The first month of Toji Fushiguro's arrangement with the pipsqueak goddess and her Hestia Familia had settled into a dysfunctional routine.
When it came to his role in dungeon delving, Toji didn't care about the layout, the lore, or the supposed prestige of descending deeper. He only cared that the ugly, screeching monsters that were, at best, equivalent to mock Grade 3 curses, dropped shiny rocks that translated directly into hard currency.
His first few dives were so utterly boring that he was genuinely tempted to abandon this shit job and return to seducing rich women for crumbs. However, as he hit the deeper floors, his boredom shifted into mild acceptance. The difficulty of the monsters didn't change for him at all, but the exchange rate for their magic stones certainly did.
The Dungeon was nothing more than a poorly lit, oversized, slow-dispensing ATM. All the complaints and horror stories he heard from moaning females and tavern drunkards were nothing but brats crying that their prey wasn't helpless enough.
And now, standing on the fourteenth floor of the Dungeon, that thought solidified into undeniable fact.
This floor, part of the notoriously lethal Middle Floors, was a massive cavern with shitty lighting and deadly pitfalls leading to even deeper floors. For the average adventurer, simply navigating it was a hard task. For Toji Fushiguro, it was a morning walk.
He was currently doing mental math, trying to calculate exactly how many magic stones it would take to fund his bets in an upcoming monster vs livestock race and cover a nasty debt he'd racked up at a back alley dice game.
Curled lazily around his torso and neck, his Inventory Curse let out a low, gurgling purr.
"Quiet," Toji muttered, scratching the side of his head. "I'm trying to calculate how much I hate my life right now."
A sudden, fast blur of white darted across the cavern walls, followed by the sound of dozens of tiny footsteps echoing around him.
From the shadows of the maze-like tunnels, a small army of Al-Miraj, white-furred rabbits with single, spiraling crimson horns, bounded into the dim light. Individually, they were nothing special, but in groups, they were considered a lethal threat even to a Level 2 adventurer. Their horns were valuable drops, famous for piercing through cheap armor like wet paper.
Toji lazily stared at the swarm.
"I could go for rabbit stew."
The lead rabbit lunged, turning itself into a living spear aimed directly at Toji's chest.
Toji casually backhanded the creature out of mid-air like an annoying mosquito. The Al-Miraj's neck snapped instantly, its body rocketing sideways and shattering against the cavern wall, reducing it to a paste of blood and white fur.
The rest of the swarm hesitated for a fraction of a second.
That was their fatal mistake.
Toji didn't even bother drawing a weapon, he simply stepped into their formation. To the naked eye, it was an instantaneous shift, one moment he was standing upright, and the next, he was a blurred silhouette of pure, unadulterated violence.
He swept a heavy boot through the front line, shattering the bodies of dozens of rabbits at once, then pivoted, catching another out with his teeth, crushing it with a sickening crunch.
In less than three seconds, the corridor was completely silent again.
Before he could collect his meager payout, the humid temperature in the cavern spiked. The air grew thick, smelling sharply of burning hair.
Three Hellhounds stalked out from the darkness ahead. Their ash-coated fur bristled, their jaws dripping with viscous fire. They growled in unison, the sound rumbling like a lit furnace.
"Oh, good. The heating bill," Toji sighed.
The Hellhounds didn't charge. Acting on instinct, they inhaled sharply and unleashed a unified torrent of roaring flames, turning the corridor into an inescapable oven.
Toji didn't retreat.
Instead he reached into the gaping mouth of his cursed worm.
His hand clamped around the familiar grip of the standard katana he had used to stab the Gojo brat.
As the wall of fire rushed toward him, Toji swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc. He wasn't using any technique, and the sword itself had no cursed properties. It was just pure, monstrous physical force. The sheer air pressure generated by the swing created a vacuum that cleaved the firestorm in two, forcing the roaring flames to part around him like water hitting a stone. He stood in the center, completely untouched.
The Hellhounds barely had time to register that their attack had failed before Toji closed the distance. He moved low, sliding effortlessly under the lingering black smoke.
A single, clean line of silver light traced through the air. All three Hellhounds fell apart, bisected flawlessly from snout to tail, bursting into clouds of ash and blood.
"Too easy. It's not even fun," Toji muttered, catching the three magic stones before they even hit the ground and feeding them to his Inventory Curse.
