Chapter 5: Blue Flame

"Hey, Crozzo, you good-for-nothing runt!"

Welf turned around reluctantly. This was exactly why he hated fancy balls and dinner

parties.

The walls and pillars had all been festooned at great expense with so many sparkling

embellishments that they hurt the eyes. A swirl of elaborately dressed nobles flowed

gracefully across the dance floor to lilting string music. Overhead hung a vast number

of magic-stone lights sourced from the Labyrinth City arrayed in a huge chandelier.

It was a lavishly decorated hall, and it was just one part of the huge castle that also

boasted sweeping balconies, gardens, and fountains.

This was a royal ball.

"A runt from a disgraced family like yours dares to show his face here? It's pathetic to

see your ilk clinging to past glories. Or were you just hoping to snag some scraps from

the banquet?"

A group of young scions from powerful noble families grinned at him unpleasantly.

Welf had been forcibly pulled along by two of the duller-looking bullies on the orders

of a third boy who looked about ten, which was close to Welf's age as well. His slim

frame was clothed in well-tailored clothes, and he looked down with a sneering,

superior gaze.

Welf hated everything about the atmosphere of this ball. Amid a swirl of sparkling

dresses and beautiful music, the nobility and royal vassals in attendance sniffed one

another's rumps as they jockeyed for advantage. Behind their flowery language, each

and every one of them was licking their chops. Welf was undoubtedly still a child, but

this was what his eyes saw.

It was a world of performance and superficiality, without a single trace of anything

sincere or genuine.

The attendees were all sweetness and flattery, and they would all gladly kick over

anyone else here in their desperation for personal gain. And any who retired from the

vicious political infighting was treated with the scorn and cold mockery that Welf was

now receiving.

He had been dragged here by his family, who were eager to curry favor with more

powerful nobility, but if it was going to be like this every time, Welf would much rather

have preferred to be shut away in a dirty workshop polishing hammers.

The thought occurred to him vividly as he faced the group of boys who'd come to sneer

at the only son of the once great, now fallen Crozzo family.

Just as Welf was making a distinctly unnoble grimace, another boy suddenly approached

them.

"A son of Hron, ganging up with others just to humiliate one person. Not very seemly."

"L-Lord Marius…?!"

The appearance of Marius, the first son of the nation's king, surprised both Welf and

his tormentors alike.

His honey-blond hair and knightly posture told of the fine-featured man he would

become. The term lordling suited him perfectly.

In addition to the gift of his appearance and his Status, his handling of the unreasonable

demands placed upon him by the king and his patron deity alike had begun to

distinguish him even at the tender age of twelve. Welf had heard that there was no end

to the stream of nobility attempting to flatter their way into his good graces.

It seemed like he had come to stop the bullying, but Welf suspected it was only on a

whim.

That said, when he looked at the stoic crown prince who regarded everything

surrounding him with annoyance, he had a strange sense that the prince hated this

ball as much as he did.

The noble boys had been so startled that they forgot to pay their proper respects,

tripping over themselves until they eventually smiled unpleasantly as they seized

upon a gambit.

"N-no, Your Highness, this isn't… Yes, in fact, it's his fault! This runt from an irrelevant

smithing family forgot his place. He ought to content himself with playing around at

his forge instead of—"

The words were cut off by a fist. Welf had lost his temper and thrown a punch. "I dare

you to say another word, bastard!" Welf roared, grabbing the boy by his lapels.

"Nnagh!" yelped the boy, cheek red and nose bleeding from the punch.

As the ladies around them shrieked in alarm, Marius looked on in surprise, but he

made no move to stop Welf. He was too busy clamping his mouth shut in an attempt

to stifle a laugh.

The other boys immediately jumped into the developing scuffle, but the red-haired

boy's fury could not be quelled. He fought tooth and nail until all three of his attackers

cried for mercy.

This was the Kingdom of Rakia, a nation-sized familia ruled by Ares, the God of War.

The royal ball held that night in the capital city of Barva shortly turned into an uproar.

"Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

A deity's vulgar laughter rang out under the cloudy skies.

Welf, surly and bruised, turned a sour face toward the goddess, who held her sides as

she rolled about guffawing.

They were in the rear garden of the shabby Crozzo manor. It was the day after the row

at the ball.

"Slugging the son of a nobleman! Turning a ball into a brawl! That's a first! Heeee-heehee-hee-hee!"

