Several hours had passed since they left the Guild. By the time Luan returned, the sunlight was already beginning to fade, staining the sky with a lifeless orange hue that gave way to the first shadows of night.
The streets of Orario changed with dusk. The cheerful bustle of the merchants died down, replaced by the echo of heavy boots and the clinking of dented armor.
The adventurers returned from the dungeon, some with the euphoria of unexpected loot heading to the taverns, but most with empty eyes from exhaustion, covered in dust and dried blood.
The atmosphere grew heavier, thick with the sour smell of cheap alcohol that was beginning to flow in the nearby taverns.
Luan walked in silence, his mind working at a speed his small body could barely sustain.
At his side, Lili did not move even a centimeter away. She clutched his tunic with a force that made her knuckles turn white. From time to time, she looked up, making sure he was still there and hadn't gotten lost.
"Luan…" she whispered, barely a thread of voice.
"Don't let go, Lili," he replied. His voice was calm, too steady for a five-year-old child. There was no trace of the childish fear someone of his size should have in front of the two-meter-tall warriors passing by his side.
They had managed to register. That was the first step of a plan many would call suicidal, but now came the most critical variable in his adventurer career, the advisor.
Luan wanted a reliable advisor who would explain everything related to the dungeon, but he didn't want someone as strict and meddlesome as Eina, who would prevent him from progressing at the pace he needed to get Lili out of misery before the Soma Familia finished devouring them.
But he also knew he could end up with a careless advisor who would forget to remind him of vital information about the dungeon, which would likely get him killed on the upper floors.
Upon entering the Guild building again, they walked over to where Diana was, still behind the counter with the same expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else in the world. When she saw them, her eyebrows arched slightly.
"So you really came back," she said, in a tone that hovered between skepticism and a hint of pity. "For once, time is on your side. Your advisor is available. Rose!" Diana called, raising her voice over the chaos. "I've got an assignment for you!"
Then, from another section of the counter, someone approached.
A young woman of the werewolf race, with long hair of a soft reddish tone, loosely gathered behind her back, and whose expression lacked the harshness and fatigue shown by most Guild employees.
Luan recognized her instantly and knew she was Rose, even though he had never seen her in this life. As a secondary character who doesn't appear much, yet is still very remembered for her good looks and because she always left a strong impression by having an attitude contrary to Eina's.
When Rose's gaze lowered and met Luan and little Lili, her face changed. There was no annoyance, but a jolt of pure disbelief.
"They are…?" Rose asked, her voice trembling slightly with surprise.
"Luan Arde," Diana replied, handing her the document as if delivering a sentence. "The novice Level 1 adventurer of the Soma Familia that you'll be in charge of."
Upon hearing the name "Soma Familia," Rose visibly tensed. Her wolf ears drooped a millimeter. She looked at the paper and then at the child in front of her.
Although she had already been informed about him, she was still surprised, because it was the first time since she became a receptionist at the Adventurers' Guild that she had seen someone so young registering, and worse still, he was a pallum, so his chances of surviving in the dungeon were very low unless he teamed up with other adventurers.
That wasn't the worst part, he also belonged to the Soma Familia, and to Rose, the Soma Familia was not just a group of adventurers, it was a sect of lost souls enslaved by a divine wine. Seeing a five-year-old child becoming an adventurer and belonging to that familia was like seeing someone condemned.
Rose crouched down to his level, it was an instinctive gesture of protection.
"Hello…" she said with extreme softness, as if she feared Luan would break if she spoke too loudly. "I'm Rose. I'll be your advisor. But, little one… are you sure about this? Where are your parents?"
Luan looked at her steadily. Rose noticed something that deeply unsettled her, the child's eyes did not have the wandering brightness of childhood. They were eyes that analyzed, that measured.
"They're dead, Miss Rose," Luan replied without a hint of self-pity. "It's just Lili and me. That's why, in order to protect her and feed her, I need to become stronger by going into the Dungeon."
Rose felt a knot form in her throat as she heard him say that.
"Come with me," she said, standing up quickly. She needed to get them out of sight of the drunken adventurers who were already starting to cast curious glances.
She led them to a private room. The silence that followed was heavy. Rose sat in front of them, interlacing her fingers on the table.
"Luan, I'm going to be very honest with you," Rose began, her tone turning urgent.
"I don't want to be your advisor. I want you to go home. You're five years old. The Dungeon is not a place for children, it's a dangerous place that devours armed men."
