The Labyrinth City, Orario. Hephaestus Arms, Branch Store.
A mature woman with a striking, handsome face and wine-red hair tied into a low ponytail stood with a slight frown. She wore a simple white shirt and black trousers. The black eyepatch over her right eye only sharpened her dashing aura.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on the black-haired boy unconscious on the sofa before shifting, with a sigh of exasperation, to the dear friend who was causing her this headache.
"Hestia."
"My limit was letting you stay at my place temporarily. So… who is this?"
The girl with long black hair tied into twin tails, Hestia, twisted her fingers together, a somewhat sheepish smile on her youthful face.
Her voluptuous figure, startlingly at odds with her childlike features, swayed slightly as she stood up quickly. Thankfully, the blue ribbon wrapped tightly around her chest kept things from becoming too… pronounced.
"Well, it's a bit of a long story."
"You see, today I went to the Guild to try and recruit members for my Familia. On the way back, I found this child passed out in an alley I was passing by."
'At least she's not just lazing around at home all day anymore.' Hephaestus felt a flicker of relief at that, though her stern expression didn't soften. "So you brought him home?"
"That's right!"
"Did you consider that he might already belong to a Familia?"
Faced with her friend's pointed question, Hestia's confidence visibly wavered. She looked at the boy's handsome face and replied with determined earnestness, "Meeting someone is a kind of fate. If he's already part of another Familia, then we'll just consider it a good deed."
"But if he doesn't have a god…"
"If he wants to be an adventurer, I'll just invite him to join when he wakes up!"
As fragmented memories swirled and coalesced in his mind, the scenes replaying behind his eyelids made Xyros abruptly realize his current situation was less than ideal.
He had pulled an all-nighter finally beating Elden Ring, then gone out for breakfast only to have a close encounter with a hundred-ton truck.
The numbers were off the charts, monstrous. Even a sports scholarship student giving it his all stood no chance.
"Logically speaking, with my athletic background, I had Morgott, the Omen King in the palm of my hand. A hundred-ton truck shouldn't have been a problem."
After all, the cessation of brainstem function and the disappearance of brain activity signaled the end of consciousness, that was just basic medical knowledge.
If he could still think…
…then there was still hope.
But there was no smell of disinfectant in the air. Just as Xyros was puzzling over this, he caught a faint, gentle scent of orchids.
As this confusion arose, a pure white light enveloped his soul, like a lone bird adrift on the sea finally finding an island to land upon.
It allowed Xyros to gradually feel the tangible sensation of being alive.
Slowly regaining control of his body, he opened his eyes. The bright light hanging from the ceiling assaulted his vision, causing intense discomfort.
And then,
What filled his sight was a completely unfamiliar environment. This was not a hospital ICU.
A spacious room furnished in solid wood, filled with objects he had never seen before. This flood of information poured into his mind, ultimately pointing to one answer.
'It wasn't a truck. It was an isekai express.'
Getting transported to another world, anyone who read web novels knew this was a classic trope. He just never imagined it would happen to him one day.
"Please don't tell me it dumped me into the Lands Between."
A sense of foreboding settled over Xyros. Just as this thought crossed his mind, a gentle, unfamiliar voice sounded from not too far away.
"Um…"
"Are you alright?"
Following the voice, Xyros struggled to lift his head. But when his eyes finally focused on the girl who had spoken, his brain short-circuited for a moment.
Standing before him was a girl in a simple white dress. Her youthful face hovered somewhere between teenager and child, a delicate beauty that seemed like a miracle of creation.
Her long, smooth black hair was tied into twin tails. That sweet, almost childlike face was paired with a figure of utterly unreasonable proportions.
Babyface with massive tits.
Hestia. Blue ribbon.
'Where the hell did I end up this time?'
Recognizing the girl instantly, Xyros finally understood, he had been transported into the world of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?.
Compared to the grim, unforgiving darkness of a Souls-like world, ending up in Danmachi was far easier to swallow.
At least you wouldn't get ambushed around a corner by some cheap shot and die a meaningless death to a low-level grunt. Though this world wasn't exactly simple either.
Adventurers, Familias…
He was fairly familiar with this fantasy world and its extraordinary systems.
Deities bestowed their "Falna", their Blessing, upon those of the lower world, granting them the potential to gain power and grow stronger. Around this labor and the pursuit of wealth, the system of Familias was built.
Familias varied greatly in size and nature.
But a group could only truly be called a Familia when both its members and its patron deity were present.
The core mechanic revolved around this Falna. Receiving it granted something like a status panel, making one's abilities visible as numerical values.
Adventurers who possessed the "vessel" for it could, through trials in the Dungeon, continually unlock their latent potential, which included abilities like Magic and Skills.
"Become an adventurer, huh?"
"With that option right in front of me… it's kind of hard to say no."
Thinking of all those infuriatingly difficult bosses he had been stuck on in Souls games, that feeling of wanting to reach through the screen and punch them, the sheer temptation to just open up a trainer program…
It was still a world filled with monsters, this Danmachi place.
There were no bonfires to respawn at, but it had magic and other supernatural powers. Relying on skill to conquer monsters… wasn't that just another form of a no-death, Souls-like challenge run?
Not to mention, knowing how the plot of Danmachi unfolded, Xyros felt, this adventurer thing, he really had no choice but to go for it.
According to the original story, the catastrophic threat of the One-Eyed Black Dragon would erupt in just two years.
Without some means of protecting himself, the only result waiting for him would be a hard reset.
He had considered it, pinning all his hopes for saving the world on the original protagonist, Bell Cranel. But he just couldn't get past the mental block.
Xyros believed more in relying on himself than others. He was determined to take his future into his own hands.
Having figured out his post-transmigration situation and the unavoidable problem staring him in the face, he pushed himself up from the sofa and looked at the figure in front of him.
Hestia, who was in the middle of pouring a cup of hot tea.
After confirming his body was fine, Xyros expressed his sincere gratitude. "Thank you. I think I'm alright now."
"May I ask where is this?"
Hestia handed the warm tea to the boy and patiently explained, "This is the office at the Hephaestus Arms shop."
"You fainted in an alley. I just couldn't leave you there, so I brought you back."
After explaining the situation, the girl looked at the black-haired boy, a sweet smile gracing her face, complete with dimples.
"Which god's Familia do you belong to? Would you like me to contact them for you?"
"Right now… I guess you could say I'm a free agent."
Her personality was just as it was in the original, a virgin goddess firmly in the camp of justice.
She held a genuinely friendly attitude toward humans.
As for her question, Xyros didn't hide the truth. Partly because any lie would be seen through by a deity's ability to discern intentions.
But the moment he finished answering…
Hestia, sitting primly across from him, looked up. In her clear, lake-blue eyes shone an expectation she made no effort to conceal.
"Um…"
"Would you… like to become an adventurer?"