2.2 Dungeon City, Orario

A/N: You know the drill guys.

Here is a bit of a key:

{this is The Game talking to the MC and also system messages}

"This is speaking out loud"

'This is thoughts'

-----------------------------------

As Ramiel stepped through what he now knew to be the North-Western gate and out onto one of Orario's eight main streets, he laid his eyes upon an expected sight, yet it took his breath away nonetheless.

Far, far in the distance and at the centre of what he knew to be the main plaza sat a colossal tower of darkened stone that gave off a subtle pressure, enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck even from this far away.

It rose high into the air, proudly pierced the clouds and gave off a feeling of such incredible grandeur that anyone who didn't know better would naturally believe that its purpose was to hold up the very sky itself.

Babel.

The tower of gods and what basically equated to the lynchpin of this reality. It was also the key to the dungeon and along with the Divine Power of Ouranos, it was the one thing preventing the forces of darkness from spilling out into the world and consuming it to the bones.

For over a thousand years, the Sky God had used Babel to regulate the dungeon and the sheer size of the tower was rather intimidating.

The young man found himself burning with vindication. Below that Divine Construct was the key to gaining everything he had ever dreamed of...

Power, fame and wealth could all be sought and found below the surface, yet they were but a means to an end, each one adding a different layer of protection for the family he would build in this world.

Still, even from this distance, the tower gave off a subtle pressure of Divinity. Considering this was the first time Ramiel had felt this kind of otherworldly power, he was unable to hide his thoughts, unconsciously allowing a single word to slip from his mouth. "Incredible…"

In fact, despite how awed by the sight he was, it was also extremely sobering and actually made the young man feel so small by comparison that for the first few minutes, he was stunned into mental silence and his pace slowed to barely a crawl.

That was of course until he felt something foreign and even more powerful wash over him for the briefest moments, carrying with it a sweet scent of flowers and a strange heat that sank into his core, breaking him out of his daydreaming.

'What was that?'

{Freya... and someone else, heh.}

'What do you mean someone else? And what heh?'

{I just warned them a little.}

Ramiel gulped, not really knowing whether that was a good thing or not. 'How was Freya? And who was the other one?'

{Freya is already well into the insanity level of 'baby crazy' after looking at you once but I would agree that she is hot enough for that to be easily overlooked… Here.}

An image of a scandalously dressed and incredibly beautiful woman flashed through Ramiel's head for a second and he felt his mouth go hot and dry. The young man licked his lips. 'Damn, agreed.'

{The upsides are: You will probably gain her obsessive love and a new full-time stalker who will try to get close to you in a variety of different ways... once she wakes up that is.

The downsides are: She will probably quite desperately try to 'kill' you, both to help you grow and as a way to express her twisted brand of love.}

The other one, well that's a surprise for later.}

The young man hummed in affirmation. 'While my new dick agrees that a crazy yandere stalker Freya is just as hot as my soul cloud form thought it would be, I feel like I am missing the point here.'

'Why exactly would she need to wake up first?'

{Because she tried to stare too deeply into the abyss and the abyss stared back at her.}

'Just so you know I am rolling my eyes both physically and mentally right now.'

{I poked her true soul a little to make her pass out before she could truly hurt herself or use enough of her Arcanum to get sent back to heaven. You're welcome by the way.}

'You know what, thank you. What about the other one?'

{The other one, well it was a dude so I scared the shit out of him.}

'...Nice.'

Ramiel walked along the streets of Orario with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips as he internally groaned in frustration for the umpteenth time in the last few minutes.

People were staring at him... like a lot. Like a lot a lot, and he was already beginning to ever so slightly regret spending all that time sculpting his face and body to perfection.

Wherever he walked, eyes were drawn to his figure. Women of all ages paused in whatever they were doing to stare hungrily at him until he had moved completely out of their eyesight.

