Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
His arms were continuing to whine at him, but the cool air kept them shivering too much to do more than whine. There was a deep soreness in the limbs still, and while he couldn't do much to stop that, he could increase it. His limbs, little weasley shits they were, were complaining the whole time that he spent lifting and lowering heavy things behind the church.
Which was too bad for them, because Adam had no intention of stopping at any point. There was quite a bit of stone rubble and miscellaneous garbage around the back of the church, so that's what he spent his early morning waiting on the meatbags to wake up again. They actually slept in beds like morons.
Beds were death traps, too soft to easily move off of, a blanket over top slowing you down, a sense of comfort luring you to your death. No, beds were horrible things and Adam intended to never go near one if he could avoid it. So he slept leaning against the fireplace hearth and ready to spring up and stab the first fucker that tried something after breaking in.
Then, the moment he started hearing birds screaming, he was up and over to the well to wash off anything that had accumulated. His arms were still torn up, his legs and biceps still bruised, and everything was yelling at him. That was fine, because apparently healing potions existed and would probably help. At worst, it was probably opium in a bottle and would numb the pain, and that's all he really needed it to do.
This was all just surface level damage, it didn't matter. The muscles underneath the torn strips were still fully functional and the bones were doing fine.
So after his morning wash, the other two still weren't awake, so Adam took to going through half-remembered motions of exercise that the Marines put him through. But to do that, first he needed to clear the space out.
So Adam spent the next hour or two cleaning. Big rocks moved to the side and set up like a stone wall. Wooden boards used to reinforce said stone wall. Glass bottles and smaller trash swept up and to the side with the one broom he found indoors. It was a scrub-broom, so immediately after sweeping all the loose bits to a single pile he started with his first exercises.
Pour well water onto stone. Use push-broom to scrub the floor. Murder the dirt underneath with his muscles. Plus side, this didn't let any dirt get into his half-open wounds and lead to potential infection. Also plus side, scrubbing stone with a broom was still a half-decent workout, and it got the area clean for later use.
If he had money, he would pay some chucklefuck kid to do this for him. Currently, they were down to his bag of stolen valis and about three-thousand vali in the guild bank account after yesterday's deposit. He hasn't counted out how much was in that bag yet, but he was going to empty it out at the potion shop today so they had more room to carry cores in.
From his eyeballing it, they could probably fit another twenty five or so in there. That's like having two Burden's carrying cores instead of one, much better profits. Average income per run round about three-thousand two-hundred vali. If his estimate was right, that was about one-thousand eddies and change per run.
He made a note to check how much the shittiest armor cost to cover his arms with. Something there would cut down on their long term costs significantly.
…Actually, he stared at his black cloak, drying from the wash, and then his arms again.
He didn't really need that, did he? Adam dropped the broom for a moment, then went over to find his sword.
—
"Oh, how long were you awake?" His employer sleepily asked, rubbing her eyes and re-stoking the fireplace with old wooden furniture. Adam grunted in thought as he finished wrapping the slightly damp strips of black leather around his arms. It wasn't quite proper armor, but against the sharp nails and teeth of things the size of children and small dogs, it would be more than enough for him to tussle more freely.
More importantly, it was a completely free way to potentially lower their expenses, so it only made sense to do. Even if they only lasted a single run, that was a good one-thousand valis saved. Each run they lasted would be effectively another one-thousand in the account, and make the trip to buying gear that was worth a damn that much quicker.
"Couple hours." Adam grumbled, testing the wraps and making sure they were going to stay on his arms securely. Layers of leather that slightly overlapped and held all that good blood in his arms where it belonged. Meat frames needed that to function, and replacing it was a pain. "Leftovers?" He asked.
She yawned and pointed at the wooden chest they had. Adam got up to look inside, and saw that it had a few rows of shelving currently holding old hashbrowns. Being hashbrowns, they hadn't expired yet. Being a day old, she couldn't sell them.
So Adam reached down and started to devour them. He'd only take a third for Burden and Tinytits to take the rest.
"What were you doing while awake?" Tinytits rubbed her hands together and held them in front of the fireplace, her eyes still bleary.
"Cleaning the back." Adam grumbled through a mouthful of potato. "I'll wake the kid."
"...This early?"
"We have meat to butcher and valis to make, he's got a good eight hours already."
"My my, my child works so hard~" Her attempt to sound mature was ruined by the massive yawn and sleepy blinks that immediately followed. She wasn't really awake yet, it seemed. Adam briefly grumbled to himself about how much slack he was picking up here.
—
"We're heading out!" Burden spoke with a smile and a bow. Adam waiting near the door and watching.
"Stay safe, and do your best!" Tinytits replied with an enthusiastic bow of her own. Turning her gaze towards him, she gave a mild glare. "That includes you too, mister! I don't want to see your arms all torn up like that again, you hear me?"
Adam stared for a moment, before turning to open the door and walking out. Tinytits made a sound similar to a 'grk!' as he completely ignored her and stared down the road.