Toji inspected the edge of the katana, wiping a smudge of soot off the flat of the blade with his thumb. The intense heat had darkened the steel.
"Shitty quality," he grumbled. "The exchange rate for Hellhound drops is garbage, it won't even cover the maintenance on this sword. This floor is a scam."
A low, thunderous tremor interrupted his complaining. The loose pebbles on the dungeon floor began to violently vibrate.
From the widest tunnel ahead, a herd of Minotaurs stepped into the corridor. They were massive specimens, corded with thick muscle, their giant hands clutching crude, oversized battleaxes and clubs.
Their red, blood-hungry eyes locked onto Toji. Flaring their snouts, they let out deafening roars that shook the ceiling.
Toji looked at the herd of cows, then glanced at his left wrist, tapping an imaginary watch.
"I was hoping to catch a race for the rest of the day," Toji said, his voice entirely devoid of worry. "I don't have time for walking steak."
The Minotaurs charged. Each footstep cracked the bedrock, their sheer numbers and viciousness enough to slaughter a seasoned party of high-level adventurers.
But Toji was Toji.
Reaching into his worm, he pulled out the Split Soul Katana, quickly connecting its hilt to the Chain of a Thousand Miles.
"Your rocks should cover the entrance fees."
Toji smirked, his dark eyes mocking as he began to swing the chained weapon.
It was a slaughterhouse. The Split Soul Katana was a special-grade cursed tool that bypassed all physical toughness to strike the soul directly. Not even the most heavily armored tank in Orario could survive a slash from it.
Combined with the infinite reach of the Chain of a Thousand Miles, Toji essentially created the first area-of-effect slaughter blade in the Dungeon. He bisected the massive beasts so fast, and so precisely, that the entire floor was instantly painted in gore.
When he was done, there was nothing left of the herd but a pile of magic stones.
'Still too easy,' Toji thought, sighing as he stored his weapons back inside his worm.
"Eat up," he ordered his Inventory Curse, nudging the monster remains with his boot.
The curse happily obeyed its master, slithering down his body to gorge itself on the corpses and magic stones of the monsters that hadn't turned to ash.
"Make sure to keep the stones intact. Those nosy suits at the Guild don't accept cracked rocks."
༻❁༺
The Guild was usually a place of quiet, orderly transactions and hushed dungeon strategy.
Then the heavy oak doors practically slammed open.
Instantly, everyone in the hall stared at the massive man in a tight black shirt. He carried no weapons and no bags, yet his indifferent, intensely bored expression gave off the aura of a hardened veteran rather than a rookie.
"Oh fuck, it's him again."
A Guild employee muttered the sentiment, which was quickly echoed by the rest of the staff.
While Toji hadn't made any waves among the actual Adventurers yet, he had certainly left a massive impression on the Guild staff since his arrival. Their initial read on him was that he was just a skanky, high-end gigolo, mostly because they constantly saw female adventurers cashing in their magic stones, only for Toji to be standing right behind them, smoothly sweet-talking them.
It didn't take a genius to figure out his game.
Ignoring the stares, Toji approached the front counter, his posture slouched and his eyes half-closed in perpetual boredom.
He stopped in front of a red-haired, dog-eared girl, Rose Fannett. She was his usual rock exchanger, largely because she always looked just as bored as he did and didn't waste time chatting.
Without a word, Toji reached a hand into his shirt. To the stunned onlookers, it looked as though the towering man was casually pulling drop items and magic stones out of thin air. In reality, his Inventory Curse, entirely invisible to normal people, was happily regurgitating its contents onto the desk at his silent command.
For a full minute, the pile grew. Hundreds upon hundreds of magic stones and a sizable number of drop items, ranging from standard goblin fangs to the dense cores of the Minotaurs he'd turned to paste, spilled over the wooden counter, forming a mountain of wealth.
The Guild hall fell dead silent. Whispers broke out immediately.
Is that a magic bag? How did he carry all that? Who the hell is this guy?
Rose sighed, her ears twitching in profound annoyance.
"Please give us a moment to appraise this," she said with mock politeness. She couldn't prove it, but she was entirely convinced this musclehead was deliberately choosing her counter to dump a three-party-sized haul just to ruin her day.
Toji just grunted, leaning his heavy frame against the wooden desk. He hated waiting.
"Hey, pal!"
