[Day 1, clear skies.
Wanted to go find Tia-Mama to update my stats, but then got talked out of it by a tearful Tia-Mama asking, “After you finish updating your stats, are you just going to leave Mama again?”] [Day 2, clear skies.
Refusal failed.
Spent the day with Tia-Mama creating a new humanity in the Primordial Sea.] […] [Day 7, clear skies.
Refusal failed.
Spent the day with Tia-Mama… no, wait, Artorias, oh Artorias, how could you sink so low!
Tomorrow I absolutely must make up my mind and tell Tia-Mama no!] [Day 8, clear skies.
Refusal failed.] […] [Day 1065, clear skies.
Spent the day with Tia-Mama creating a new humanity in the Primordial Sea.] … Isn’t it about time I headed out?
Lifting his head to gaze up at that eternal, unchanging vault of blue so clear it made his heart flutter, Artorias, having just cleared three years of dead-weight memories from his mind, woke as if from a dream, only now realizing that somewhere along the way he’d once again melted into this cursed comfort zone like a salted fish left to rot.
“Mama (O divine one), it’s about time you updated my stats, isn’t it?” He reached out and gently shook the divine one who was still draped over him, lost in sweet slumber.
Cheeks faintly flushed, Tiamat leaned against his chest with a satisfied smile curling at the corners of her lips.
“Mmm, ten more years, just stay with Mama ten more years, little fawn—” Her arms and legs coiled around him like an octopus, releasing him for barely an instant before clinging on all over again.
Those pink pupils drifted open in a daze, met Artorias’s gaze for a moment, then slowly slid shut again, her voice thick with drowsiness and coy pleading.
“But I haven’t even been in this world for ten years.” Artorias let out a helpless sigh and reached up to give Tia-Mama’s impossibly soft cheek a light pinch.
There were times when he genuinely struggled to grasp how these long-lived species measured the passage of time, what yardstick they even used.
Seeming to sense that trace of settled resolve, Tiamat finally rubbed her bleary eyes and, reluctantly, slowly sat up off of him.
She didn’t offer any more of those words meant to make him waver.
She knew that her little fawn was a good, sensible child, and that he’d already kept her company long enough in this lonely world.
Here in the Primordial Sea, where time was stretched out to infinity, her duty as a mother was not only to be a warm harbor for her weary child, but also, when the child yearned for adventure, to smile and send him off on his distant journey with encouragement and a blessing.
A silence brewed within the tiny world the two of them shared.
Both of them understood, without needing to say it, that every stat update meant one more small parting.
As Artorias turned around, the pitch-black emblem engraved on his back, belonging to the [Beast] job class, slowly surfaced.
Seated behind him, Tiamat gently pricked her finger and let a single drop of crimson divine blood fall upon those intricate markings.
In truth, Artorias rarely came to Tia-Mama for stat updates.
The reason was simple.
Like the monsters in the original work, the numbers he gained from devouring magic stones in the course of an ordinary day couldn’t be quantified by the system of a god’s blessing.
On the panel of that blessing, he could only earn experience through the most primitive kind of combat.
And of all the luck, he didn’t have any absurdly overpowered skill like [Argonaut] to accelerate experience gain.
This meant that Artorias, in his capacity as an adventurer, grew at a pace that could only be called glacial.
Forget the dream panel of all-S stats, at this point even grinding a single stat up to A was as hard as climbing to the heavens.
He’d honestly get a bigger boost just playing the greedy little glutton in the Dungeon, gobbling down magic stones.
The only reason he still clung to the notion of updating his stats was a kind of lottery-ticket wishful thinking, a hope that maybe someday he’d awaken magic or something of the sort.
Artorias held an optimistic view about it, and was in no hurry.
Possessing a dual growth system of both monster and divine blessing at once, in his eyes, already counted as a plenty excellent build under DanMachi’s conservative worldview.
“Magic…” Until, straddling his back, little Tia-Mama gave a slight tremble and spoke up in surprise: “Little fawn, you’ve awakened magic.” “Huh?” He half-suspected he’d just misheard something.
… “Holy crap, a cheat!” Holding a sheet of parchment he had no idea where it came from, Artorias finished reading the sacred script, his eyes going wide.
The thousand words piled up in his chest finally condensed into one heartfelt exclamation.
“This magic… does it count as something I earned myself, from all my daily fasting and prayer?” They say magic is a reflection of the heart, the concrete manifestation of the soul’s very essence.
So this was the blessing he’d earned from starring, day after day, in his own gourmet documentary set inside the Dungeon?
[Devourer (monster eater)] [· Transformation / Buff magic] [· By devouring a portion of a target, one can gain a transformation that mimics its form.] [· After devouring a certain number of ordinary individuals, one can permanently gain a special buff.] [· After devouring a rare Enhanced Species of a given race, one can permanently gain a certain development ability / magic / skill.] [· If the transformed state contradicts the traits of the devoured target, the effect cannot be triggered.] [· A target devoured by ·· cannot be transformed into.] [· The first piece of the puzzle toward becoming the object of admiration.] As everyone knows, in any game, any ability involving no upper limit and permanent buffs is basically a terrifyingly broken mechanic.