Most of them just offered a mumbled greeting along with a healthy blush as he returned them with a casual smile but some of the bolder ones even shouted across the street to him with catcalls and wolf whistles.

Thank God he hadn't met any amazonesses yet.

The young man suppressed a shudder. There was absolutely no way he was stepping foot into the Entertainment district without a good disguise or at the very least, the strength of a Level 3 otherwise he would probably never be able to leave.

The looks he got from the men were arguably worse and when he passed them, they either directed looks of envy, anger, hatred, confusion or even lust at him. Worse still was when he met their eyes…

Suppressing a shudder, he lit the cigarette and continued to walk forward with a calm and steady smile on his lips, one hand behind the back of his head and another repeatedly flipped a single coin inside his jacket pocket.

{Serves you right.}

'While it is rather unnerving to have both men and women of all shapes, sizes and… races? stare at me like this as if I am some piece of meat, I don't particularly dislike looking this way or the attention.

'If I were powerful and well known it would not be this way, it is only because I lack both power and fame that they dare to be so open in both their positive and negative desires.'

'I just need someone to complain to about it while Gamers Mind does its thing on the topside.'

'Considering you are the only voice in my head until something ridiculous like rolling a sacred gear in the Gacha happens, or I get myself a girl, that would be your job.'

{Oh, the joys.}

'Sucks to be you I guess.'

Between the daydreaming, complaining, worrying and gawking like the country bumpkin his backstory made him out to be, Ramiel had already walked a fair way down the main street towards the guild.

The guild was probably closer to two-thirds of the way down the God knows how long street between the gate and the plaza and although the tower itself did not seem to be getting much closer, there were still plenty of things for the young man to feast his eyes upon.

For one, Ramiel had noticed early on how there were several separate and unmarked lanes roughly dividing the street. They were dubbed by him as the 'central, inner and outer' lanes.

The central lanes were avoided by almost everyone except for those large and high class looking carriages pulled by either jacked up horses or some kind of lizard monster and at first he wondered if it was a noble thing that caused people to avoid it.

How wrong he was. Only a few of those large carriages had passed him but the speed they were travelling at could easily rival a car in his previous world and they were almost silent too. There must have been some sort of magic used in the construction.

He would have used Observe on the lizards too but the combination of it being his first time seeing a monster and the ridiculous speed at which the carriage was travelling left him with no chance in the end and he, unfortunately, hadn't spotted another one.

The inner lane seemed to be mostly for slower carts and simple carriages that he assumed were the equivalent of this world's taxi cabs but that wasn't all that particular lane was used for, oh no. Adventurers.

Groups of Adventurers dressed in armour and carrying all manner of different weapons would walk along together in the inner lane and regularly pass him by. At first, Ramiel put the difference in speed down to his relaxed pace and paid it no mind.

Then after being quickly left in the dust by a group of extremely young-looking adventurers, he decided to pay closer attention to the next group walking by and so he did.

It was one of the coolest and strangest things he had ever seen in his life. They looked to be casually walking along while chatting among themselves, except they weren't just walking!

They were absolutely travelling more distance than their strides should have taken them and it completely threw the young man through a loop.

'That should not be possible! How can they cover so much ground with a single step and in such a relaxed manner?'

{Magic.}

'Okay, seriously. That is not a thing because I know for a fact that the majority of adventurers have no magic whatsoever!'

{Okay, okay. It has to do with the interaction between the Basic Abilities of Dexterity and Agility. They are moving in a way that all Adventurers learn to do as their speed and control over their body's reaction times both increase.}

{To your eyes, they are taking a single step when in fact they are either taking multiple or using their body's muscles in a way that covers more distance with each stride. As you are currently a normal human, your eyes cannot pick up their movements and so your brain tries to fill the gaps, forming an incongruous image.}

'Wow, not only does that actually make a remarkable amount of sense, but it's also fucking awesome!'

Finally, the outside lanes were for schmucks and normal humans like him which he totally wasn't bitter about by the way!

