Floor ten.
Archway, archway, archway—the chambers between them already gone. Bell tore through the dungeon floor, white steam and orange sparks shearing off his shoulders. Soil ignited in his wake, blazing detonations chasing his heels.
Alfia ran at his flank. And two chambers back, her shadow was still trying to arrive—thin, late, stuttering across a wall it should have long passed by.
The dungeon shot past them, a disjointed reel of walls and chambers. Bell kept his gaze forward.
One war shadow loomed in the corridor ahead. He didn't look. His right arm swept out, violently erupting against air, knuckles locked in place.
The walls kept streaking by.
A heartbeat later, his fist connected. The distance between them had collapsed, that creature's chest running directly into it. A boom of impact arrived late, chasing him down alongside flaming trails.
Two needle rabbits burst from another corridor, white fur and sharp teeth aimed at Alfia's throat.
She didn't break stride. Her fingers snapped forward—a scissor-cut in space.
Those rabbits dropped, hitting the dirt mid-leap, parallel lines of red blooming across their skulls, dead long before they halted.
Two chambers back, on another wall that her shadow had just reached, the silhouette of her hand finally flashed upward. It mimicked her kill-stroke a full second too late.
Floor seven.
Black chitin. Mandibles. Black chitin again.
A whole swarm of killer ants flashed past, jaws snapping shut around only superheated air they left behind.
Ahead, the corridor widened into a gallery. Three adventurers fighting inside froze mid-step, pupils constricting as two parallel lines of heat and blur roared toward them.
Bell continued. His right hand swept back, palm meeting the hilt of Crimson Order strapped to his spine.
Beside him, Alfia extended her arm, fingers closing around the handle of a katana strapped to an adventurer's side.
His red hair whipped sideways, strands snapping in the wind.
Her white hair rushed to meet it, pale threads catching crimson.
Their eyes locked the exact moment their hair intersected.
Shing. Shing.
Hundreds of killer ants ahead of them petrified mid-step. A breath later, their bodies slid apart, toppling in bloody, segmented halves.
But Bell and Alfia were already gone.
That adventurer stared down at his katana, still sheathed, though hairline cracks webbed across its guard now.
Another adventurer opened his mouth, then closed it.
"What was that?"
"... A natural disaster."
Floor four.
Three frog shooters materialized from shadows. One fired, a wet tongue snapping toward Bell's neck.
His hand rose, encased in a gauntlet of flame. He caught the tongue mid-air.
A hard pivot. That creature was ripped from the ground, swung in a full circle, and hurled forward.
Alfia didn't stop.
That beast whipped behind her calves. She leaped, planting a foot on it, launching herself off its back.
It crashed into the second shooter, fracturing bone. But Alfia was already past them, vaulting toward the third. Her knee drove straight into its eye socket.
Before a crunch could even echo, Bell's hand closed around her wrist. He pulled, dragging her momentum back into sync with his as they continued onward.
Floor one.
Two goblins crouched in a corridor side by side. One gripped a rusted sword, the other held a rusted dagger in reverse grip, metallic tip pointed toward itself.
Bell and Alfia surged through that exact corridor.
It ruptured in their wake, floor bursting upward, stone walls shattering like an explosion going off.
The sword-goblin's feet left ground on their own. It rocketed straight to the ceiling, rusted blade crashing against stone, its skull diving in right behind.
Beside it, that dagger-goblin was slammed sideways, spine crushing against a cracked wall. Its hand wrenched back by the momentum of its crash, dagger's tip thrusting straight between its legs.
Silence.
Agonised howls tore all the way to the surface.
Surface.
Bell tilted his head.
"Aunt, do you hear someone screaming? Like really loud?"
Alfia glanced at him and shrugged her shoulders.
He rubbed his head for a moment and walked deeper into a throng of adventurers.
"Eh, must've been my imagination."
...
..
.
Home.
Bell walked to their home's main door and knocked once. Alfia stood behind him with her arms resting gently at her sides.
His hair had returned to its original white hue, Crimson Order still strapped to his back with a tiny string of flame.
A moment passed before the sound of rapid footsteps reached them from inside. Their home's door swung wide open.
Bell opened his mouth—
"Ooof!"
He took a step back as a body collided with his chest, slender arms digging into his shoulders, face pressed deep into his neckline.
Which rocket is it this time?
His arms wrapped around her back, and he let out a confused hm.
This back is slimmer than Astraea's, but wider than Hestia's... Excuse me, who?
Bell looked down, and the first thing he saw was long, blue hair, a very familiar shade of it.