Luan was quite surprised by Rose's current attitude, because she didn't have that "don't talk to me" look or the sense that she had been forced to accept a problematic adventurer, completely different from the Rose from Danmachi that he remembered. In a short time, he arrived at the only conclusion he could think of.
She hadn't gone through her canonical event yet, therefore, she didn't have the character development that led her to become apathetic toward adventurers. This Rose Fannett still retained warmth in her eyes, that spark of idealism that the Guild usually extinguished after a couple of novice funerals.
Lili squeezed Luan's arm, looking at Rose with teary eyes. Luan, however, did not blink.
"I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. I don't think I'll earn much in any other job because I'm a child. Besides, I think you already know more or less how the Soma Familia works through rumors. If you don't bring valis, they take what little you have to ease their addiction."
Luan looked tenderly at his sister, who was quite shaken by what she was hearing, and then turned his gaze back to Rose.
"The dungeon is the only place where the risk depends on my own ability and not on the charity of others. Besides the valis, what I need most is to become stronger so the other members don't try to take advantage of the two of us, because there may come a time when they try to force us to drink Soma's wine and make us addicted in order to get valis for them in exchange for a few drops of the wine."
Rose was left speechless. The child's logic was perfect and terrifying. She noticed that Luan didn't speak like someone his age, he was a child who had grown up in a harsh and primitive environment where the strong devour the weak, which was not far from reality in some familias. And she couldn't do much either, since the Guild couldn't interfere in the internal workings of familias unless they did something very serious that harmed Orario.
"Do you even understand what you're facing?" Rose asked, trying to use fear as a last resort.
"Yes, I know. The dungeon is a closed ecosystem and dangerous for anyone who enters it," Luan replied calmly.
"Monsters respawn in the chambers, and the difficulty increases as you go down the floors. The real risk isn't just facing monsters, but exhaustion, getting trapped in sudden situations like being injured and then having more monsters appear, being surrounded in a 'Monster Party,' or other adventurers deciding that my loot would be much easier to obtain and eliminating me before throwing my corpse to monsters so it looks like it was my own incompetence. If I do something stupid, I die. If I'm not prepared, Lili will be left alone, so I don't plan on doing anything stupid."
Rose felt a chill. The way he broke down the dangers was technical, almost professional. What kind of life has this child lived for his mind to work like this? she wondered. She saw in him that distorted maturity that only comes from extreme tragedy.
"It's clear that… you've learned a lot," Rose said, exhaling a sigh of defeat.
She knew that if she didn't accept him, the Guild would assign him to someone like Diana or other coworkers who joked about how long he would last before dying in the dungeon, people who would let him die without looking back because it wasn't worth investing time in someone who would probably die within a few weeks.
"Alright. If you're going to do this, I'll make sure you have a chance to come back to your sister."
Rose took out a sheet and began writing quickly, though her hands trembled slightly.
"Tomorrow you'll come at dawn. You won't enter the Dungeon yet until I'm at least sure you'll survive on the first floors. First, I'll teach you the map of the upper floors so you can memorize it, and you'll learn everything about the monsters, their weaknesses, their behavior, and something very important every adventurer must know, extracting magic stones from their corpses."
She gave a brief glance at the clothes both children were wearing and knew that Luan's financial situation wouldn't allow him to obtain a weapon and armor in good condition.
"After teaching you all that, we'll review your equipment. You need basic protection at minimum, and as for a weapon, a short one, since your arms don't have the reach for a longsword. So the knife and the starter armor offered by the Adventurers' Guild with a loan will suit you very well." She paused.
"Later on, when you can afford to buy new equipment… a spear would be better for someone of your size, which will make you less likely to get injured."
She looked at Lili, who was still hiding behind her brother and seemed to have a blank, worried expression as she tried to understand what she was hearing.
"And you, Lili… I heard your brother wanted you to attend the briefings with him. I don't see any problem with that, so you can come with him to all the advisory sessions."
Lili simply nodded without saying anything.
Luan took the list Rose was handing him. For a second, his fingers brushed against the woman's. Rose felt the child's cold skin and a determination that frightened her.
"Thank you, Rose. We'll be here tomorrow."
When the two children left the room, Rose let herself fall into her chair, covering her face with her hands.
"Five years old…" she whispered to herself. "Gods, what a rotten world we've built."
She didn't know that, at that moment, Luan was already thinking about testing his strength against the monsters on the first floor for a while and then going down to floors lower than the third after getting used to fighting monsters.