A rough, overly loud voice broke Toji's favorable silence. A fat, low-grade raccoon-eared adventurer, clad in shitty armor likely looted off corpses or bought in shady alleys, swaggered up next to him.
The punk had a sleazy grin plastered across his face, his greedy eyes locked onto the mountain of wealth on the counter. He was clearly trying to leech some secondhand clout, or perhaps steal a handful if given the opportunity.
"That's a hell of a haul. You must be high and mighty, right? I know a great tavern for guys like you and me. First round's on you, yeah?"
The punk made the fatal mistake of reaching out to place a hand on Toji's shoulder.
Toji didn't even turn his head. His hand shot up with terrifying, untraceable speed. He didn't grab the man's wrist, he casually caught the punk's index finger in mid-air.
With a simple flick of his wrist, Toji twisted.
A sickening crunch echoed through the quiet hall as the bone and joint snapped completely, grinding into a powdery dust under Toji's grip.
"AARRRGHH! MY HAND! MY FUCKING HAND!" the adventurer shrieked, collapsing to his knees and clutching his mangled appendage in agony. "I'll kill you! My Familia will—"
"Three hundred and forty thousand Valis, sir," Rose announced, returning with the receipt. She didn't bat an eye at the raccoon adventurer sobbing on the floor. "Do you want it exchanged into your regular account?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.
Toji ignored the wailing man weeping on his boots. He hadn't even twisted that hard and the guy broke like a twig. Pathetic.
"Do that," Toji said. He turned and walked out without a single glance back, leaving Canoe, the whining raccoon from the Soma Familia, curled on the floor, fueling up on both pain and resentment toward Toji.
༻❁༺
Back at the ruined church, Hestia was bored out of her mind.
But the moment Toji's heavy boots descended the creaky stairs, she shot up.
"Welcome back! How much did you make!?" she asked eagerly, practically vibrating as she waited for her child's answer.
Hestia's mood briefly skyrocketed as her first Familia member tossed a single, shiny gold coin onto the old table. Her eyes lit up with the promise of wealth, and then immediately narrowed.
"Is that...is that it?" Hestia asked, her voice trembling. "I heard you say yesterday that you took down two hundred monsters! Where is the rest of it?!"
"I invested three hundred thousand and lost," Toji replied flatly, throwing his massive frame onto the lumpy sofa. "Put it all on a racing game. A goblin racing a pig. The stupid green midget tripped at the starting gate. Rigged."
Hestia stared at him, her divine patience instantly evaporating into a mix of utter despair and boiling rage.
"You...you lost three hundred thousand Valis on a RACE?! You absolute, degenerate deadbeat! We don't have food! The roof leaks! I need new clothes!"
"Should've picked a better horse, shortstack," Toji yawned, closing his eyes and crossing his arms.
"Update your status!" Hestia screamed, waving a silver needle threateningly. "Let me see your Falna! You have to have leveled up a stat by now! It's been a whole month since you joined, and you haven't let me update you even once!"
"Too much work," he muttered, turning his back to her. "I'm sleeping."
Hestia fell to her knees in pure defeat.
"Why me? Did Loki send you? Did that walking washboard curse me with you just to make me suffer?! I have to go work at the potato stall to buy us dinner because my only child is a gambling addict!"
Toji was already asleep.
༻❁༺
Things shifted slightly a few weeks later when a white-haired kid stumbled into their lives.
Well, more accurately, into Hestia's life. Toji didn't really care.
Bell Cranel was everything Toji wasn't. He was bright-eyed, naive, overly respectful, and pathetically weak. When Hestia proudly introduced the boy as the newest member of the Hestia Familia, Toji just stared at him from the couch.
'Soft,' Toji thought immediately. The kid practically radiated an aura of "I'm an easy target."
However, Toji didn't particularly mind, because the kid seemed eager to please. If the rabbit kept the shortstack occupied, that meant she would finally stop nagging Toji about his gambling habits.
Bell wasn't a comrade, he was a very convenient decoy. And maybe a backup wallet, if the kid actually managed to survive a dungeon dive.
Speaking of dives, that was exactly what led them to the Guild headquarters the morning after the kid got his Falna.
"So cool! I never saw the Guild from the inside!" Bell was practically vibrating with excitement as he approached a counter occupied by a half-elf receptionist. Toji stood a few feet behind him, deeply engrossed in a crumpled racing form.
