get killed like that, but these were Dungeon monsters so he buried it.

Like gramps said, the only thing Dungeon monsters want is to kill everyone, killing them back was just a job to do. Just like the coyotes trying to get at their chickens.

Bell swung the sword gifted to him like it was a shovel, heavy and sharp, and it crashed into the goblin's skull. The reach advantage was a lot, he noticed, and most monsters on the first floor just couldn't get a hit on him with it in hand. He should've brought a shovel instead of a dagger, in hindsight.

He pulled the sword from the cleaved skull, stepped back to avoid gnashing teeth, and swung sideways. The sword went in a wide arc and chopped into the kobold's side, sending it down too. Like Adam said, it was a sword, Bell just needed to swing it and it would take care of the rest.

He glanced over again, and saw Adam spin-kick with that same crazy shaking-style, crashing a heel into a goblin's head and making it burst like a ripe fruit. The gore painted the ceiling, walls, and his lower legs. Adam had a soft grin on his face as the red went wide. Adam had tried teaching him how to do it the other day, but no matter how hard he thought about boiling water and shook his arms, they always just got sore before any proper shaking happened.

Adam might be vulgar, always cursing like gramps did when he hurt something. Adam might be rude, always ignoring things he found annoying and telling people to leave him alone. Adam might enjoy the dungeon just a bit too much.

But Bell could say for absolute certainty, Adam was a True Hero in the making. Huge and strong, fast and quick, with loads of pain tolerance and a sharp eye. More than anything else, he was really good at killing monsters.

Bell had gotten maybe about twenty goblins and kobolds his first day. The second day he went down with Adam and they got nearly eighty. That means that Adam was getting sixty. Sixty was three times more than twenty. Gramps made sure Bell knew his numbers.

Adam was three times more of a hero than Bell was. He even had a cute girl offering him free food! Comparing himself to that, Bell was coming up pretty dang short.

Running forwards, he roared and swung the sword down. The kobold lunging for Adam turned just in time for the blade to chop down on his shoulder and into the chest. A bit of red sprayed him, but Bell ignored it. Adam was soaked in the stuff and you didn't see him complaining, so Bell wasn't about to worry about a little bit like this.

The sword was stuck, so Bell punched the next goblin. He winced as the blow bruised his knuckles pretty badly, even as it tossed the goblin back with a broken nose. It's skull was about as hard as his fists then, huh?

He needed to change that. He got twenty monsters the first day, and at least twenty one the next. So today he was going to get at least twenty two, and preferably even more. A little bit at a time, that's how work gets done.

That and he was still a little astonished from Adam's update yesterday. Bell got six or seven points on everything except magic his first day, then six or seven more the second. Adam got twelve to fourteen most things, and then a sixty in endurance! Bell clearly wasn't working hard enough!

One of the goblins leapt.

His hand swiped the dagger from his belt. A horizontal sweep.

The goblin's corpse fell on him. Droplets of red fell over his face.

Bell stumbled backwards, sputtering as the goblin's weight unbalanced him. "Gah! It got in my mouth!"

An amused snort from the giant that was his ally followed. Adam had one of those almost-smiles on his face, the kind he had whenever he wasn't killing monsters. It wasn't quite a real smile, his lips didn't even twitch, but there was an amused gleam in his eyes.

The only time Bell saw him smile was while killing monsters, it worried him a bit. Adam's face seemed to naturally settle into a frown, and almost never climbed out of that state. Similarly, his brows were almost always slightly furrowed and eyes narrowed, as if he found it slightly hard to see.

"Did you die, kid?" Adam rumbled lightly at him.

Shoving the goblin corpse off of him, he stood up straight again and looked to the hall they were in, and the dim walls that surrounded them. He was beginning to suspect that monster blood could attract more monsters, because they seemed to only increase in numbers the more Adam got drenched in guts.

"I'm fine!" He replied, looking at the bodies that now clogged the hallways. Reaching up to scratch his head at the puddles that were forming. "How many was it that time?"

"Get counting." Adam instead replied, reaching down to start prying open their chests with his bare hands. Fingers shaking and buried into flesh, then a solid grip, then a tearing motion like he was ripping firewood apart.

The goblin, corpse that it was, did not complain as it was torn in two and the little monster core fell to the ground.

Bell instead nodded to himself, then started getting to the less glamorous part of this Hero-ing business, getting the drops out. Cores and the occasional claw or tooth. The claws and teeth were worth slightly more valis each, but Adam pointed out that they were awkwardly shaped and a bit bigger than the cores, and thus wouldn't fit as many in each bag.

