Twenty thousand valis.
Liliruca Arde tightly clutched a heavy leather pouch to her chest, hidden under the folds of her oversized, tattered cloak. Even for a group of Level 1 adventurers, this would have been an excellent expedition, whereas for her, a weak Level 1 Supporter, this sum seemed like a true fortune.
Watching the broad back of the departing Rane, the Pallum girl turned around and walked in the opposite direction from the sparkling center of Orario.
With every passing block, the scenery inexorably changed. White stone pavements gave way to dirty, chipped cobblestones. Laughter and music yielded to drunken swearing and hacking coughs. This was the underbelly of the great city—a labyrinth of damp, foul-smelling alleys inhabited by the scum rejected by luck. Shadows huddled along the archways: crippled adventurers missing limbs, drunken vagrants, and those whose spirits were forever broken by the Dungeon.
Lili lowered her head, pulling her hood right down to her eyes. She tried to breathe through her mouth and step as quietly as possible, blending in with the dirty walls.
Ahead appeared a gloomy, shabby building that served as the residence of the Soma Familia. There was no trace of divine grandeur here. The place looked more like a den, soaked in despair and a mad, fanatical thirst for the legendary divine wine.
Right at the entrance, blocking the narrow passage, loitered a group of four burly men. Lili threw them a quick glance from under her hood. Familiar crests on their battered armor confirmed her worst fears—her "comrades" from the Familia. Their faces were bloated, and their eyes held that feverish emptiness of addicts.
The girl tucked her head into her shoulders, trying to slip into the doorway by bypassing them in a wide arc.
A sharp kick to her shin turned her world upside down.
Lili lost her balance. With a muffled cry, she crashed onto the hard stones right before the threshold. Her fingers reflexively opened, trying to break the fall, and the leather pouch slipped out from under her cloak.
Clink.
The treacherous, ringing sound of coins striking each other sliced through the hum of the alley. The laughter of the drinking adventurers instantly cut off.
Lili shrank into a ball in panic, desperately reaching for her earnings.
But someone's heavy, iron-shod boot roughly stepped on her thin wrist, pinning it to the cobblestones. The girl hissed in pain. In the same second, a strange hand grabbed the coarse fabric of her cloak near her neck and jerked her into the air.
The hood flew back. A shock of chestnut hair tumbled over her shoulders, revealing the terrified, pain-twisted face of the little Pallum. The fabric tightened around her throat, cutting off her oxygen. Lili wheezed, helplessly kicking her legs in the air and trying to loosen the suffocating grip.
"Oho, just look at this," a hulking brute with a jagged scar across his cheek drawled hoarsely. "Our little rat dragged a fat piece of cheese into the hole."
He released his fingers with disgust. Coughing, Lili collapsed back onto the stones, greedily gulping the damp air.
One of the brute's buddies had already leaned down and picked up the coveted pouch. He tossed it in his palm, listening to the pleasant weight, and whistled. A greedy fire flared up in his bloodshot eyes.
"There's enough here for a whole barrel!" he grinned joyfully. "Great job, half-pint."
Leaning on her scraped palms, Lili tried to push herself up. The physical pain faded into the background, giving way to a burning, corrosive sense of humiliation. That was her money. She had earned it by running through deadly floors with that crazy guy.
She raised her head. In her huge eyes, despite the fear, stood pure, crystalline hatred. She looked at them not as family, but as parasites.
Pathetic adventurers, Lili thought with contempt.
This uncompromising fury in the weak girl's gaze instantly wiped the smirks off the drunken group's faces. They didn't like it when prey looked at them like that.
The scar-faced man, whom the others called Zenos, stepped toward her. A mocking, sickeningly sweet mask of sympathy appeared on his face. He squatted down and placed his broad, dirty palm on the top of her head.
"Now, why are you so angry, Lili?" he hissed, beginning to roughly, forcefully pat her head, forcing the girl to instinctively shrink into the ground. "We're all one Familia, aren't we? We serve the same god. And comrades are obliged to share with each other, right?"
The feeling of disgust overpowered her self-preservation instinct. Lili jerked her head, throwing off his vile hand, and curled her lips in contempt.
Zenos's gaze glazed over.
A ringing, heavy slap threw the girl aside. The blow of a grown man, enhanced by Falna, was terrifying. Lili flew a meter away, painfully slamming her shoulder against the building wall. Her ears rang.
"Tch. Useless, ungrateful wretch," Zenos spat, wiping his palm on his pants with disgust. "And this is how you repay our brotherly care?"
