The basement of the old church was suddenly plunged into silence.
The dim glow from the magic stone lamp mounted on the wall cast Hestia’s shadow onto the stone floor.
Natsu remained seated cross-legged, his bare back facing the goddess.
The pink-haired youth let the silence stretch, feeling the lingering warmth seeping into the skin of his back.
It was the exact spot where Hestia’s divine blood had just formed his new family crest.
However, second after second ticked by without a single word escaping Hestia’s mouth.
Natsu noticed a drastic change in the goddess’s breathing rhythm behind him.
Hestia’s heartbeat sounded incredibly fast and erratic.
Turning his head slightly over his shoulder, Natsu looked at Hestia with a furrowed brow.
“What’s wrong, Hestia?” Natsu asked, breaking the silence of the room with a casual tone.
“Is there something weird with my status?”
Hestia stared straight at the young man’s back.
Her eyes were glued to the hieroglyphs glowing faintly against Natsu’s skin.
“Weird…” Hestia muttered softly.
“No…
no.”
Hestia took a deep breath, then screamed, shattering the silence of the night.
“Your status is completely abnormal, Natsu!”
Her shout echoed, bouncing off the stone walls of the church.
Without wasting another second, Hestia spun around and marched briskly toward her wooden table in the corner of the room.
The sound of shuffling paper could be heard.
The goddess grabbed a piece of special parchment typically used by deities to copy their members’ Falna status.
Hestia marched back over to Natsu.
She immediately slapped the blank parchment onto his back.
In accordance with the absolute laws of this world, the arcane text from Natsu’s back was automatically traced and printed onto the surface of the paper.
Hestia pulled the paper away and shoved it right in front of Natsu’s face.
“See for yourself!” Hestia exclaimed.
Natsu took the parchment.
He shifted his body so he could sit back comfortably on the worn-out sofa, then stared intently at the sheet of paper in his hands.
For a few moments, Natsu fell silent.
His eyes narrowed, trying to recognize the curves and lines of the writing.
The rows of numbers were crystal clear and he could read them easily.
However, the text accompanying those numbers looked like random scribbles to him.
Natsu tried digging through the three lives inside his head.
The text definitely wasn’t Japanese characters from his first life on Earth.
It wasn’t the language he had spoken while living peacefully with Zeref during his childhood, and it certainly wasn’t the ancient script Igneel had taught him in the past.
The hieroglyphic writing on that paper was an entirely alien language.
A very fundamental realization struck him.
He was in a completely different world, with a new civilization and written language.
And naturally, he was illiterate here.
Looks like I have to start learning the local alphabet from scratch, Natsu thought, letting out a resigned sigh.
This was an obstacle far more troublesome than simply punching giant monsters into the dirt in the forest.
Natsu slowly lowered the parchment, then looked at Hestia, who was still standing there waiting for him.
The young man scratched the back of his head.
Natsu smiled awkwardly.
“I understand the stats, but I have no idea what the rest of this says.”
Hestia let out a long breath, trying to calm her still-racing heart.
She took the parchment back from Natsu’s hands, pulled up a wooden chair, and sat down opposite him.
She held the paper between them so Natsu could follow along with her explanation.
“Alright, listen closely.
I’ll read it for you,” Hestia said, pointing to the very top line of the parchment.
“Natsu Dragneel,” Hestia began from the top row.
“Level 1.”
Hestia’s index finger moved down to the next block.
Her voice trembled slightly as she read the rows of numbers lined up neatly there.
“Basic Status: Strength (STR): EX – 9999 Endurance (END): EX – 9999 Dexterity (DEX): EX – 9999 Agility (AGI): EX – 9999 Magic (MAG): EX – 9999”
Hestia paused for a moment, glancing over at Natsu.
The young man was just listening calmly, as if rows of thousands were completely normal to him.
The goddess forced herself to continue reading down to the magic block.
“Magic: [Karyū no Mahō] [Etherious]”
Discovering two innate magics registered immediately without needing to read a grimoire was an extraordinary rarity.
However, Hestia’s surprises were far from over.
She slid her finger down to the final block containing Natsu’s anomalous abilities.
“Skills: [Flames of Emotion] [Ignis Devorator] [Dragon King’s Protection]”
The moment she finished reading the final line, Hestia lowered her hand.
She stared intently at Natsu, desperately searching for a logical explanation from the youth before her.
“Your status…
why is there a 9999?” Hestia asked softly, demanding an answer to something so utterly illogical.
Natsu chuckled softly, scratching his cheek.
From the memories of his life on Earth, he knew full well that the maximum limit for a Falna parameter before leveling up normally was rank S (nine hundred and ninety-nine).
The number nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine clearly shattered the limits of the Falna system.
“Well…
it seems my body’s vessel is just a bit too dense for this system,” Natsu said casually.
“A bit, you say?!” Hestia retorted, her voice rising in pitch.
Hestia leaned forward.
“Listen here, Natsu-kun.
The Falna blessing system measures the absolute maximum capacity that a mortal’s physical vessel can hold.
It’s only supposed to go up to 999, Natsu-kun!”
Hestia pointed sharply at the row of 9999s on the parchment.
“The number 999 is the absolute pinnacle of a vessel.
Once someone reaches that number, their body has to evolve to the next level.
No adventurer has a stat of 1000, let alone 9999!
The gods’ hieroglyphic system was even forced to invent the rank ‘EX’ just to read your status.
Your very existence destroys the foundational rules of divine blessings.”
Natsu remained silent as he listened to the explanation.
He slowly clenched and unclenched his fist.
To him, those numbers made perfect sense.
They were the tangible result of extreme training and life-or-death battles for five years in the forest.
His physique had indeed been trained to its absolute limit before being refined by the Falna.
However, Natsu now understood that by Gekai’s standards, his power was an anomaly their system simply couldn’t explain.
Hestia gently massaged her temples, trying to digest the fact that she had just recruited a human with absurd strength as her very first member.
But, as Hestia looked back down at the very bottom of the status parchment, she noticed the stockpile of Excelia that the Falna system had already processed.
It was the accumulated Excelia—the experience points recorded within Natsu’s body.
The pure experience points amassed during Natsu’s five years of survival, slaughtering lethal monsters in the Unexplored Area, had now all been read and processed by the Falna system.
The sheer volume of that life-and-death experience was so massive that it utterly obliterated the evaluation threshold required for a beginner.
Hestia swallowed hard.
The hand holding the parchment began to tremble again.
She slowly lifted her face, locking eyes with Natsu.
“And what’s even crazier…
congratulations, Natsu-kun.
You’ve leveled up to Level 2.”
“Like my work?