"Welcome. Are you here to submit a quest, exchange magic stones, or register as an Adventurer?" the elf greeted politely, getting straight to business. Toji at least appreciated the efficiency.
Bell scratched the back of his head awkwardly, a nervous red tint on his cheeks.
"Uhm, well, I was hoping to register as an Adventurer, miss."
She smiled kindly. "Alright, you just need to fill out this form, and we will take it from there."
She handed him a piece of parchment, which the earnest boy took a little too eagerly.
After agonizing over his answers and double-checking the form, Bell finally handed the registration paper back, his face a mask of nervousness.
The elf took the paper, scanning it quickly.
"Your registration is complete," she said with a professional smile, before a sly glint appeared in her eyes. "I see you've filled in a request for an advisor. A female elf nonetheless," she teased, clearly enjoying the way Bell immediately squirmed at the loss of words.
"Uhm, well...!"
"How about me, then? I volunteer for the post. I'll have you know I'm the most knowledgeable of all the staff here regarding the Dungeon," she declared, pointing at her chest with a proud smirk.
Bell looked far too impressed by such a basic proclamation.
"Whoa, really!? Then I'll be incredibly grateful for your assistance, miss...?" He emphasized the miss.
"Eina Tulle! You can call me Eina!"
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Eina—!"
"Can you two stop flirting and get on with the damn entrance process!?" Toji suddenly rumbled, entirely fed up with their soft, cliché, high-school style romance bullshit.
Both Eina and Bell's faces went violently red in embarrassment.
"That's not what it looks like!" they stammered in unison, but Toji clearly didn't give a damn.
Recovering quickly, Eina pointed a trembling finger at the massive man. "Who are you to assume such things!? I haven't seen you register here before. Are you even in the system!?"
Her eyes scanned Toji, taking in his appearance. He looked like he belonged in an underground deathmatch, not a Guild hall.
Toji looked up from his racing paper. He blinked slowly.
"Register?"
Eina frowned. She coughed, regaining her professional composure. "Uhm...yes. All adventurers must be registered with the Guild before entering the Dungeon. It's strictly illegal to dive without—"
Toji scratched his chin.
"Right. Now that I think about it, I never filled out the paperwork." He had just been walking in and killing things for a month. No one had ever tried to stop him.
He walked up to the counter, picking up the pen from the desk. "I'll take a form."
Bell's jaw dropped. He looked back and forth between Eina and Toji in utter shock.
"W-Wait! Toji-san! You're a rookie too?! But you look so strong! Goddess said you've been diving since—Mmph!"
"Read the room, kid," Toji sighed, placing his hand over the boy's mouth to stop the brat from accidentally getting Toji slapped with a massive fine from the Guild.
༻❁༺
After officially registering the kid, Toji immediately set to work on his primary goal: building a self-sustaining secondary income. Unfortunately for poor Bell, "training" with the Sorcerer Killer was less of an educational experience and more of a brutal, unforgiving exercise in survival.
In the dusty courtyard of the ruined church, Bell was panting heavily, covered head to toe in dirt and some bruises. He charged forward, swinging his cheap Guild-issued starter knife with all the speed his newly acquired Falna could muster.
Toji didn't even look at him. He was holding today's racing pamphlet in his right hand, thoroughly engrossed in the odds.
As Bell thrust the blade with a desperate shout, Toji simply swayed his hips back an inch. The blade cut empty air. Without breaking his eyes from the betting lines on the third race, Toji lazily brought his left foot up and kicked Bell squarely in the chest.
The boy went flying backward, skipping across the dirt like a flat stone on water before slamming violently into a stone pillar.
"Your footing is garbage," Toji drawled, casually flipping a page. "You broadcast your swings by tensing your shoulders and screaming like an idiot. If I were a Minotaur, you'd be paste right now."
"R-Right!" Bell gasped, struggling to his feet on trembling legs, barely able to keep his eyes open. "When can we finally enter the Dungeon?" he rasped, his vision blurring slightly from the impact.
Toji thought about it for a moment, weighing his options before replying.
"You will be ready in the next week. Rest up for now. I'll beat you again tomorrow."
Bell smiled brightly, utterly thankful that the torture disguised as training session was over—until the smile instantly melted off his face at Toji's promise of another beatdown. He was genuinely grateful for the opportunity to train under such an experienced fighter, but his battered body was complaining much louder than his respectful tone.
