Chương 2: The Goddess Without a Familia

"Haa..." A possibility had just occurred to Cael, and it made his breathing turn shallow. With trembling hands, he lifted the ornate longsword he had bought with almost his entire fortune and held it out to Eina.

"Miss Eina," he said, his voice catching slightly, "please take a very careful look at this sword and tell me how much it is worth."

"I am not a smith, but I can at least recognize the basics." Eina studied the sword for a few seconds before delivering her verdict without mercy.

"The blade itself is probably worth about sixty valis. With the glowing crystals and engravings included, perhaps eighty." She only needed to watch the light drain from the newcomer's eyes to understand what had happened. He had been swindled the moment he arrived in Orario. How unlucky. And he looked so innocent too. His hands did not have the calluses of someone who had held a sword for years or worked a farm. Was he some young noble from a kingdom outside Orario?

Telling him the truth so directly was cruel, but letting a new adventurer walk into the Dungeon with decorative gear would be far worse. If he never came back, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

"Urgh!" Cael clutched his chest as if he had taken a critical hit.

"My heart. I think my heart just gave out."

"Didn't every story say dwarves were supposed to be honest?" he groaned.

"That lying little..." Ten million valis. His phone, with one bar of battery left, had become ten million valis. And then ten million valis had become two potato puffs.

"Pfft." Eina failed to hold back a small laugh at his tragic expression. She quickly caught herself and returned to her professional smile.

"It seems you really do need an adviser to explain how things work for adventurers." At that, Cael lifted his head with empty eyes. Eighty valis. In Orario, one fried potato puff cost thirty valis. In other words, he had traded ten million valis for something worth a little more than two snacks.

"As you can see," he said weakly, "I am currently penniless."

"There is no fee right now," Eina said with patient kindness.

"New adventurers without someone responsible for guiding them often fail because of problems that could have been avoided. I hope you will consider it." She placed a form in front of him with a smile.

"I will, Miss Eina," Cael said.

"But first I need to find a Familia to join. Do you happen to know of any gods who still have no Familia members? Maybe a goddess without a Familia, for example?" He gave her an awkward little laugh. Even as he said it, his face began to warm. Anyone could hear the extra motive behind those words. Sure enough, Eina froze for a heartbeat and then looked him over with a strange expression.

"You are specifically looking for a goddess with no Familia?" Are you trying to join a Familia, or are you trying to have a fated encounter with a goddess? Gods falling for mortals and mortals falling for gods happened often enough in Orario. But someone arriving at the Guild and openly looking for a goddess to meet was a first for her. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Of course, as a Guild employee, Eina kept that thought to herself.

"I am sure." Cael's gaze slipped aside under her scrutiny, but he lifted his chin anyway.

"As a man who will one day stand at the top of Orario's adventurers, I want to build something from nothing. That is what makes a man's blood run hot. Surely you understand that, Miss Eina." He only half believed his own speech, but he pressed his palms together and shut his eyes.

"Please." Searching all of Orario for one person, or rather, one goddess, would be too difficult. The Guild was his best chance. Eina stared at him for a moment, half exasperated and half amused. He really was a strangely confident, strangely adorable child. Then again, he was hardly the first boy to come to Orario chasing a dream. Plenty of rookies she had advised had joined Familias because a goddess had captured their heart. Freya Familia was full of examples.

"Let me check." Eina sighed softly and began searching through the records.

"An adventurer who came here to meet a goddess. You really are the first of your kind. Gods without any Familia members are rare, and goddesses are even rarer. There may not be any at all, and I would advise you to..." She paused.

"Oh. There really is one." Ten minutes later, Eina signed her name on a set of adventurer registration documents with her quill.

"Becoming an adventurer for the sake of meeting a goddess. I have truly never seen that before," she said, unable to stop herself from commenting. Still, she smiled. Rookies who became adventurers for reasons other than money or fame were rare now. Even if his reason was ridiculous, at least it was his own. Cael Veyren. As a rookie adviser, Eina would remember that name.

"Hestia still has no Familia members. Thank goodness." Cael jogged through the noisy streets with his travel bag on his back, unable to hide the happiness on his face. Hestia was currently searching for humans willing to join her Familia. Unfortunately, gods in the lower world were not that different from humans. Some even lived worse than humans, and most people chased profit before anything else. If a god had no useful talent, most people saw no benefit in choosing them. Hestia was the goddess of the hearth.

She did not have Freya's power to charm mortals with a glance. She could not forge divine weapons like Hephaestus. She did not have Hermes's layered schemes either. She even had to work for humans to earn the valis she needed to live. Anyone chasing status, money, or quick profit would ignore a goddess like that, especially when every god's Falna worked by the same basic principles. But Cael was one of the few people not chasing profit. His own ability was enough to carry him beyond ordinary gods.

Money and shallow benefits were not his real goal. What he wanted was an encounter. Something moving. Something warm enough to matter. The kind of beautiful connection that had been almost impossible to find in his old world. The southeastern outer district of Orario had more ordinary residents than adventurers. The buildings there were humbler and older, and the narrow alleys were marked by moss growing through the cracks in the brick walls. Some Familias had once kept their bases in this area.

After they were destroyed or moved away, only slums and the ruined remains of old Familia homes were left behind. The abandoned church where Hestia currently lived had once belonged to one of those Familias. The deeper Cael went, the more the atmosphere changed. Laundry hung on lines overhead, street stalls sold daily necessities, and discarded beer barrels were piled in corners. Compared with the western avenue, this place felt far more human.

"Come and take a look! Do not miss out. These potato puffs were made by a goddess herself. Only thirty valis. Very cheap." At a small fried potato puff stand, a girl with twin ponytails waved a pair of tongs with bright enthusiasm. Her smile shone with springlike warmth, full of youth and energy, as if the world's worries could be swept away just by seeing her. A faint aura surrounded her. Stare too long, and it was easy to lose yourself in it without realizing. Divinity. The word surfaced in Cael's mind.

Mortals might not recognize a god by name, but the moment they saw one, they knew. Cute. Beautiful. Pure. Charming. Noble. Sacred. Unreachable. Unique. One word after another flashed through his mind, and the speech he had prepared vanished entirely.

"Would you like one?" Hestia asked sweetly, lifting a potato puff toward the dazed boy standing in front of her stall.

"They are delicious. A goddess made them by hand, you know." Cael froze. He was blushing. This was humiliating. He had no composure at all.

"My Goddess?" Hestia blinked. For one second, she simply stared at him. Then a smile of pure, uncontrollable delight spread across her face, and her eyes fixed on the boy who had gone speechless at the sight of her. She had been in the lower world for quite some time, yet not a single human had been willing to become a member of her obscure little Familia.

Her divine friends teased her as a poor goddess whose only wealth was her chest, and humans kept politely rejecting her because she seemed like a poor goddess who could not do anything useful. Because she could not do much of anything, most humans gave her only the bare minimum of respect. Some did not even give her that. They called her Goddess Hestia, Lady Hestia, or simply Hestia. But My Goddess? That was the first time anyone had addressed her with that kind of reverence.

Usually, only members of a Familia called their patron god that way.

"Hehe. My name is Hestia. What is yours?" Hestia dropped the tongs at once and skipped lightly to stand in front of him. With both hands clasped behind her back, she smiled up at him, her sky-blue eyes bright with anticipation. There was no trace of Falna on him. His dark eyes were clear too. Wonderful. He was a child from outside Orario who had never joined another Familia.