"Aw, come off it… What was I supposed to do? They started it!"

From within the house came Welf's mother's piecing voice. "Welf! Welf! Where are

you?!"

Welf had fled to the garden in an effort to escape the hysterical lecturing he hated so

much, and the goddess in front of him snickered in anticipation, as though she'd read

his mind.

When she'd asked him what he'd gotten up to this time and he'd reluctantly explained,

this had happened.

"Anyway, Phobos—if we make noise, Mom's gonna find me. Stop, c'mon."

"Aw, sorry, sorry. Still, you're a real funny guy, Welf. Not like the rest of the Crozzos."

Her lustrous black hair fell down to her waist. It went without saying that Welf had to

look up in order to meet her gaze, but disregarding the fact that he was still a child,

the slender goddess was fairly tall for a woman—nearly 170 celch. She was clad in odd

robes the same black color as her hair.

While it wasn't clear what her actual age was, the goddess appeared as a beautiful

young woman—although her looks clashed terribly with the vulgar speech and

laughter that seemed to be typical of certain deities.

"If there were more like you, getting fallen-nobility duty foisted off on me wouldn't be

so boring!"

Her name was Phobos.

She was a respected goddess, as well as the patron goddess responsible for the Crozzo

house. She was also an uninhibited, freewheeling figurehead who'd been assimilated

by the Kingdom of Rakia.

To make a long story short, she'd fought a defensive war against Rakia's military—

which was to say, Ares Familia —and lost. And as losers of a War Game had to accede

to the wishes of the winner, she'd had to become a vassal-god of Ares, God of War.

Within the vast population of the Kingdom of Rakia, it was the possession of a Falna

that separated civilians from combatants. The former accounted for the large majority

of the population, but the soldiers and knights who constituted the latter still easily

numbered near a hundred thousand. It was quite impossible for Ares to handle all the

Falna conferments and Status updates himself.

That was where vassal-gods like Phobos came in. They were his hands and feet, the

ones who brought people at the fringe into the familia.

While the position of the fallen Crozzo clan as part of Rakia had in some sense not

changed, they now all bore Phobos's blessing as members of Phobos Familia. It was a

system often found in national-level familias.

"…If you're that bored, go stage a coup or something. Gods love that kind of thing,

right?"

"Yeah, I wish somebody would. It's great watching stuff like that from the sidelines.

But getting a bunch of children worked up and keeping them in order while making

sure Ares doesn't notice would be a real hassle."

Even if they'd lost a war and had been subjugated, there was no telling what a

capricious deity might do.

Therefore, in order to prevent rebellion, all of Rakia's military might—its Level 2 and

Level 3 knights and officers, and the entirety of the royal household guard—was under

Ares's direct control. While he might rely on the help of other deities, the notoriously

stubborn (and, some would say, muscle-headed) Ares was personally attended by well

over ten thousand of these troops. Meanwhile, his vassal-gods were only ever

responsible for the lowest-Status holders and weakest fighters.

Moreover, whenever he heard that any of his vassal-gods' charges had become

especially strong or clever, he immediately had them convert into Ares Familia.

In other words, rising to any sort of power in Rakia also entailed receiving the blood

of its founding father—Ares, God of War. And the Crozzo clan itself had aspirations of

returning to prominence by riding Ares's coattails.

"Still, you're a strange one, talking about coups and whatnot so casually. Hee-hee."

The Crozzo clan had once provided magic swords of vast power to the ruling family,

but with the royals now a shadow of their former selves, and with the Crozzos cursed

besides, they could no longer produce the fabled weapons. Just as the boys from the

previous night's ball had said, they passed their days clinging to the tatters of their

former glory.

Welf found his family's obsession with status to be unseemly, and he was uninterested.

He had his own goal.

"I'm going to be a smith. It doesn't matter if the gods or kings or whatever above me

change. Hey!… Stop! Stop messing up my hair!"

Phobos had wrapped her arms around Welf, who hadn't had his growth spurt yet, and

was affectionately tousling his hair. Her immature demeanor felt somehow incongruous

given her seductively narrow, bewitching eyes. Welf was unlike the rest of the Crozzo

family, and she couldn't help but fuss over and tease him.

To Welf, meanwhile, she was not so much as a goddess to be worshipped as she was

some combination of a mischievous friend, a bad influence, and an irritating older

sibling.