So it would be a net loss if they took drops over cores from the first floor. Bell took them regardless, and put them in his pockets instead. He wanted to save up enough to buy Hestia-sama something in return for taking him in, but wasn't sure what yet.

That and, well, Adam took a look at him filling up his pockets earlier and only grunted in approval, so it must be something right. The older teen had a good five years of experience on him, after all.

…Maybe he should buy one of those really big bags first? So that he could save up more and faster? It's what Adam said they should be getting as number 1 priority, and Bell saw the logic in it. He would recommend gauntlets again, but Adam turned his cloak into leather wraps and it was doing way better against their attacks than his bare skin had been.

"How many cores?" Adam grunted out.

"Eight." Bell called out. Adam nodded and finished dropping his own little orbs into the bag, standing straight up and rubbing his chin.

"...What's with the walls?" He grumbled out.

Ah! He actually knew this one! "Ah, that means this section of the dungeon is exhausted of energy, and can't make anymore monsters for a while."

Adam turned a questioning eye towards him, and Bell raised a hand to rub the back of his head. "At least, that's what Eina-san-" Adam's hand twitched. He really didn't like the guild huh? "-told me."

Adam turned his gaze back to the hall they were in, then turned his gaze back down the hall they had come from, and the long line of similarly-colored walls. He hummed for a moment. "We've just completed a loop."

"What?" Bell asked back, confused as he moved to stand closer.

"This floor. I memorized most of it yesterday. We just completed a loop. Took five hours." Adam explained.

Bell felt dumbfounded at the realization, and suddenly looked back down the previous hall again, exhausted of energy. He and Adam had only been moving on once the monsters stopped coming in each section.

Had they… had they just cleared an entire dungeon floor?

This was his third day of Adventuring. He looked down to the borrowed sword and dagger in his hands, and they felt just as heavy as ever.

…Oh hey. Bell blinked and brought the sword up closer to his face, looking at the base of the blade. "Adam, why didn't you tell me this sword had a name?"

"...It has a name?"

"Yeah, and a smithing-seal. It's called Gobrist, and it was made by someone named Bruni. Did you not know when you bought it?" Bell turned his gaze up to Adam, who frowned slightly harder.

"Found it on a corpse. Didn't bother looking at it."

Bell also dropped it. A light wave of revulsion followed. "What!?"

Adam nodded casually. "In the slums, where I was staying before I joined Tinytits. There was a corpse in an alleyway, so I took its stuff and moved on."

"I-" Bell didn't know what his face looked like. Adam was living in the slums? There were corpses laying around in the slums? "I… shouldn't we return it?"

"To who?"

Bell wasn't sure either, but he knew they had to take it somewhere. "This Bruni I guess?"

"If you want to get rid of it, sure." Adam grunted out, clearly not caring about the topic as much as he did. "But first, let's go to the second floor and finish filling our bags."

Bell looked back up at the older teen, and frowned in consideration. It was true that their bags still weren't full… and that he kinda wanted to see the second floor already… but…

"Eina-san recommended not going down until our stats were higher."

Adam snorted and rolled his eyes. "Alright, I'll go down and you can stay here."

And let him die?! Bell can't do that! Not to his Goddess! He opened his mouth to protest…

Before closing it, and an idea forming behind his eyebrows. Taking a moment to think it through, he weighed the odds and potential rewards for a bit. Then, finally, with a heavy heart, he mentally apologized to Eina-san.

"I'll go with you, but it's kinda inefficient don't you think?" He slyly started.

Adam grunted in questioning. Bell continued on. "Well if we want to finish filling our bags then… we'd need to empty this bag first too huh?"

He raised a particular bag from his belt. Adam's perpetual glare sharpened with great intensity.

"No."

"I mean look at the size of this thing, we could probably fit another thirty, fifty cores in here. That'd be more than enough to pay for our meal there yesterday and it's a free meal on top!"

"Then you eat it."

"I can't do that!" Bell looked shocked and appalled. "A cute girl made this for you! If I eat it, it'll send all kinds of wrong messages!"

"Then toss it out."

Bell was about to reply.

Adam's stomach roared, cutting him off, and ending the debate.

Adam's glare burned into him like the sun.

"...You tell a goddamn soul and I'm breaking your arms." Bell resisted the urge to scold him for blasphemy again, and instead nodded.