He took one wobbly step forward and collapsed face-first into the dirt, entirely passed out from exhaustion.
Toji finally looked away from his paper. He stared down at the unconscious boy for a moment.
"The game should be starting soon," Toji muttered to himself.
He turned and walked off to catch his gambling matches, leaving the boy facedown in the courtyard dirt.
Surely the shortstack wouldn't mind.
༻❁༺
Later that week, Toji found himself dragged back into the Dungeon. Hestia had spent three exhausting hours threatening to withhold his sleeping spot on the sofa if he didn't go "supervise" Bell's first dive.
It was highly irritating. Toji hadn't even bothered to babysit his own flesh and blood, why the hell was he being forced to babysit some random rabbit?
They stood in a relatively quiet, low-spawn-rate tunnel on the second floor. Bell's red eyes were sharp, scanning the shadows for any possible threats or enemies hiding in the narrow closings. His knife work and footwork were already slightly better than they had been on his first day.
Toji nodded in mild, silent approval. He reached into his worm and tossed a spare, high-quality combat knife at the boy's feet.
"Keep that," Toji said. "Your main blade is going to chip and shatter if you keep hitting bone and armor like a moron. Aim for the joints, then the head."
Bell picked up the knife, his eyes shining with awe and gratitude.
"Thank you, Toji-san! Are we going to the third floor now?"
"You are," Toji said, turning his back to the boy and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "I've got a hot tip on a monster fight on the surface. Try not to die. The Goddess will whine if she has to bury you."
Leaving a completely bewildered Bell standing alone in the monster infested tunnels, Toji began his slow, silent walk back toward the surface.
As he approached the exit of the dungeon, the tunnels widened into the grand subterranean hub. Toji found himself walking against a massive tide of heavily armed adventurers near the grand staircase leading outside.
It was the Loki Familia. Their literal army was marching down for an expedition, banners held high, armor gleaming under the magical crystal lights.
Toji didn't move out of the way. He just kept walking at his lazy, slouching pace, drifting slightly to the left to avoid the dead center of their formation.
His dark, apathetic eyes lazily tracked the executives leading the march. He recognized the Pallum, Finn Deimne, and the blonde Sword Princess, Ais Wallenstein. They were some of the city's absolute elites. Judging by the rumors of their feats, they could easily be considered Grade 1 or even Special Grade sorcerers back in his old world.
Toji walked right past them.
Finn didn't turn his head. Ais kept her golden eyes locked straight forward. Neither of them, two of the most perceptive, battle-hardened fighters in all of Orario, even twitched as he passed within arm's reach. To their highly sharpened senses, there was absolutely nothing there. No intent. No presence.
Toji was a ghost.
Further back in the marching line, an Amazon with short hair was walking backward, laughing loudly as she chatted with a nervous-looking elf girl.
"I'm telling you, Lefiya, this expedition is gonna be—"
THUD
Tiona Hiryute, a Level 5 adventurer boasting monstrous physical strength, collided back-first into Toji's chest.
Tiona stumbled forward, completely caught off guard. It felt like she had just backed into a solid pillar of reinforced adamantine. She spun around, a bright, quick apology already on her lips.
"Ah! Sorry about that, I wasn't—"
She stopped dead.
The towering man in the tight black shirt didn't even break his stride. He hadn't shifted a single inch from the impact. He just kept his hands in his pockets, his bored eyes looking straight ahead as he walked past her, completely ignoring her existence as if she were nothing more than a gentle breeze.
Tiona blinked, watching his broad back disappear into the bustling crowd. Her twin sister, Tione, walked up beside her, frowning deeply.
"What's wrong with you? Watch where you're going."
"Tione..." Tiona muttered, rubbing the back of her head, genuine confusion painted across her face. "Did you see that guy? He didn't even flinch when I hit him."
Lefiya tilted her head, clutching her staff. "Really? You of all people?"
"Yup," Tiona said, still staring back toward the staircase leading to the surface. "When I bumped right into him...I didn't feel him at all. Even right before we hit, there was nothing there."
"Bypassing your perception isn't exactly a feat someone can boast about," Tione said with a deadpan stare, crossing her arms.
"Huh!? I'm not an idiot! I can see where I'm going and who is where!" Tiona squawked, refusing to let the insult slide.
༻❁༺
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