Lili's cheek burned like fire, rapidly swelling with a crimson bruise. A salty taste of blood from a split lip appeared in her mouth. The girl leaned her trembling hands on the ground, keeping her face down. She gritted her teeth with all her might, squeezing her eyes shut so as not to let tears of humiliation spill in front of these bastards. Not in front of them.
"Just forget about her, Zenos," tossed the guy with the pouch, losing interest in the beating. He tossed the coins into the air again. "Let's go blow this jackpot instead. My throat is already parched!"
The trio guffawed in agreement, anticipating the purchase of a new round of booze. Zenos grunted, preparing to turn around and leave.
"That's... mine."
A thin, broken little voice sounding from behind him made him stop.
Zenos turned around slowly. Lili was still sitting on the ground, clenching her fists in the road dust, but her shoulders stubbornly tensed.
The adventurer's eyebrows drew together. Irritation flared up with renewed vigor. He walked right up to her, squatted down, and, running his fingers into her chestnut hair, roughly yanked the girl's head upward.
Lili cried out softly. Pain pierced her scalp. Her face—with a swollen cheek and a thin trickle of blood at the corner of her lips—was inches away from her tormentor's face. Tears stood in the girl's eyes, but that very gaze... The look of a cornered but unbroken little animal that genuinely refused to submit infuriated Zenos to the point of trembling.
He gripped her hair even tighter. Lili hissed, digging her thin fingers into his wrist, vainly trying to loosen his grip. The man merely pulled her harshly toward him.
With his free hand, Zenos drew a hunting knife from his belt in an imperceptible movement.
The blade flashed in the dim light of the alley and stopped exactly a millimeter from the girl's right eye.
Time stopped for Lili. The burning pain in her hair vanished. All her bravado, all her hatred evaporated instantly, swept away by a wave of paralyzing, primal, animalistic terror.
She stared at the tip of the cold metal, which was so close she could smell it. The slightest movement, and she would lose an eye. Lili's pupils dilated to the limit. She began to tremble violently, her breathing turning into convulsive, quiet sobs. The fingers gripping Zenos's arm unclasped limply.
Getting exactly the reaction he sought, the man gave a crooked, satisfied smirk.
He smoothly sheathed the knife. Leaning close to her ear, he whispered so only she could hear:
"Know your place, trash."
Zenos opened his fingers and forcefully threw her aside. Lili, like a broken doll, flew into a pile of rotting garbage by the wall.
Having regained his cheerful, relaxed mood, the adventurer straightened up and walked toward his waiting friends. With loud, mocking guffaws, the group disappeared into the darkness of the street, taking with them the girl's only hope for a normal life.
Lili remained lying among the refuse. The stench of rot filled her nose, the cold of the stone chilled her to the bone. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her trembling arms around them, and finally allowed bitter, soundless tears to stream from her eyes. In this dark alley, far from the shining legends of heroes, Orario had once again shown her its true, merciless face.
***
Morning sun rays flooded the spacious square in front of the Babel Tower, promising a clear and warm day. Rane stood at the edge of the paved circle, his eyes closed, enjoying the warming light on his face with a slight smile.
The usual bustle was already boiling around him: merchants laying out their goods, adventurers checking their gear, forming parties before the descent. The youth was in no hurry. Last night, he had clearly outlined the conditions to Leo and Alice: if they managed to get permission from their comrades, they would meet here at the appointed time. Otherwise, he would simply head to the middle floors in the company of his new Supporter. Both options suited him just fine.
A few minutes later, his relaxed musings were interrupted by the hurried patter of light feet.
Rane half-opened his eyes. Through the colorful crowd, a small figure wrapped in an oversized, faded cloak was hurrying toward the square. Spotting her employer already waiting for her, Liliruca realized her mistake. She broke into a scurrying run and, braking sharply a couple of steps from the youth, bowed deeply, her cloak almost grazing the stones.
"Oh, Mr. Rane! Please forgive Lili!" her usual, artificially pitched voice rang out, overflowing with sugary remorse. "Lili is so clumsy, making an esteemed adventurer wait! What unforgivable behavior for a Supporter!"
Rane, slightly taken aback by this one-actor theater, shifted his gaze to the tower clock. A faint, slightly crooked smirk appeared on his lips.
"No, you're fine," he said calmly. "It's still about twenty minutes until the appointed time. I just got here early."
The girl froze, but was in no hurry to straighten up. She mechanically pulled her voluminous hood even lower, so that the fabric almost completely hid her face, leaving only her sharp chin visible.
"I-is that so? In that case... Lili is ready to descend right now!" she reported briskly, trying to make her voice sound just as cheerful as during their last meeting.