After a few moments, Burden caught up with a half-smile and furrowed brows. "Still giving out goddess a hard time huh?"
"She's worrying too much about meat. We're already getting potions for it." Adam rumbled a reply. A thought came to mind, and he unstrapped his stolen sword and handed it over to the kid. Burden took it with a blink.
"You didn't have the muscle to do panzerfaust." As they had found out yesterday, the kid simply didn't have the ability to shake in the right ways to do it. Not even telling him to think of boiling water worked, and that's how Adam first learned how to do it, so Adam was mostly lost on how to teach it to him other than the circular motions and force-building forms. "So you get to use the sword. That wimpy ass dagger isn't enough for your skinny arms."
"Hey! I'm not skinny!"
Adam stared at the kid for a few moments as they walked. He then raised an arm and flexed the bicep. Burden stared back for a few moments, before glancing down at his own arms.
"...You may have a point." He sheepishly muttered. "But still, don't you need a weapon?"
Adam started to shake his still flexed arm in just the right way, still blankly staring at the kid. Point finally proven, the kid nodded.
"Alright, I'll do my best. Please be patient, I've never used a sword before."
"Just swing it at things, it's a sword, it'll handle the rest." Adam grumbled out. "Where's the potion place again?"
Burden shuffled through his pockets to pull out the paper again and squinted at it. "...Uhh, the third building on the right on the next street, it has a picture of a potion hanging at the door."
Adam was pretty sure they passed by it yesterday, which meant it was conveniently along the way back to the dungeon. Good sense of placement by his employer.
"Is that it?" He asked, staring at the building in question. Burden glanced down at the instructions in his hands, then up at the building and street names.
"I think so."
Pushing his way through the door, heralded by a little jingle of a bell overhead, Adam figured that this was indeed a potion shop. An incredibly stereotypical looking potion shop that really should be investing in better protection against thieves. They had bottles just sitting on shelves, instead of behind nice iron bars. Drugs were usually pretty expensive, in his experience.
"Hello, welcome to the Miach Pharmacy! How can I help you?" A thin looking guy with long straight blue-black hair smiled from behind the counter, wearing some sort of tunic, short cape, and tie-up vest.
"Hello! Hestia said you sell potions right?" Burden called with a smile. The man's face brightened up slightly at the mention of the name. Adam kept his pace steady towards the counter.
"Ah! You wouldn't happen to be her new familia would you? I passed by her stand the other day and she was bragging on you two. Here, would you like a free sampl-"
"Absolutely not." Adam grunted out, finally reaching the counter and cutting the man off. Raising and dropping his stolen coinpurse on the counter, he placed his order. "I want all the healing potions that can get me, starting with your cheapest and shittiest ones and going up."
The man behind the counter blinked, furrowing his brows. "Y-you want my off-stock? It's not nearly as effective and hurts a lot more to drink you know?"
"Hey Adam, he said he was offering a free sample, weren't you complaining about prices yesterday?" Burden asked with an equally confused expression.
"Anything offered for free isn't actually free, it just means it's going to screw you over later if you take it. Either because it's poison or you get too used to the handouts." Adam rumbled out an explanation for the brat, before turning back to the man at the counter. "I want your shittiest, cheapest health potions, all of them I can get for that. If you try to offer me anything for free again I'm buying them somewhere else."
The man gazed at him for a moment, before an understanding smile came to his face. "Ah, so you're that kinda mortal huh? I understand. Still, are you sure you want the offstock first?"
"I said so, didn't I?" Adam grumbled. This wasn't that difficult. "Just let me spend my money already, meatbag."
The man chuckled, spilling out the bag and starting a count of all the coins, muttering under his breath as he did so. Adam paid close attention to the numbers and the coins they corresponded to, better to figure out their values now and not later.
"Alright alright, you can buy the offstock, but I'm giving you a bag to hold it all in at least." The man replied after counting out the sum. Adam grumbled, but didn't refuse this part. An extra bag was yet more cores he could carry back on each run, so it was just long term profits there.
"Your total comes to twenty one offstock healing potions for seven-hundred vali each. That's three-hundred vali left over. Let me go get those bottles for you, I think Naaza-chan-" Adam's fist shook. "-got those done last night."
The man disappeared behind the door that was just beyond the counter. Adam turned around to lean against the counter, arms crossed, as he waited for the man to come back. Burden, at the very least, looked contemplative and thus not making annoying noise.
At least for a bit. "What's with that name?"
"Hmm?" Adam responded.
"Meatbag. You use that word a lot." Burden responded.
Adam wondered how he was going to explain it for a moment. Rumbling aimlessly as he pondered this, he eventually spoke after a moment. "There was a kinda… philosophy I guess back home. Metal is better than meat. You know what a prosthetic is?"
"Yeah, they're like golem arms for people. Gramps had a friend with one when I was growing up." Burden responded. Good, he was familiar with the concept.