"Oh, by the way, Welf, Garon was talking about doing some tempering today," said

Phobos after toying with him for a while, as though she'd just remembered.

She wasn't voluptuous per se , but Welf was still turning red at the sensation of her soft

chest pressing against him through the black material of her robes. The moment he

heard her absentminded words, though, his eyes widened. "Wha…? Why didn't you

say so sooner?!" he shouted.

He squirmed free of her and sprinted from the garden.

"Good luck, Welf!"

"Didn't ask you, stupid goddess!" said Welf, but there was a smile on his face. He waved

at her with both hands as he ran, acting every bit a boy his age, which was quite

removed from the noble he had been raised to be.

The goddess grinned as she watched him disappear around the corner of the mansion.

Welf made straight for an old, weathered building distinctly detached from the main

residence.

The Crozzo workshop was just as shabby as their dilapidated old mansion, but Welf

didn't mind the smithy's cramped spaces. The sharp smell of iron, the soot-smeared

walls—all of it was familiar and comforting. The furnace was old, but it still produced

a hot flame. Here he could forget the chains of nobility.

He took off his fine, well-tailored noble's clothes and changed into his work clothes,

then stepped into the workshop's interior.

"Gramps! Pop!"

There were only two other people in the workshop, both wearing the same work

clothes he was: his grandfather, Garon Crozzo, and his father, Vil Crozzo. Garon had

white hair and a beard, while Vil had long brown hair that he tied back. Hearing Welf's

greeting, both turned to look.

"Welf, how many times have I told you not to address us so? When are you going to

start acting like a proper noble? And I heard that while I was away, you were apparently

involved in some scuffle at the ball?"

"That was because they called our work 'playing around at the forge'—"

"Silence! I will not tolerate such childish displays in the presence of the king! We are

fortunate that Lord Marius saw fit to smooth things over for us…"

Welf's father, Vil, was rigid in his adherence to the rules of the nobility.

As the current head of the family, he had sworn to see it restored, and he insisted on

maintaining the appearance of a noble smithing family from his wife on down, under

duress if necessary. Welf found it all terribly constricting.

But apparently the king's first son had, owing to some whimsy, interceded on Welf's

behalf and absolved him of blame for the incident at the ball.

"Enough, Vil. Welf is here. It's time to start."

Vil glared at the boy's downcast, chagrined face, but reluctantly acceded to Garon.

"…Very well."

Welf's grandfather, who'd abdicated his position as the head of the family, nonetheless

had a build sturdy enough that no one could detect any hint of old age about him. His

posture was rigidly straight, as though he had a spine of iron, and his facial expression

was always stern.

Garon was no nobleman but a smith , Welf thought, which was why he'd just saved him

from further scolding.

Welf smiled as he watched from behind as his grandfather approached the furnace. He

followed his father to take up his place beside the two men.

"—Hn!"

Clang! Clang!

The tempering began, amid sparks and the sound of striking iron.

The furnace glowed red, illuminating the dim workshop.

Despite the murderous heat scorching his face and the beads of sweat that rolled down

his back, Welf was wholly engaged as his father and grandfather's apprentice.

Both his father and grandfather bore Phobos's Blessing, and the sound of their blows

was clear and strong. Despite their Ability giving them enough strength to forge

weapons on their own without needing to take turns striking hammer blows, the two

of them were stubbornly working a single piece of metal together.

With Welf joining Vil and Garon, three generations combined their power to forge a

single blade.

With a fearsomely serious face, Vil spoke to Welf as he brought his hammer down.

"Listen, Welf. You must listen to the voice of the iron and bend your ear to its tone. Feel

the mind of the hammer. If you don't, you'll never forge a blade properly. We must

always strive to make weapons worthy of replacing the magic swords of Crozzo."

It was always his father who said such things. Vil had staked his life on attempting to

restore the family by the crafting of weapons that could substitute for the fabled

Crozzo's Magic Swords.

While his true wish was still the restoration of the family as nobility, his father's

intentions and emotions here were sincere, and Welf nodded after listening intently.

When Welf watched his father as he tended to the tempering, he felt respect and love.

Meanwhile, his taciturn grandfather was somehow able to embody the meaning of

smithing even with his broad back turned.

"Welf, the tongs."

"Yes, sir!"