Another thing that Ramiel noticed along the way was that he had yet to see any two buildings along this main street that looked even remotely the same, despite a lot of them selling similar things.

Sure, some of them were of similar shapes or even sizes but they were all either sporting different colours, architectural designs or decorations from the others.

When glancing over as he walked, the city's buildings that sprawled away from the main road and spread out in the surroundings to either side through various winding alleys and smaller streets, seemed to be set in different tiers or levels.

Meaning that they could be at the same height as the main street, way above it or even below it. If the city itself was already a labyrinth, then how confusing would the actual dungeon be?

Trying to make sense of it all left Ramiel feeling rather disorientated, although that was probably partly due to the Semi-Perfect Memory skill taking note of almost everything he passed.

In fact, he actually had to toggle the skill off as a mild headache began to set in about halfway to the guild.

Instead of exploring any of these maze-like areas, he did what any good tourist visiting a thousand-year-old European city for the first time would do, he simply stuck to the main road and headed forward to his destination.

There was no need to understand everything on his first day after all…

-----------------------------------

By mid-morning, Ramiel had managed to reach the guild and by George was it an impressive structure. The anime and manga really didn't do the sheer size and grandeur of the building any justice.

In fact, if he hadn't spent the last couple of hours desensitising himself to the scale of Orario's architecture, he would have stood there gawking at it, rather than simply walking towards it and gawking at it.

He hadn't spent the time idly either as evidenced by the progress made in two of his skills.

...

{[Observe](Active) - {Level 3/100(14%) Cost 5MP}}

{[Presence detection](Passive) - Level 6/100(6%)

Hostiles within a radius of 10m of the host will have faint red outlines, even in pitch darkness}

...

Presence detection was not as simple as the detection of hostiles, no, when it was active Ramiel could also sense other people and even objects around him to a lesser degree.

It basically gave him an extremely good spatial awareness and he had been using it to bob and weave through the increasingly busy street while he looked around at everything and casually used observe on anyone who didn't look like a strong adventurer.

After all, it was best not to tempt fate while he was still weak and have them possibly notice him doing something to them and taking it the wrong way.

Consequently, the range of the skill had increased to 10m at Level 5, and although he felt slightly more spatially aware than before, there were no hostiles around and so the skill hadn't shown its true worth just yet.

After Level 5, It had also stopped gaining exp as quickly too.

Observe had only Levelled up to 3 because it took 5MP to cast and Ramiel would only dare to cast it a few times in succession as he wasn't sure if the casting could be noticed or if he would enter mind down should his MP hit 0.

The Game was being suspiciously silent about it as well...

Ramiel decided for safety's sake, that he would always keep 10MP as a buffer, meaning that he could cast 14 Observes in a row before waiting almost 15 minutes for his MP to recharge to full or he could cast one every minute-ish on average to keep his MP topped off.

As he joined the coming and going of the adventurers and walked through the main entrance of the 'Pantheon' he couldn't help but note to himself that the inside was somewhat similar to how he imagined a medieval version of a bank would look.

The brightly lit and frankly massive, main hall had a floor entirely consisting of shining marble slabs with gilded edges and was filled with the low hubbub of many voices. Adventurers of all shapes and sizes stood together in groups of two or three while some waited quietly in orderly lines for their turn at the cashier's desks.

A row of exchange tables littered with sets of brass scales and abacuses for counting monster stones lined the entire right side wall, while the one directly across the wide-open hall from the entrance was filled with counters for Adventurers to speak with advisors.

On the left side were two huge wooden boards, sparsely covered in pieces of pinned parchment, separated by a pair of doors leading to what he assumed, by the signs above them at least, to be changing rooms, showers and washrooms.

He didn't see any of the guild girls from the show and came to the conclusion that they were either on their day off or working in the guild on the ground floor of Babel and while he wasn't especially disappointed by the lack of a loudmouth half-elf, the missing red-haired wolf chick was indeed saddening.

