Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Hestia could see the stress hanging on my shoulder as I walked into the basement and called out to me as I started stripping out of my adventurer gear. "Jake you alright?" She asked and even though I was pulling my shirt off at the time I could hear the concern in her voice.

I kept silent for a moment till I finished changing and I knew Hestia was giving me time to formulate what I wanted to say.

I sat down beside Hestia on our new couch and just kept my hands on my knees as I looked down and didnt make eye contact with her as I spoke, blankly replaying those memories over in my head because despite the fact that I got ahead in the situation and didnt get hurt, all it would have taken was Lili shooting me as her partner tried to stab me or any other variation and despite my cheats I would be the one laying in the dirt. "I had to kill someone in the dungeon today when they tried to rob me..."

Hestia sighed and then she took up my whole view as she straddled my lap and gently lifted my chin up to look into her Aquamarine eyes as she looked at me gently "Jake did you want to kill him, or did you enjoy it?"

"No of course not Hestia, I am not some psychopath." I said hotly and then Hestia shut me up by kissing me and she put her whole body into it when she pushed her breasts into my chest and wrapped her legs around my back.

It only took me a moment to come back to my senses as I was currently gripping her hips and pulling her into me and I could almost feel Hestia affection for me with her almost drowning me in her attentions.

Finally we pulled apart and I was already feeling a bit better holding someone who cared for me.

"Jake as an adventurer and as a person living in Orario you keep this in mind as this was the first thing Hephaestus told me when I arrived. Very few adventurers die randomly to average monsters." Hestia shook her head in disappointment most die due to and I caught her underling meaning. "Yes Jake, granted most deaths are attributed to monsters in the dungeon but the truth is that most people die to Pass Parades, other adventures, and Monster Rex's the mutated monsters that sometimes form or when people force them too."

She patted my head affectionately "So if someone starts trouble just clean them up. I will support you no matter what Jake." She then blushed and she coughed into her fist and then looked up into my eyes and I realized Hestia had something important to say to me.

"Jake I think I love you... So you aren't allowed to abandon me. Or look at other girls!" She almost shouted and bounced a bit in my lap making me laugh at how animated she was not to mention how red her face was at her confession.

I simply pulled her in and rested her head against my chest and let her hear my heart beat "Hestia as a man it's impossible for me not too "Look" at girls but I will never abandon you for long..." I joked making Hestia gap in outrage and start slapping my chest in her fury. "Ai Ow Hestia you're divine strength is too great for my humble body have mercy..." I laughed out.

"Hestia when can we go pick up another Familia member?" I asked after flipping Hestia around so I could wrap my arms around her belly and with how short she naturally was my arms covered her stomach and my top arm was propping up her breasts and Hestia seemed to appreciate it with how she squirmed in my lap.

"Well I want anyone to joining to be a decent person at least..." Wow scraping the bottom of the barrel there Hestia but she seemed to be able to sense my incredulity and continued. "I would rather have a smaller Familia full of quality people we could all get along with rather than a hundred people I will likely only see once every few weeks to update there Falna." Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

Yeah most large Familia's have that kind of situation, just think of the literally hundreds of smiths alone in the Hephaestus Familia and think of how many of them actually even have the chance to communicate with there goddess... No in those cases it's no longer a family, working together to prosper it's a clan with muddy waters from the differing interests conflicting with one another or having to jostle for power.

"So would it be ok for us to find people and bring them here for you to question?" I asked

Hestia hummed in thought for a couple moment. "Hmm that's fine I guess."

For the next couple hours we discussed how we would look for more Familia members being me literally going to the front gate and waylaying obviously fresh entry's and Hestia putting up a notice in the Guild.

After we finished our prior talks, the wild Rabbit managed to stagger in looking like shit warmed over with his clothes torn up and the short sword I made him broken seeing as he was just carrying it by its pommel and the blade itself was missing half it's previous length.

"Jeez Bell what happened to you?" I asked and Hestia surprisingly didnt move from her place on my lap after taking Bell in and seeing he didnt look hurt.

Bell just sighed and shook his head. "Jake we are going to need too stick together the Soma Familia is literally going insane because someone killed the captain and all those addicts have lost there mind after literally drinking several pots of his unfiltered brew."

I could feel Hestia's frown as she tensed up. "The guild wouldn't allow a bunch of junkies to run around Orario causing trouble."

Bell snorted and I could see how stressed he was as I know that wasn't something he would normally do. "Yeah the guild would normally order the Ganesha Familia to put them in there place but, the problem is that Soma himself supposedly finally left his lab and threatened to burn the rest of his stock and forbid selling his wine to any gods for the next century if people interfere with him restructuring his own Familia." Ah shit so basically he is holding all the childish gods favorite drink as ransom to make them lean on the Guild.

"Ok so what does that have to do with the dungeon?" I asked already fearing his response.

"Ok I guess I will just have to ask for some other divines blood to bind and upgrade the weapon. Oh and I guess I shouldn't name the weapon after you as well then." I sighed dramatically making her freeze and I could see the thoughts rolling in her mind as she contemplated the thought of another's deities blood being carried by me along with the thought of there blood bound weapon that I would carry for the majority of the day and think of constantly being named after her...