As he single-mindedly worked the iron, Welf was learning all sorts of things from him.

The same went for Vil. The family had long since lost the art of creating Crozzo's Magic

Swords when Garon had dedicated himself to the craft of smithing in an attempt to

create weapons of the finest caliber.

"Listen to the voice of the iron. Bend your ear to its tone. Feel the mind of the hammer."

These words had originally been Garon's, and Vil inherited them from him. Welf had

heard them from his grandfather only once, as he'd brought his hammer down like a

man possessed.

Welf had known of Garon and Vil and the art of the smith before he'd known what a

weapon was. Since before he could remember. He couldn't help but be entranced with

the weapons their passion and dedication created—those tempered blades and keen

reflections.

When he saw a certain knight wielding one of his grandfather's pieces, Welf's whole

body felt hot. Could a wielder and their stance, the union of weapon and person, really

be elevated to such a level?

He wanted to become a smith himself.

He wanted to become a smith and create a masterpiece.

He wanted to see that masterpiece wielded by someone of the highest skill.

The compulsion burned within him. A longing, a need, a hope.

Welf had carried those feelings within him even back when he was tiny.

"…Welf, try a strike."

"Wha…? C-can I really, Gramps?!" Thus far, Welf had only ever been allowed to do the

most menial assistant work. This would be the first time he was ever allowed to hold

a hammer at the forge.

With a silent look, his stern grandfather told him to proceed.

His sweat-soaked father smiled, too.

Welf grinned brightly, and it almost looked like he was going to cry.

He grasped the hammer, which looked far too heavy for his skinny, childish arms, and

approached the anvil where the red-hot metal waited.

Welf brought the hammer down, knowing he would never forget this day.

A sad little clank rang out. It was a far cry from the clear, pealing strikes of his father

and grandfather, but he'd put all his strength into the hammer as it fell.

He would be a smith, too. With his father and grandfather, he would make legendary

weapons that surpassed even Crozzo's Magic Swords.

At that moment, Welf still believed in this future.

The fated day arrived on Welf's tenth birthday.

"Okay, it's time to receive my Blessing!"

In a room in the Crozzo mansion. Welf was about to receive his Falna from Phobos.

The inscription of a Falna on his tenth birthday was being done at Garon's direction.

He believed that Welf needed to understand hardship as a craftsman before receiving

his strength-enhancing Status.

As Welf, Garon, and other members of the family looked on, Welf sat in a chair stripped

to the waist while Phobos dripped ichor onto his back and etched the hieroglyphs into

his skin.

Welf Crozzo

Level 1

Strength: I0 Defense: I0 Dexterity: I0 Agility: I0 Magic: I0

Magic

( )

Skill

Blood of Crozzo

• Ability to produce magic swords

• Can increase potency of magic swords during creation

As she gazed at the rows of hieroglyphs on the boy's back—including the same skill,

Blood of Crozzo, that others in his family had—Phobos slowly and quietly spoke.

"…Now, Welf. Go and forge a magic sword."

"Huh? That's impossible. The whole family was cursed by a spirit—"

"Just try, boy."

His father and grandfather had drilled the ways of the smith's craft into him right up

until this very day. It had been a year since he'd first held a hammer, and now that he'd

received his own Status, he was sure that he could forge a weapon on his own.

Garon and Vil both had wary expressions on their faces, but the black-haired goddess

only smiled a faint smile. "…Just do what you can."

Thus ordered by the deity, Welf grimly set himself to the task.

And then everything changed.

"I don't believe it…"

Vil's field of vision was filled by scorched earth from which rose black smoke.

They were in a field outside the capital city of Barva.

In his hand was a crimson-bladed shortsword whose blade had just then broken with

a sharp crack.

As the fragment of blade hit the ground at his feet, Vil and the rest of the family who'd

come with him were dumbstruck.

It was the test of the shortsword—the magic shortsword—that Welf had forged.

Flickers of flame lingered everywhere. The field had been reduced to ash.

The symbol of the family's lost glory, the Crozzo's Magic Sword, had returned. A great,

mad cry arose. "Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"

A stunned, shocked Welf was there, too, and he looked down at the broken blade

fragment on the ground with eyes full of tears.

"Welf, forge a magic sword!!"

After they returned to the mansion, Welf found himself surrounded by family.