"I won't speak a word." Bell swore, handing the bag of food off with a sincere expression and a pleased grin in his soul.

—

As it turned out, the second floor of the Dungeon had more than just goblins and kobolds. On top of those guys, there were the occasional big lizard that showed up. Goblins and kobolds were… relatively easy to take care of. One good stab or slash somewhere in the chest or head was enough to take them down, and the extra reach of this sword was more than enough to keep their claws or teeth away on their own.

It was only when more than one or two started showing up that Bell started having trouble. Adam on the other hand, was going through them with decisive blows and ignoring their attempted counterattacks each time. He got really scratched up doing this, but they had already bought healing potions, so it was probably fine.

Frankly, it was kinda awesome to watch his teammate go all out every time, without hesitation or regard for their attempts to hurt him. It was also something he knew Hestia-sama would be worried about seeing, so he restrained his urge to ramble about how sensational it was.

Bell saw the next step in his journey as an adventurer, covered in gore and grinning.

…Well, hopefully he wouldn't be as vulgar, rude, or battle-hungry. Bell considered himself a bit more polite than all that. But certainly just as strong, at the very least. Adam needed to work on his other qualities to round out his attributes as a True Hero.

"Above!" Bell called out, swinging and hacking into the side of a goblin's face. Adam's eyes darted up, and immediately spun into a counter against the giant lizard that was trying to fall on him from above with claws and teeth ready.

His upper torso leaned back, his leg coming up in a perfectly circular motion, shaking enough to blur the limb slightly, and heel crashing into the lizard's side as it descended.

The lizard's torso half-collapsed as it flew through the air and crashed against the walls of the dungeon, spraying yet more gore all over his ally, the ceiling, walls, and floors. Adam kept falling backwards, hands reaching up to brace himself against the floor.

Goblins leapt forwards to seize the chance.

Bell's borrowed sword stabbed past Adam's descending form, and crashed into one of their torsos. The other turned to face him. His dagger cut across its eyes.

This dual-wielding thing was actually pretty useful, huh.

Adam flipped by pushing off the ground, heels-over-head, and landed into a crouching position behind him. Bell stomped back, yanking the sword out of the goblin's torso and raising it to catch a new kobold's teeth. His other weapon was on the other side of his body, unable to stop the second kobold…

Adam's fist crashed into the side of its head, turning the dog-skull into red rain, blinding the first one long enough for Bell to stab its exposed chest.

Bell staggered back, and looked for the next threat. Adam rose to his full height and did the same. After a few moments of seeing nothing in particular around, the two relaxed.

Bell slumped, his arms burning and breathing heavy.

Adam's own breathing was quite heavy, but it was also completely silent. His senpai refused to show any kind of weakness, even with just noise.

Bell forced himself to straighten once more, and looked at the new corpses around him.

Adam glanced over, before snorting. "They got you on the side."

Bell blinked before looking down to see red stains on the side of his shirt, and his leather jacket slightly torn. Raising a hand to feel at it, he winced as a pain he didn't notice before burned into his mind. "Ow…"

Hearing some shuffling, he glanced up to see a thin glass vial being offered by his Senpai. Taking it, he grinned tiredly. "Thanks Adam-san."

His eyes twitched for a moment, before he uncapped and drained his own vial.

Bell figured he should do the same, uncapping the vial and hesitating. Gramps once said healing potions burnt, and that's how you knew they were working. Frowning and deciding he needed to get it over with, Bell drained the vial.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

He blinked. He was looking at the ceiling. When did he get on the floor?

He pushed himself up woozily, staring at nothing for a few moments. Blinking, he saw Adam a slight ways away, tearing open the corpse of the dungeon lizard.

"Finally done screaming?" Adam rumbled out idly, tearing open the torso with an experimental, uncertain grip. He hadn't figured out how to rip open this kind of monster yet. "You were down for about a minute."

Bell blinked.

…Oh the offstock hurt a lot, didn't it? Bell wasn't expecting it to be that bad. Reaching up to feel his side, the wound and pain was gone. His back was also soaked in floor-gore now. It was kinda uncomfortable.

What was he doing lazing around? Bell forced himself up to his feet again, and retrieved his knife. Blinking the brief stars out of his eyes, he marched over to start carving open monsters again.

Senpai had an almost-smile on his face, tearing open the lizard. He was already hard at work again, what excuse did Bell have for slacking off?

Dagger plunged into the goblin's chest, and he started working the stone out.

They were going to make so many valis today, he was going to make sure of it!