However, Rane, accustomed to reading body language better than any open book, noticed something was wrong. Her shoulders were more tense than usual, and her attempt to hide her face under the hood bespoke not just habit, but a nervous, instinctive need to conceal herself.
"There's no rush," the youth crossed his arms over his chest. "Yesterday I made arrangements with another team of adventurers. We might go into the Dungeon with an expanded group today."
Liliruca's small hands convulsively crumpled the coarse fabric of her cloak. Her heart sank. A team of adventurers. To her, those words always meant one thing: bullying, being used as a human shield, and the risk of being thrown to the monsters for someone else's salvation. While Rane seemed like a strange but safe loner, a whole group did not guarantee a good descent.
"You don't mind, do you?" Rane suddenly added.
This simple question sounded like a bolt from the blue. An adventurer... asking for a Supporter's opinion? Taken by surprise, Lili jerked her head up, forgetting about her disguise.
The hood slipped back. The morning sun mercilessly illuminated her face.
The girl's right cheek was crimson from a massive, terrible swelling.
The air between them seemed to freeze. Rane's faint smirk vanished in that same fraction of a second, giving way to an extreme, frightening seriousness. His dark eyes narrowed, scanning the injuries with the professional precision of someone who knows exactly what the traces of a brutal beating look like.
Realizing her mistake, Lili lowered her head in a panic. Her heart pounded in her throat. I have to fix everything... the thought beat feverishly in her head. She frantically tried to focus on the formula of her magic, to change her guise, to pull the illusion of another face over herself and escape that piercing gaze.
But the magic never activated.
A swift, unceremonious movement interrupted her concentration. Rane threw the hood off her head with a single pull. Without a word, he dropped to one knee before her to be on the same level, and firmly took her face in his broad hands.
Lili froze in shock. Her breath caught at the outrageous violation of personal boundaries, but she didn't even flinch. Finding herself so close for the first time, she focused her gaze on his face and... turned to stone.
There was neither the pity nor the disgust to which she was accustomed in his eyes. Instead, a pure, icy, primal anger swirled within them. The stern expression of an old warrior discovering that someone was crippling the weak with impunity was so heavy and overwhelming that the girl was physically unable to utter a single word. A lump stuck in her throat.
Having inspected the bruise, Rane stood up silently. He gently but inflexibly took her by the thin wrist and led her toward the empty stone benches standing in the shade of the colonnade.
"M-Mr. Rane! Wait! Lili is fine!" the girl finally unfroze, trying to plant her feet on the cobblestones. "It was just an accident..."
"Sit," his voice was quiet, but that single word harbored such absolute, crushing authority that Liliruca's knees buckled on their own, and she obediently sank onto the cold stone.
The youth sat next to her. Dropping his travel bag from his shoulder, he pulled out a small vial of high-quality healing potion, bought the day before at Miach's shop. Uncorking the stopper, Rane moistened a clean scrap of cloth with the bluish liquid.
"It'll sting a bit," he warned, and carefully pressed the damp cloth to her split lip.
Lili hissed weakly but didn't recoil. The healing magic of the potion worked instantly. The burning was replaced by a pleasant coolness. The girl sat like a paralyzed mouse, feeling the pain recede under the sensitive movements of his fingers. The split flesh on her lip knitted together, the crimson swelling on her cheek melted away, returning the skin to its natural, healthy shade.
She didn't know how to react to this. In her entire life in the Soma Familia, no one had ever touched her except to strike or roughly shove her. And this guy, to whom she was a nobody, was wasting a precious potion on her. Lili timidly raised her huge chestnut eyes to his focused face, but immediately lowered them in shame, studying the toes of her boots. Her cheeks burned—no longer from the blow, but from a burning, completely unfamiliar sense of awkwardness and gratitude.
Finished with the procedure, Rane put the vial back into his bag.
They sat side by side in complete silence. The hum of the morning square seemed like a distant background. Liliruca, stripped of her usual protective hood and fake cheerfulness, sat with her head down, nervously fiddling with the hem of her cloak. She couldn't force herself to put on the mask of the "best Supporter." Next to him, it suddenly seemed pointless.
Rane, sensing her numbness and understanding that now was not the time for interrogations about who had beaten her, decided to bring her back to reality with a proven method—work routine.
"So," his voice became even and calm again, as if nothing had happened. "Getting back to our conversation. You don't mind if we descend with others today?"
Lili stared at her hands for a few more seconds. And then, without lifting her head, she answered quietly, but without the feigned, high-pitched intonations. In her real voice.
"Yes... Lili doesn't mind."