Relatives he didn't recognize, his mother, and even Vil all chorused the same words.

The young Welf was frozen where he stood.

"This will restore the Crozzo clan! Only your blades can do this!" Vil faced Welf and

held him by the shoulders, his eyes wide and wild. Vil seemed not to notice the pained

face of the child as he demanded more weapons.

"Wait, please…! Weren't we trying to make dependable weapons worthy of the Crozzo

name?!"

"We don't need them anymore! If we have you and your magic swords, the Crozzo

family will rise again!"

"Father, no! I… I don't want to make weapons that will abandon their masters…

weapons that will always break! Please!"

"I'll have none of your foolish nonsense, boy!"

Struck across his face, Welf fell to the floor, where he stayed, staring vacantly down.

The man who'd poured his heart and soul into the task of creating a substitute for the

lost art of Crozzo's Magic Swords was no longer there. What remained was the

descendant of a line of cursed magic smiths, obsessed with his lineage.

"We'll regain the honor of the Crozzos, Welf! Now, forge tools that will please the king!"

Welf's balled fists shook terribly at that voice, those words.

Amid the shouting of the gathered family, only Garon was silent. Welf peered up at him

beseechingly.

Garon looked into his grandson's trembling eyes, his expression terrifyingly blank as

he spoke. "Welf… forge a magic sword."

All strength left Welf's body like an escaped breath.

It was replaced with scarlet flames of rage. He felt despair, betrayal, and a violent

indignation.

That day, Welf was broken by his father, his grandfather, and the entire Crozzo family.

Late that night, Welf was in his bedroom, quietly and secretly packing his things, when

Phobos appeared.

"Are you running away from home, Welf? From your whole country?"

"What do you want?" said Welf, looking over his shoulder, a feral gleam in his eyes. It

had been this goddess's instruction to him that had triggered all of this.

Although the truth would have surely come out no matter how he tried to hide it, the

young Welf couldn't help but resent her.

"I'm sorry I stole your home from you. I really am, Welf."

"…"

"On the other hand, if you'd stayed ignorant—or, no, if you hadn't accepted it, you

would have eventually regretted it. That's why I told you what I did." She giggled.

"Forgive me, eh?" Phobos regarded the grief-stricken child, wearing the same grin she

always had.

Welf held his tongue for a moment, decided not to bother with a retort, and returned

to his packing. "Don't try to stop me."

"I'm not gonna. I'm actually here to help you."

Welf stopped and looked back at her again. "…What?"

"Just what I said. I'm going to get you out of this kingdom."

"What are you getting at…?"

"It's my last bit of meddling in my dear little child's life. Call it atonement. Plus, it's not

like a kid is gonna make it past the outer walls of Barva on his own."

Phobos walked up to the now-silent Welf with a smile and put her arms around his

shoulders a bit too familiarly. "Leave it to me, okay?"

Welf didn't know what her divine intentions were, but what she said was true.

There was only a slim chance that a child who knew nothing of life save his existence

as an impoverished noble and his skill as a smith could find a way past the country's

border guards. His ecstatic family was surely even now telling the whole royal court

about the child who could forge Crozzo's Magic Swords.

If he wanted to leave the country, he had no choice but to accept Phobos's help.

"Welf. Take a magic sword with you."

"I don't need one. I'll never —"

"You don't know what you're going to run into, do you? It's just in case. Could you for

once just listen to what your goddess is telling you, please?"

Welf had forged two magic swords—one for testing, and one to present to the royal

family.

Phobos's words made him realize that he loathed the idea of leaving his very first

creation behind, to be used by someone else. He grimaced and nodded reluctantly.

"I'll use my contacts and make it so you can pass through the checkpoint. It'll be

tomorrow. Got that?"

"All right…" he said, nodding at her explanation of the plan.

Welf didn't know what was possessing Phobos to do this, but he somehow got the

sense that he could trust the words of his mischievous old friend.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" The god Ares's laughter boomed. He was giving Vil an audience

on the castle's highest floor, in the throne room. "Did you hear, Martinus? Someone

who can forge magic swords has appeared in the Crozzo family!"

"But Lord Ares, the Crozzo clan still suffers from a spirit's curse. Even if these swords

hold their form now, there's every chance they'd snap in an instant the moment they

see real battle… They're surely defective," offered the aging king.