"Goddess Artem—"
"Orion! Why do you keep worrying me again and again!?"
He was cut off by those words, her voice rising with each syllable.
Artemis' fingers raked down, bunching his tunic at the collarbone, white-knuckled fists clutching its cloth.
"I had to—"
"Shut up."
She pulled her face back and gazed at him, her eyes were glassy, lips trembling with equal parts fury and grief. Her breath came in shallow, uneven draws, each exhale shuddering through her chest.
Bell remained still for a heartbeat, his mouth opened, tongue moved, yet words refused to come out.
"You—I felt it." Artemis said, and her voice cracked on the third word like a bowstring snapping mid-draw.
"I felt you burn through my eyes, watched you set yourself alight like before. I didn't need the forest to tell me that someone was igniting themselves like a living flame and I knew, Orion, I knew it was you because who else could—who else would—"
Her sentences collapsed into each other, grief gave way to a relentless shaking underneath, her forehead dropped forward until it pressed against his chest, the blue of her hair spilling over his tunic.
"I'm fine—"
"Shut up."
Her shoulders heaved once, twice, a third time. Each convulsion silent. Swallowed before it could surface.
"Don't."
She whispered, and the word carried a prayer she had been reciting on her way back for days, repeated until its syllables had become like breathing.
"Don't—don't do that again. Don't burn yourself without me. If you have to burn, then let me accompany you and burn together until nothing of us is left."
Bell choked, his arms felt heavy, fingers pressing further into her back.
"I—"
"Shut up."
He had barely opened his mouth when Artemis pulled on his tunic. His breath caught as—
Artemis crashed her lips against his.
"Mmnph!"
Their kiss was not gentle or chaste by any degree. Artemis moved her lips without technique—too much pressure, no rhythm, her hands remaining fisted in his tunic.
She leaned further in, pushing her breasts against his chest, deepening their kiss. Bell felt her wrists shiver, a vibration so fine and constant that it was almost electrical.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Artemis pulled back.
A thin, glistening strand of saliva stretched between their lips, remaining suspended for a single breath before it snapped, falling against his chin and hers in two separate drops that neither of them moved to wipe away.
Her lips were parted, still trembling at the corners where the shape of his mouth had left a faint red impression against her skin. A flush had climbed from her throat to her cheeks in the span of that kiss.
Artemis' hands, still fisted in his tunic, loosened. Her white-knuckled grip changed, no longer clinging and instead holding.
"You taste like scorched steel." She whispered.
It was not a complaint. Scorched steel meant his weapon had met his fire. His weapon meeting his fire meant he had burned. Burning meant he was alive, because dead men did not burn—they only cooled.
Bell did not reply.
He pulled her back toward him, face closing in on hers when—
"Ahem." "Ahem."
Two interruptions stopped him dead, snapping him out of his trance.
He looked in a direction one sound had come from.
Goddess Astraea was leaning with her shoulder against a doorframe, arms wrapped beneath her chest, looking at him with a gentle smile. So gentle that it made his bones tremble.
Goddess Hestia stood beside her, brows furrowed and eyelashes blinking rapidly to prevent her tears from falling, her nails digging so deep into her palms that blood dripped from them.
She wore the exact expression of a husband who had just caught his wife two-timing with his best friend.
Further back, the rest of them had arranged themselves in varying degrees of mortification—Haruhime peeking through her fingers, Rethusa studying the floor, Lante frozen behind her like a deer that had walked into the wrong room.
Then, Bell turned his face in the other direction, where that second sound had come from.
Alfia was there, cracking her knuckles, her eyebrow twitching continuously, stepping forward, inching back, then stepping forward anyway.
Astraea straightened and started to walk toward him with calm steps.
Alfia pressed in from the other side.
Fuck!
"Orion. I heard that you can have more than one Falna?" Artemis continued, ignoring both Alfia and Astraea as though they did not exist.
"Why don't you get my Falna then? You don't need Hestia's and Astraea's at all." She said with a straight face, nails digging into his tunic painfully.
Bell wanted to roar. I'm about to die here, and you're still thinking about Falna?
"Come on, say yes." Artemis's voice dropped.
Sweet. Too sweet.
Astraea was close.
Alfia even more so.
Artemis.
Astraea.
Alfia.
You all have to believe me...
I'm innocent.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Artemis dear, you couldn't have your ten thousand years or romance in the original. But Author-sama is here, you go have your fun girl. Just don't split Bell in parts, I'm fine with everything else.
Anyway, take care everyone, and have a lovely day!