Chapter 1: The Beautiful advantageous Goddess Will Pick Up Her Own Follower! (Patreon)

Labyrinth City, Orario. A branch of the Hephaestus Familia's weapon shop, located on Adventurer Street.

A mature, striking woman in a white shirt and black trousers, her wine-red hair pulled into a loose low ponytail, her features carrying a sharp, handsome edge. Hephaestus.

She frowned at the unconscious boy, then finally turned a helpless look toward the close friend across from her who never failed to give her headaches.

"Hestia."

"I thought I made this clear—letting you stay here was already the limit. So who exactly is this guy?"

"..."

The girl called Hestia, her smooth black hair tied into twin tails, blinked out of habit under the questioning. Her figure was startlingly voluptuous, utterly mismatched with her youthful face. It swayed slightly as she rose to her feet abruptly, though the blue chest band she wore kept her generous bosom from spilling out too obviously.

The girl lifted her head, but the moment she remembered her status as a freeloader, Hestia's voice noticeably lost its confidence.

"It's a long story."

"You know, like you said—find something to do here in Orario. So I... I thought, why not try recruiting some Familia members!"

"And then..."

"I just happened to find him passed out in an alley..."

At least this girl wasn't lying around the house all day doing nothing. Hephaestus actually felt a bit relieved inside, though her expression didn't soften. "So you just brought him back?"

"That's right!"

"Did you even consider that he might already belong to some Familia in Orario?"

Clearly not. Hestia hadn't considered that possibility at all. She looked at the boy's handsome face, her tone turning serious. "Well, how should I put it..."

"Meeting him at all is a kind of fate. If he belongs to another god's Familia, then I'll just consider it a good deed for today!"

"And if he doesn't belong anywhere..."

"If he wants to become an Adventurer, I'll just try inviting him once he wakes up!"

—

The murmur of voices kept drilling into Rozz's eardrums, slowly pulling his drifting consciousness back into his body.

In a daze, Rozz slowly opened his eyes. The dim yellow light overhead felt unusually harsh, and the air carried a fragrance he couldn't quite describe. Most importantly, the room around him was completely unfamiliar.

"Where am I..."

"Did I pass out last night and get carried to a hospital by my roommate?"

The moment that possibility crossed his mind, Rozz felt a chill crawl down his spine—whether it was his computer's browser history or the very particular kind of romance games on his Steam library, if anyone saw them, he'd die of social embarrassment on the spot!!

But then, when he bolted upright like a dying man suddenly snapping back to life, he saw furnishings that clearly didn't belong to a hospital room, along with two women of very different styles standing there. Rozz's eyes went blank, his head buzzing with confusion.

"What the hell..."

"Did someone seriously just haul me off somewhere—is this even still back home?!"

"..."

Noticing the confusion written across the black-haired boy's face, Hestia straightened her posture and did her best to soften her tone:

"Um..."

"Are you all right? This is Hephaestus's weapon shop. I saw you passed out in an alley, so I brought you back."

"..."

Following the sound of the voice, Rozz turned to look at the black-haired girl with twin tails in front of him, and her face struck him as strangely familiar. And more than that, she was gorgeous. Her youthful looks hovered somewhere between girl and child, her face like a miracle of creation, something words simply couldn't capture. Her smooth black hair was tied into twin tails, and despite her somewhat childlike face, her figure was absurdly disproportionate.

TL;DR:

"Baby face, big bust."

"Why do I feel like... I'm in a dream?"

Long-dead memories kept flooding back to assault him. Rozz decisively reached out and, under Hestia's startled gaze, pinched himself hard several times until the pain finally registered.

In the end, he was able to confirm it: the transmigration trope so overused in web novels from his past life had finally caught up to him...

"Is this really happening?"

As for DanMachi. Rozz knew of the show. Since following a weekly airing felt like being left hanging every single episode, he'd decided to wait until it finished and binge through it all at once.

So, before he transmigrated, he'd watched just the first episode, confirmed the style was to his taste, then shelved it on his watch list to gather dust. But judging by his current situation—it seemed he wouldn't get the chance to catch up on it after all.

The good news: thanks to that one episode he'd watched to check the style, Rozz knew the opening plot of DanMachi and understood the core setting behind Adventurers.

Put simply, gods came down to Orario looking for amusement, granting Falna to humans so they could become Adventurers and conquer the bottomless Dungeon.

As for the actual plot, though, he was completely in the dark. But that didn't matter—all he needed to know was that this was an otherworldly realm with power beyond the ordinary.

As a modern corporate slave living through peacetime, Rozz had once fantasized about gaining extraordinary power and beating the hell out of his balding boss, the one who always singled him out and made him work overtime on his days off.

Now, having transmigrated into another world, when he thought about actually gaining such power, he had to admit his anticipation outweighed any fear of the unfamiliar.

"..."

Rozz gathered his tangled thoughts, and once he'd finally made sense of his situation, he looked at the goddess-girl across from him, her face etched with concern. He didn't forget to thank the goddess who'd carried him back. "Thank you... I think my body's fine."

"Good, that's a relief."

But just as things reached a critical moment, the speech Hestia had prepared in advance simply wouldn't come out. All she could do was keep shooting meaningful looks at her friend beside her.

Considering this might help her recruit a Familia member, this could very well be the turning point that finally changed this freeloader's status. Hephaestus's brows furrowed slightly.

"Do you need us to notify your Familia so your companions can come pick you up?"

"No need..."

Rozz couldn't place the identity of this mature woman with wine-red short hair and an eyepatch over her right eye, but going by how Hestia treated her—she was very likely a goddess too? And to become an Adventurer, the first thing he needed to do was join a Familia founded by a god. So he answered honestly:

"To be precise... I really do want to become an Adventurer, but I just arrived in Orario and haven't found a suitable Familia yet."

"...Eh?!"

As a goddess, Hestia could tell truth from lies in what people said. Now that she had a clear answer, thoughts began stirring rapidly in her mind.

Even though she still didn't know the boy's name, still, on the very day she'd finally made the decision to grow her Familia and post a notice at the Adventurer Guild, she'd happened to pick him up.

"This has to be fate!"

Rozz's fine-featured face reflected in the girl's clear, lake-blue eyes. She cleared her throat and asked, curious:

"Um..."

"What's your name?"

"Rozz."

After committing the name firmly to memory, Hestia stood up and put her hands on her hips, but the expectant look she gave Rozz carried more nervousness—fear of being turned down—than confidence.

"Nice to meet you."

"My name is Hestia. Right now I guess... I can be considered a goddess. So, would you consider... joining my Familia?"