Unfortunately, it was never specifically explained in any of the content whether the girls worked here in the Pantheon, at the one in the tower or alternating between the two but the last option was rather unlikely given the probable distance between the two places and the fact that the girls were normal people.

Judging by how long it had taken him to walk here from the gate at least it seemed ...unlikely.

'Then again those taxi carts are a thing.'

He joined one of the smaller queues leading towards an average looking human man with salt and pepper in his hair and a professional smile. Judging from the wrinkles around his eyes, Ramiel would have put him in his late 40's.

'At least people aren't staring at me so much anymore.' Ramiel thought to himself as he waited.

{Yeah, I kind of dialled back the whole Charisma thing for you. It will still work like a charm… heh, but only on people, you are consciously interacting with.}

'Yeah, that's probably for the best right now.'

{Anyone who knows or recognises you will still be fully affected by the CHA stat. However, the actual cast and anyone with Falna will generally have a high hidden CHA stat of their own and won't be as easily affected anyway.}

'Ahh, so that's why the adventurers were mostly passing by without staring while the common folk couldn't keep their eyes to themselves.'

{Yeah, they are no longer normal mortals and are more resistant.}

'You are being awfully helpful right now, what am I missing?'

{Nothing.}

'...Suspicious.'

At that moment, the person in front moved away from the counter, allowing the young man to finally step up and greet the guild staff. "Good morning."

"Good morning sir. What can I help you with today?" The staff member's eyes flashed with something close to recognition when he looked at Ramiel but the professional smile never left his face and his greeting was polite and steady.

That look of recognition gave the young man a strong sense of unease and even with Gamers Mind, he almost didn't manage to reply. "Err… My name is Ramiel Gedeon and I have some business with the Guild that requires me to talk with an advisor in private."

"Of course sir, please follow me to one of the side rooms." The guild advisor nodded and gestured towards a door behind him as he opened up a counter for Ramiel to pass through.

The man's expression didn't falter at the mention of his name and gave away nothing more that would suggest it had ever changed in the first place but the sense of unease remained and Ramiel was a man who trusted his instincts.

As he followed behind the man, he raised his vigilance to the maximum and gripped the small knife hidden away inside his jacket pocket in case the time for fight or flight came to pass.

He even threw a skill out there for good measure. 'Observe.'

...

{Name: Strum}

Job: Guild Advisor

Level: 1

Familia: Guild

Thoughts about you:???

...

Ramiel relaxed a little at the man, Strum's level. If he needed to fight, at least he would have a chance unlike with the guard earlier. His status gave away nothing... or maybe it did, and the question marks covered up the important part.

'Strange, why did he look like he knew me?'

{Just wait. This will be good.}

'I don't like the implications behind that, could Freya have lost it and gone after me already.'

{Nope, it's the other one.}

'Wait, the one you scared the shit out of?'

{Yup.}

'Hmm, who could it be? A God who would still be after me in one way or another, even when you already scared them off.'

'They would need to have the ability to see souls or the power to track Freya's use of Arcanum, not to mention having the guild on his/her payroll…' Ramiel went deathly pale.

'No… nonononono!'

{I think you know.}

'Ouranos!? The Fucking Sky God!? The only God on Gekai that can use his Arcanum without consequence because he literally made the fucking rulebook??''

{That's the one.}

'You fucked me, bro!'

Uncaring of Ramiel's near mental breakdown, time continued forward and so did the advisor. "Mr Gedeon. Please take a seat inside, someone will be with you momentarily. Have a pleasant day."

By this point, there was no turning back, running from Ouranos wasn't exactly a viable option either, now was it?

After a momentary fir of panic, Ramiel calmed down again. It wasn't like he had never been in a dangerous situation or brushed with death before, and so he decided to just roll with it and see what was about to happen, through to the end...