It was… strange.
Traveling through the multiverse wasn't what I expected. At the same time, I felt a creeping sense of nervousness.
For one thing, the journey wasn't instantaneous like I had assumed it would be.
The moment I stepped into the portal, I found myself floating—slowly moving through what looked like an endless corridor.
The surroundings were difficult to describe. The closest comparison I could think of was a kaleidoscope, colors and shapes shifting in ways that made no sense to the human mind. Patterns folded into themselves, fracturing and reforming over and over again.
It was… weird.
That was the only word my mind could latch onto at the moment.
As I drifted forward, a wave of dizziness washed over me, followed by a growing sense of nausea. My stomach churned unpleasantly.
Maybe it was because this was my first time traveling between dimensions.
At some point, I lost track of time.
Seconds… minutes… maybe longer. In that strange corridor of shifting colors and impossible geometry, the concept of time seemed to blur until it meant nothing at all.
Then, suddenly—
The sensation stopped.
My feet touched solid ground, and the nauseating swirl of colors vanished as if someone had flipped a switch.
I blinked, steadying myself as the dizziness slowly faded.
When my vision cleared, I found myself standing inside what looked like an abandoned church.
It looked… familiar.
It only took a second for the realization to click.
The abandoned church in Orario.
The very same place that had once served as the home of the Hestia Familia.
I was in Danmachi now.
Well… that was to be expected. It was where I had planned to arrive in the first place.
Danmachi.
Or Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? — which is, admittedly, one of the worst titles ever put on something genuinely worth watching. The name does it no favors. Most people hear it and assume the worst. They're wrong.
It's not about the harem. Well — it has one. But that's not the point.
I always had a soft spot for mythology. Heroes, monsters, the gods that made their lives complicated — Percy Jackson was a childhood thing that never really left. Danmachi scratched the same itch but with its own teeth.
So yeah. I had a soft spot for it.
But that wasn't why I came here.
As I said, I couldn't just sit around waiting for the next item to manifest, I needed to find ways to get stronger.
And this world had something none of the others on my list could offer as quickly or easily.
The Falna system.
Every adventurer in Orario carries a blessing from a god — ichor written directly onto their back, updating in real time as they grow, quantifying everything. Strength. Endurance. Agility. Dexterity. Magic. Numbers on skin that don't lie. And beyond the base stats, the system generates something more interesting — Skills. Abilities that crystallize out of a person's experiences and nature. Unique, personal, and in the right hands, broken.
Like Bell Cranel's Liaris Freese.
It was an ability that accelerated his growth at a rate nobody in the history of Orario had seen before — came entirely from who he was and what he wanted. It wasn't given to him. It became him.
That was what I wanted.
Skills.
And the Falna system is able to look at what a person fundamentally was and hand them a power that reflected it.
That was how broken this power system is.
Still, there were two other worlds I seriously considered before settling on this one.
Bleach and One Piece.
Both had things I wanted. Both had reasons I held off.
Bleach for its reiatsu system and more specifically its Zanpakuto. That was the part that mattered most to me personally. Ever since the battle with Cao Cao, I'd been trying to reconnect with Logos Ruinas — to communicate with it again, to reach whatever was on the other side of that silence. Nothing had worked.
Every attempt hit the same wall. Travelling to the Bleach universe would've given me direct access to the one place in existence that understood Zanpakuto better than anywhere else. The Soul Society had centuries of knowledge on the subject. That kind of insight was exactly what I needed.
But Bleach had a problem.
The power ceiling there was steep. The hax abilities that populated that world weren't the kind of thing you walked into confidently without preparation. And the issue wasn't just the danger — it was the recovery window. The Dimensional Cube needed three months to recharge between uses. Three months before I could open another portal. If something went wrong in the Bleach universe, if I miscalculated and found myself in a situation I couldn't walk out of — there was no quick exit. No immediate fallback.
That risk kept it off the top of the list.
Still. Bleach was close.
One Piece was the other one.
And honestly, the reasoning there was more personal than strategic.
I'd been thinking about it for a while — the uncomfortable truth that I'd become too reliant on my items.
While I understand that the items are my power and mine alone, I still want to become stronger without relying entirely on them. What if there comes a time when I cannot use them? The Celestial Workshop is a tool to defeat my enemies, but more importantly, it is a tool to make myself stronger.
The gap between me with my arsenal and me without it was a gap I didn't like having. Simple as that.
Haki was the answer to that. Will made physical.
The world of One Piece had some of the most absurd physical feats in fiction. Monsters who could split the sea with a swing of their weapon, shatter mountains with their fists, and fight for days without stopping. Compared to that, my current body was still one of my greatest weaknesses.
True, the Body of the Everflame had improved my physique by a tremendous margin. I was faster, stronger, tougher than any normal human had the right to be. But even then, I couldn't imagine standing toe-to-toe with the true powerhouses of this world using my physique alone.
They were simply built different—broken in a way that defied common sense.
And if I wanted to stand among them…
My body would have to become just as monstrous.
So on paper, One Piece had a strong argument.
The world itself was the problem.
It was massive. Not just geographically, but structurally.
Haki didn't come quickly, and it certainly didn't come cheap. It required dedicated trainers, extended isolation, and months of relentless work. The kind of training that demanded you stay in one place long enough to see it through.
It needed time.
And while I wasn't exactly in a hurry, there were better choices for the moment—especially with the canon events back home already thrown completely off track.
But Danmachi had its advantages.
For one, almost everything important was concentrated in a single city. Orario was the center of the world—the dungeon, the adventurers, the gods, the politics, the economy. Everything revolved around that one place. Compared to a sprawling world like One Piece, it was far more manageable.
Then there was the Falna. Divine blessing, granted openly by the gods themselves. A system designed to let mortals grow stronger through effort, danger, and achievement. More importantly, it was something that could be integrated without completely breaking the narrative structure of the world. Divine equipment, blessings, and familia politics all fit naturally into the setting.
Danmachi was practically a gold mine.
High-quality recruits for a family.
New systems and methods to grow stronger.
And most importantly, progress that didn't rely on massive time skips or contrived miracles.
It was controlled growth.
Which, at this stage, was exactly what I needed.
And while the threats were dangerous, they were not outright absurd.
So currently Danmachi was a good starting point.
Then—
"AAAHHH!!"
The shriek tore through the quiet of the abandoned church, yanking me out of my thoughts.
I turned toward the entrance.
A girl—no, a woman—stood in the doorway, frozen in place, her eyes wide as she stared straight at me.
Black hair. Twin tails tied with ribbons.
Hestia.
For a moment we just stared at each other.
Before I could say anything—
"Are you applying to be my Familia?!"
She bolted forward.
One second she was standing at the entrance.
The next she was right in front of me.
Close.
Too close.
Her eyes were practically drilling into mine, and her fingers dug into my shoulders like she was afraid I'd float away.
"…You're here to join my Familia, right?"
I blinked. She was basically vibrating with excitement.
"Uh… yes?" I said, holding up my hands.
Her face froze for half a second, like she couldn't believe what she'd just heard.
Then—
"YEEEEESSS!!"
She jumped into the air, arms flailing like she'd won the lottery.
I stood there, blinking, as she grabbed my hands and practically dragged me forward.
"First member!" she announced proudly, like she'd been waiting her whole life for this moment.
I just hoped she didn't expect me to start cleaning the church.
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