"Hmm, that's also true. Well, we'll keep our expectations low, then!" said Ares with a

decisive nod that shook his mane of golden hair.

The two men laughed airily as from the shadows an exhausted, exasperated Prince

Marius looked on.

Marius beckoned over one of the spies he employed to serve as his eyes and ears, as

though stockpiling himself the worries his father and Ares ought to be taking seriously.

"What news of the Crozzos?"

"Highness… it seems that the one with the ability is Vil Crozzo's son, Welf Crozzo."

The bright young prince took in the report and remembered the face from the royal

ball a year earlier. "Welf Crozzo… ah, so it's him."

Though his eyes were a different color, they'd shone with a gleam he recognized from

his own. The red-haired boy, like the prince, had doubts about the environment he

lived in.

"…Well, we ought to increase security, at least. Send knights to the checkpoint."

"Damn!"

Rain had started to fall from the dark clouds that covered the night sky.

Clad in traveling robes, Welf ignored the alarm whistle that sounded as he sprinted for

the castle town gate.

In all, Barva was surrounded by four sets of walls.

Thanks to Phobos's maneuvering, he'd gotten past the first two, which separated the

royalty and nobility, the military, and the commoners' residential areas, but at the gate

of the third wall, he'd been discovered by soldiers.

He didn't know when it had changed, but checkpoint inspections had clearly gotten

much stricter.

"Dammit, how'd this happen…?!"

He'd managed to break through the checkpoint with the power of his Status, and now

he raced through the castle town as the rain came down in sheets.

Welf ran, trying to keep his breathing quiet. The shortsword at his hip clattered

raucously, sounding impossibly loud in his ear. As he got closer to the last wall, he saw

its iron gate was tightly shut, and—

"Haaalt!"

—Knights!

Welf's eyes went wide at the sight of three men, fully clad in armor. These Level 2

knights were Rakia's elite. They were deadly swordsmen, far beyond anything Welf

could manage.

They drew their swords menacingly. Welf's brow furrowed, and he put his hand on

the hilt of his shortsword.

He charged headlong at the knights and the gate behind them, drawing the scarlet

blade.

And then he swung it—

"Blaze!!"

—and invoked the power of its magic.

"—"

The sight stopped time for both the waiting knights and Welf himself.

What had emanated from the blade could only be described as a torrent of flame.

The resulting inferno engulfed both the knights and the gate with a roar.

A blast.

A deafening sound.

And an explosion.

The roar of an inferno and the cries of people who'd heard the commotion began to

fill the castle town, echoing in the rainy night.

At the end of a stunned Welf's vision was the ruined wall and, beyond it in the black

of night, the outside world.

And strewn there among the rubble were the critically injured knights.

"Nnh, ngaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!" Welf howled into the darkness as he dropped the

crumbling fragments of what was left of the magic sword. "Is this… is this power?!"

Rain struck Welf's face and rolled down his cheeks like so many tears.

From the remains of the ruined section of wall rose both smoke and brilliant tongues

of flame that refused to go out despite the rain.

Normally, if someone like Welf had taken on those knights, he would've been

overwhelmed in an instant. But the Crozzo's Magic Sword had turned the tables—the

blasphemous weapon let a powerless child defeat three stalwart knights.

Long ago, such weapons had caused the fall of the family of smiths who'd made them.

Welf shed tears at the sight of the knights' badly scorched swords. "Is this really what

you want from us?! Do we really have to make these things for you?!"

The knights' backup arrived in confusion, chasing Welf as he leaped past the ruined

outer wall. He disappeared into the darkness, screaming and sobbing his rage at the

night sky.

That night, he made an oath on his pride as a smith and his sense of personal

responsibility.

—I will never forge a magic sword again.

Having made his escape, Welf arrived at a small copse of trees not too far from the city.

The rain had stopped.

Soaked to the bone, he pulled back his hood, whereupon a certain black-haired

goddess appeared from among the trees' shadows.

"Looks like you managed to get away after all, Welf."

"Phobos…"

Phobos slowly approached him, having arrived at their meeting spot first.

The exhausted boy had a scabbard—but no magic sword.

Phobos noticed this and wordlessly narrowed her eyes. "Welf, come. I have a parting

gift for you before you set out."

It was his first and last Status update from her. Explaining as much, Phobos circled

around behind Welf.

Welf was wrung out both physically and mentally from the drama of the night's escape,

so he silently did as instructed.