"Well we had prosthetics back home, kid, and they were better than anything a normal limb could manage." Adam grinned savagely. "Arms made of proper myomer-muscle and titanium bones, plated in chrome and steel. They didn't get tired. They didn't yell about all that pain they were supposedly in. They were stronger than the strongest normal stuff, you could even put weapons in them."
"...So metal over meat is…"
"It means why would any fucker still waste their time with meat when you could upgrade to metal? You said they had prosthetics here right kid?"
"They should."
"Remind me to track those down once we got the money for it so I can get rid of all this fucking meat and it's bullshit. These arms have been yelling at me since yesterday."
"I thought you said they weren't in too much pain?!" Burden sounded simultaneously irritated and worried. Brows furrowed and frown on his face.
"No." Adam grumbled. "I said it was just pain. It doesn't matter. It ain't slowing me down, it's just screaming in my ear."
"Sorry, did you say you were hurt?" The man called out with a worried tone.
"It's none of your business is what I said!" Adam called back with an irritated rumble.
"Sorry, sorry!" The man came back out, a satchel bag and hand raised. "God of medicine, you know? I can't help but worry about these kinds of things. Your order is ready." So this is the 'Miach' or something? Were all gods going to be this unimpressive or what?
Adam grumbled as he took the order, counted the bottles inside, and took one out to see how it worked.
"Now it is offstock so it's going to burn as it-." Miach tried to warn, which Adam ignored and downed the bottle in one go.
He paused.
Lowering the bottle.
Adam closed his eyes.
Breathing in once, holding it, then exhaling.
Opening his eyes again he replied casually. "Not bad. Almost had me."
His body was screaming at him. His shitty meatframe roaring in disapproval as the apparent magical potion went to work on it, starting from the deeper internals and working its way outwards. It wasn't too bad. He knew what to brace himself for in the future, so he'd be ready for it.
The apparent god was staring at him with a deeply worried expression. Adam ignored it and turned to Burden, before jerking his head for the door. "C'mon kid, we got meat to butcher."
Burden too, was staring at him with a worried expression. Adam ignored it and walked out the door. The kid followed soon after, racing to catch up. "A-are you healed up now?"
Adam's limbs were still burning, so he wasn't sure yet. Handing the bag back to the kid, he unwrapped one of his arms to check. Adam raised both brows at what he saw.
Skin covered in thin white lines and discolorations of scar tissue, but otherwise completely restored, twisting the arm to and fro, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary with it. Flexing again and again, the burn slowly died down to a mild soreness and nothing more as they walked along.
Functionality completely restored, surface-level damage repaired, breaches in outer layer patched.
"Goddamn, these are good." Adam commented mildly, starting the process of re-wrapping his arms.
"Adam! Blasphemy!" Burden complained at him.
He ignored it, his mood was too good from how effective these things were.
His mood was promptly ruined when he looked up to see a horrible sight.
Frowning deeply, he moved to cross the street and walk down the other side.
The thing in front of him moved to block him. It was faster than him, unfortunately.
He narrowed his eyes, stood up straight, and glared at the thing blocking his path forwards.
The thing stared back, brows narrowed and ears flicking.
Burden deadpanned at what he was seeing, as did several other meatmaids looking through the nearest windows. "Adam just ask what she wants."
"I don't give a shit what she wants, I want her to fuck off." Adam growled back, still glaring at the thing blocking his way.
The brown-haired catmeat was in the road before him, stance wide and ready to intercept him. She raised her hands, and the bag that she was holding. Wide but determined eyes and flickering tail. "Advertisement sample. Free of charge. Dine at the Hostess of Fertility, nya!"
"Fuck off and die, catmeat." Adam replied with a snarl, flexing his hands into violent shapes. Unfortunately there were entirely too many witnesses here to murder her. "Your diner is overpriced, never eating there again."
Unfortunately, Burden walked over to the cat and offered a hand to take the 'advertisement sample'. "I'll make sure he eats it, thank you for the sample." His face was bright and tone all too pleased to be accepting random bullshit from random meatbags.
"Like hell I will!" Adam growled out. Catmeat bowed and backed away, entering the diner again and staring out from the windows. Adam kept up his furious glower as he began to move forwards again.
"If it's advertising, then It's not free right? So it's fine to accept it." Burden responded cheerfully. "Plus, now we have another bag!"
"We're returning it when we get back." Adam rumbled with a stormy tone. "Not touching that shit. It's probably poisoned."
"Ah, you're right, we probably should return the bag afterwards." Burden ignored the second part of his words entirely, causing Adam to growl and look dead ahead again.
Exhaling heavily through his nose, Adam stomped his way to the dungeon, glare set and hands shaking. He needed to kill something. Preferably a lot of things, and green children and small dogs would do just fine. Burden followed behind, practically skipping with his new bags slung over shoulder and on his hips.Last edited: Apr 30, 2024 Like ReplyReport Reactions:BookReader240000, Jimmynutrin, Duesal Bladesinger and 1,667 othersBrosefApr 29, 2024NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Interlude 1 New View contentMay 1, 2024Add bookmark#1,533BrosefAmateur WriterBell 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!