And he’d somehow gotten two of them at once.
“So the magic you’ve been longing for has finally shown itself.” The Primordial Mother, who never once overlooked her child’s requests, sat poised upon the surface of the sea, her gaze gentle as ever.
“To reward my hardworking little fawn, Mama’s going to prepare a special gift for you too.” Tiamat’s fingers traced lightly across Artorias’s back, where his stats had just been updated.
As a searing, scalding heat spread across it, another line of vivid crimson text appeared upon the parchment scroll recording Artorias’s detailed abilities.
[Power of the Beast (over beast)] [· The blessing of the virtual Mother Goddess, proof of the one and only Dungeon Apostle.] [· Immunity to abnormal status effects.] [· While within the Dungeon environment, massive boost to all stats.] [· Enormous boost to combat stats against adventurers, enormous boost to experience gained.] [· A chance for specially enhanced trial monsters to appear on the floor where one is located.] “Hsss—” Holy crap, a signature skill of a PVP-arena grandmaster.
Having read the text clearly, Artorias sucked in a sharp breath.
Before he could get out a single word of thanks, the divine one, whose height reached only to his waist, wrapped him up in a fierce hug once more.
“Congratulations, little fawn.” “We (the Dungeon) are not like those gods of the heavens.” “We don’t need a Familia as vast as the stars.
We only need you.” “The little fawn who can understand our voice, he is the Apostle who embodies our will.” “I am your divine one, yours alone.” “And we need only you, and no one else, to become our Apostle.” “As long as you wish to grow stronger, little fawn… within the limits your body can bear, Mama can become all of your strength.” This virtual divinity, handpicked and assembled from Artorias’s own memories, was using the gentlest of words to give one final blessing to the child about to set out on his journey.
“Mama knows.
All this time, my little fawn has never had much interest in growing stronger.” “The thing that gave you the urge to try harder, it’s that adventurer who helped you, isn’t it?” Struck squarely on his hidden thoughts, Artorias found himself at a momentary loss.
As a monster himself, he could hardly admit, right in front of Tia-Mama who embodied the very will of the Dungeon, that he harbored some feeling bordering on admiration for a certain adventurer clearing that same Dungeon, could he?
In a sense, wasn’t this some kind of face-to-face betrayal laced with a strange, guilty sacrilege?
“It’s all right,” Tiamat only shook her head gently, her arms tightening around him a few degrees more.
“For a child to have found someone to look up to, that is a joyous thing worth a mother’s relief, a sign of growth.” “Even… even if that person is an adventurer?” Artorias asked, probing cautiously.
“Even if it’s a hateful adventurer, it’s all the same.” His Tia-Mama nodded in affirmation.
Just as he’d thought, Artorias mused.
Even as the embodiment of the Dungeon’s will, standing opposed to humanity, the goddess Tiamat was still, without fail, Tiamat.
No matter how her identity or her position shifted, she remained the Mother of All Things who would always understand her child and pour out her love unconditionally.
A warmth welled up inside Artorias, and he was just about to say a few moved words.
Then he heard his beloved mother, in the gentlest of voices, casually append her next line: “So, little fawn, from now on, whenever you face those adventurers… apart from that one child you like, just kill every other human, all right?” Those words, utterly devoid of malice, born of one hundred percent concern for him, made Artorias’s brow twitch violently.
Retraction of previous statement: it seemed Mama (Tiamat) still hadn’t fully understood him after all.
Perhaps he was going to run into no small amount of trouble on this front in the future.
… Artorias (Artorias) Affiliation: Tiamat Current Race: Goblin (LV1) Job: Apostle / Monster Stats: LV1 Strength: C624-C627 Endurance: E432-E434 Dexterity: D504-D524 Agility: C651-C660 Magic: I0-I0 Development Ability: None yet Magic: Devourer, effects abbreviated Skills: Power of the Beast, effects abbreviated Equipment: Refined Frying Pan · An ordinary frying pan snatched from an adventurer.
Originally an utterly unremarkable cooking utensil, it took on a faint trace of divine might from being used so often by Artorias and repeatedly stuffed into the depths of the Dungeon, and now possesses extremely high defensive power.
· A 500-Valis street-stall item.
· The party in question once used the frying pan as a tennis racket out of sheer boredom, then confidently decided he’d discovered a genius countermeasure against projectile weapons.
Elephant God’s Bite · A shortblade gifted to Artorias by Adi Varma, forged from a block of upper-floor mineral steel, a weapon suited to rookie adventurers.
· Originally a gift given by her older sister, Charlotte Varma, when her younger sister returned from her first Familia expedition.
· Not for sale, crafted by a blacksmith within the Familia.
· It carries a faint, lingering affection; from the care taken in the weapon’s maintenance, one can tell just how much its original owner treasured it.
· Under the Mother Goddess’s own gaze, it became the witness marking the beginning of a friendship between the two of them.