He sat down on a rock like a limp rag doll, and Phobos rolled up his clothes.

She traced her slender finger over the boy's back, well-muscled from his labor as a

smith.

"It's done. And Welf—I've dissolved your pact with me, too."

"…?"

"It means you can convert to another deity whenever you like. From here on out, you

can join whichever familia you please." She explained that she hadn't sealed his Status

away but had rather left his improved abilities as they were, while opening up the

possibility of entering another contract with a different deity.

To convert.

"However, my ichor will remain. In other words, I was your first," she said playfully.

Welf had been taciturn thus far, but Phobos's teasing brought a bit of his old self back

to the surface. "…Don't be weird."

The goddess giggled, amused. "Sometime today, a caravan will pass by this stand of

trees. Get a ride from them. And once you're clear of Rakia, be free."

"What's… gonna happen to you? If you go back to Barva now, they'll blame you for…"

"Who's gonna fix the mess you made, if not me? The Crozzo clan and Rakia alike are

definitely losing their minds right now."

"…"

"Don't worry, I'll play Vil and the rest of them, tell them I put you up to the whole thing.

That it was all a big game for me. Ares is an idiot, so he'll buy it."

Welf's heart was thrown into confusion by Phobos's words and by the look in her eyes

as she gazed at him. "…Why? Why would you go so far for me…?"

"Call it the whim of a god. Other than that… maybe that's just what I do for my most

adorable children?" As she cocked her head, her long black hair fell from the nape of

her neck. "It makes me happy, y'know, to have stupid little kids like you around. Plus,

I'm sick of slogging around under Ares. I don't even care anymore if they send me away

from the mortal plane."

Welf wondered if that was truly everything on the capricious goddess's mind. But one

thing was certain—in that place, in that moment, he saw the essence of divinity within

her.

"Don't worry. Even if I get shipped back to the heavens, I'll always be watching over

you." She giggled.

"…Just mind your own business."

Then—

"Go, Welf. Live as you like. The Crozzo family, Rakia, they'll just hold you back."

Phobos neither embraced him nor stroked his head, but Welf saw on her face a gentle

smile he'd never seen before.

"See ya."

"…Yeah."

Those were the last words they spoke to each other.

Several days later—

From the direction of Rakia's capital city of Barva, a huge pillar of light shot into the

sky.

—I'm sorry. Thank you.

Atop a small hill well outside Rakia's borders, the boy looked up at that shaft of light

alone as a single tear rolled down his cheek.

"There sure are some lively-looking ones, aren't there?" came the sound of a beautiful

woman's voice as her eye took in the sight of a smithy with a blazing furnace.

In the smithy, there was a redheaded boy arguing vehemently with several adult

opponents over who would get to use the furnace first.

"Aah, Goddess! It's been so long since you visited, and yet here we are, greeting you

with such an unsightly—"

"Well, that's just how smiths are. I rather like it, personally. So, who is he?"

"He just showed up one day and begged to be allowed to work for room and board. He

gave his name, too, but I reckon it's a fake. He's not a half-bad smith, either, so he's

been impossible to wrangle."

They were in Zolingam, city of sword smiths.

A certain goddess had come here to work on a contract and was visiting the smithy of

a colleague. Her fine features were partially obscured by an eye patch over her right

eye; her left eye narrowed as she watched the boy closely, studying him as he

concentrated on the furnace (the one he'd won the right to use).

"Hey, Chief—that boy, would you let me have him?"

"Huh? I mean, I've got no qualms about it, but… do you really want him?"

"Sure, why not?" The goddess grinned and waited for the boy to finish working with

the furnace.

After he'd completed a still-rough blade, she approached him. "You there, boy. What's

your name?"

The sweaty-faced boy looked up. His expression wary at the sudden appearance of a

deity, he answered. "…Welf."

"Just Welf? What's your family name?"

"I… don't want to say."

"Ah. Well, then, Welf, would you like to join my familia?"

"Huh…?" The boy looked at the smiling goddess blankly. "…Shouldn't you introduce

yourself before making an invitation like that?"

"Goodness, I'm sorry. I forgot." The goddess cheerfully apologized to the still-dubious

boy.

And then—

"My name is—"

The boy met a red-haired, red-eyed goddess, and he'd been led to her by none other

than his mischievous old friend.