"Fine I guess it can't be helped... But you can't have any other goddesses blood bound stuff on you! No discussion!"

'Whelp Hestia has made her opinion on that matter very clear.' I noted seeing her fierce expression.

I held my Goblin Tooth sword in my arms and stared at the piles of materials I was going to fuse which were the stuff I got from Lili yesterday along with some moving parts/joints and most importantly the monster stones and Hestia's blood. "Fuse." I called making the large pile of stuff blur into a pile of light that slowly broke apart into into little motes of light that merged into my sword and as the last pieces fused my sword lost its light I lost control of it as it's new weight asserted itself.

"Crack!" The new Charge Blade I modeled after ones seen in Monster Hunter was extremely heavy in its axe form not to mention awkward with how its weight was balanced at its end, so it was no surprise when I was unprepared for it, making hit the floor.

"I want one..." Bell whispered seeing me stagger to lift it up and pop a pin that made the axe head slide down and I was able to pull off and then by twisting a small handle on the axe head the blades on each side flattened to form a shield.

-Charge Blade- A mega sized weapon that fuses a great axe, tower shield, and a Great Sword to form a weapon perfectly suited to combat large scale monster for long periods. Able to shoot a blast of fire at large cost of mind. Surrounding fire can be shaped at additional mind cost. -Platinum

For a moment I contemplated on making Bell an insect glaive but the image of Bell's already bouncy fighting style being augmented assured me we would be lucky to see him touch the ground to eat or sleep...

After quickly fusing the leftover scrap metals into Bell's sword to fix it and now it became something similar to a Kopis cavalry sword meant for heavy duty slashing. We then set out after saying goodbye to Hestia and this time we didnt see Syr at the Hostess and we both wanted to get straight into the dungeon so we didnt bother to pop in an say hello.

-

"I hate to say it Bell... But I think you may have understated how crazy these people may be." I said frowning at seeing a trio of bodies literally at the bottom of the second floor's staircase and clearly already looted of everything including clothes leaving the bodies wounds easily distinguished as by swords and arrows. With the length of the gashes and the holes on the victims chest's made it plain that people did it.

Bell just shook his head "We can't do anything for them now. Lets go." I nodded and we jogged deeper into the dungeon and after messing with the sheer momentum of my charge blade I was pretty confident I would be able to hamstring Orcs or even Silverbacks should I be able to get the surprise in on them so we agreed to frankly go far deeper than we should in hopes of dodging the weaker Soma members obviously camping in the deeper tunnels on each floor and we would be hidden within the deep fog common in the 10th-12th floor's.

"Ok Bell, here's what I think we should do. You get the Orcs attention and as it turns to you I will chop its leg off at the knee and then we can easily kill them once they are down."

"Seems easy enough but what if there's more than one or if a Blue Papilo comes and starts healing them?"

Hmm we are going to need to get a long range fighter at some point point. "Just hit the Blue Papilo with a thrown stick or something. They have to fly rather low so there magic dust can heal things and they are literally the most fragile monsters in the dungeons."

As we finished up our plans we finally managed to arrive at the tenth floor and were blessed with being unable to see more than twenty meters in any direction due to the harsh fog and we could only hear monsters stomping around in the distance.

Thankfully I wasn't a complete novice using an axe as I used to have to split a lot of wood when I was younger and the motions of aiming where the axe head would land carried over quite well even if I had to dance around the stomping legs of a five meter tall orc swinging a tree trunk at me as a weapon because for whatever reason the orcs seemed to have a fetish for wanting to crush the person with the fuckoff huge weapon swinging for there legs. And just ignore the hyperactive rabbit trying to cosplay Captain Levi with how he was spinning in the air to cut deeper into the monsters with his new saber.

"Ugh" I grunted after ducking and leaving my tower shield straight up and implanted against the ground that way the overhead smash from the orc in front of me would force all the weight in it's attack into the ground and when the monster drew back for another smash I quickly flipped the shield onto the blades end and switched it into it's great axe form and did my own overhead smash but mine was faster and my axe's head bite deeply into the stomach of the orc. In fact the sheer height of the axe head's cut opened up the beast from hits hip line to where my axe stopped at breaking through the orcs breast bone.

Wrenching my axe out of the clearly crippled orc I switched back to its Great Sword mode with the shield at the cross guard and sprinted to help Bell who was fighting three Orcs of his own and I used my new found Strength and Agility to kick off against a tree to get ten meters into the air and use the downward momentum to stab the Great Sword through the upper chest of an orc as I came down making it fall to the ground dead, going poof into smoke leaving it's monster stone behind.

With me taking out one of the Orc's Bell was able to quickly deal with the other two and after cleaned up our battlefield we relaxed for a minute as my muscles were shaking from the exertion of swinging this huge weapon.

However our rest didnt last for long.

A mass of shadows came through the smoke and I groaned as a deranged smiling figure staggered out in front. "Heya kids I saw you guys are working hard but I am going to need ya to bend over for my men over there little rabbit."

Wait what I think he messed up his words. His foggy red eyes focused on me and just seemed to notice me and he said "Oh Uhh I didn't see you there. I don't wanna share any booty do you mind fucking off or are we going to have to feed you to the infant dragon guarding the stairs..."