(Author his is the st info dumpy chapter I promise.)

  To be clear though there is magic beyond the stuff that the falna gives access to but it is sidered extremely ineffit and takes a long time to use for less than stelr effects apparently. When I asked how one would go about leveling up the answer I got was a little fusing. So acc to Artemis the falna worked by gathering "excelia" which was sorta like money in that adventurers got it for putting in effort and challenging their limits through bat or crafting it didn't matter much which it arently.-

  Anyway that excelia was then "spent" on improving the adventurers stats based on this effort when their god updated their falna. So acc to Artemis mortals could only tain so much excelia depending of a bunch of factors she refused to expin beyond ones level and ialent. So it was sort of like mortals were a cup that you could only add so much water to before it overflowed. This all made sense and I could grasp it easily but the part didn't. Unlike a cup however a mortal 'T overflow their vessel with normal excelia which was also a dition for leveling up.-

  Artemis was vague about it either on purpose or because she holy wasn't but acc to her adventurers o gather "high excelia" by perf impressive feats acc to the gods in order to overflow their vessels and level up. The problem I was having trouble ing my head around was figuring out what scale if any this feat gauge was based on. Like if a god thought you surviving another year was impressive would that work? What about if a god hought what you did was good enough? What then? Would you just never level up at that point?-

  Like I said it was a fusing answer and even worse apparently nobody had ever actually thought about these sort of questions because when I shared my s Artemis didn't have any way to say they weren't justified. Not to say she didn't try because she did but she was just as fused as I was so it didn't really work. At least she was able to tell me what leveling up actually did besides the standard answer of "make you grow up big and strong". Leveling up expanded and improved an adventurers vessel so it could tain more excelia and ier purity as well.-

  The way gods uood it was that the higher the level and the more powerful an adventurer got the closer to divinity or "arum" as it arently called they got. This made me think that if an adventurer got far enough they could themselves bee a god which Artemis agreed made sense if that was truly how the falna worked. One would likely then ask the question "but what about demigods then?" The answer of which was that they did. In exge for ing down to the mortal realm gods sacrificed two things while here, their power and the ability to procreate.-

  To be more specific the former was actually sealed and they could get rejected from this world if they released those seals. The ter however was well and truly missing from their mortal forms entirely which is why they tend to refer to those who have falnas as "children". Quite literally the ones who bear the falna of a god are the closest thing to offspring they have here in the mortal world. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "adoptive family".-

  After a week traveling together I was fairly fortable around the Artemis familia and I am willing to say they felt simirly.

  "That must be Orario, it's bigger than I thought if we see it from here." I said as we crested a hill and far into the horizon stood the colossal structure.

  "That's the dungeon city for you though. The only p the world that you find everything. See that huge pilr in the middle? That's Babel, supposedly it was made my Ouranos himself when he first desded to Genkai." Ariande said expined as she walked near me.

  "I re at our current speed we will arrive in another four hours. This should be plenty of time for us to report to the guild a you settled." Rethusa said seriously.

  "Much as I like roughing it out in the wild with a bunch of pretty dies I could definitely go for a bed right about now, I might evele for a couch to be ho." I joked and most of the familia ughed and even Artemis herself had a ghost of a smile.

  As we got closer to the city I noticed something quite ing, cursed energy. A metric fu of the stuff radiated from the city like hundreds had been killed in horrifid terrible ways. None of it was ret though as the energy felt stagnant like it had sat there for years already.

  "So it didn't e up until now but is there any topic i should avoid mentioning while iy? You know like a tragic event or some bad history everyone wants tet? Got no memories remember so a heads up now would save me the trouble of finding out ter." I said fishing for a clue about what I was seeing.

  And oh boy let me tell you I was not prepared for what I learned. It was known as the dark age and eriod of eight years starting from the failure of the Hera and Zeus familias to kill the one eyed bck dragon. That failure resulted in all the high end power of those two familias to be destroyed and allowed the two current hegemons to step into the light after they seized power and exiled both Hera and Zeus from Orario.-

  Freya with her powerful Ottar and the rest of her familia of worshipers and Loki who pyed a supp role but still has the seost powerful familia in Orario. Sadly those positions of power came with a terrible price as with the Zeus and Hera familias who had reigned supreme over the st thousand years gohe darkhey had kept at bay came a knog, Evilus. Dark or mad god run familias whose only noticeable goal was to sow as much death, destru and chaos as possible.-

  Seven years ago the final blow was dealt to Evilus acc to Artemis but the wounds they left behind still hurt even now. It was some heavy stuff and expihe cursed energy floating that bhe city like a fog. Knowing what I did about cursed energy though I did wonder why it hadn't turned into a cursed spirit but then I realized something iing, it was i. The energy wasn't active like it was in it's usual world and was in fact totally harmless unless somethio make it active. I won't lie and say I wasn't tempted to gather it up and use it but I could tell that as I was right now I had no hope of taining that muergy.