Chapter 16

After the in-house show ended and us having to stop the occasional casual maid's walking by and stealing a slice of our pizza the Hestia Familia soon finished up our food and I wanted to head home to have our probably angsty talk and then get back to the dungeon in the morning because of a crucial detail I've just heard.

"So, Bell do you actually want to go the Monsterphilia coming in a couple days?" I asked Bell as personally I knew Freya was likely to use it as another one of her 'pushes' to get us to advance faster and I would rather take my chances in the dungeon.

"No not really, festivals are always super expensive, and I need to spend as much time in the dungeon to get stronger." Seeing the girl's reactions to us both denying any interest in going they slumped in their booth making me chuckle a bit.

Hmm if Freya were to try and push us to a higher stage what would she do... Ok, let's assume she has been able to see my every move in the dungeon like the stalker she is, with both me and Bell in the foggy floors she likely wouldn't do something as simple as train a minotaur for us both. Not to mention the foggy floors would make it albeit not easy to lose whatever monster she could send it would still be doable so long as it's not a monster from those specific floors which are almost attuned to the fog.

Wait I just remembered those Soma people saying there was an infant dragon hanging around could that be her play?

My mind was consumed with thoughts of possible monsters that Freya would have boosted to a stronger form as we all walked home, and it wasn't until we were all in the basement that Bell was kicking off his boots already buried into the plush couches and covered up with a blanket.

I likewise just copied him while also taking off my shirt and groaning as my body relaxed into the soft and comforting bed. Lili ever the opportunist crawled over me and tucked herself into the space between the bed and the wall and left Hestia the quandary of being known as the person who not only refused to allow a new member of the family to sleep on a bed, but we also literally didnt even have any other fabrics after fixing her clothes to even make her a mat to sleep on the floor.

Hestia grumbled and then with a sigh she leapt into bed and instead of just laying on my side she laid directly on my stomach as though to protect my 'Chasity' from a thirsty Lili in the night.

"Bell wake me and Lili up in the morning so we can get going early I want us on the tenth floor for as long as possible."

"Kay." Bell groggily answered

Thankfully Hestia was pretty light and wasn't a hindrance to getting to sleep. It also didnt take long for Lili to lose her patience and gently hold my arm as she drifted off to sleep.

-

I awoke from sleep to someone shaking my hand as he couldn't grab my shoulders Hestia had climbed up my body as we slept and was almost smothering me in her bosom making me strain to even hear Bell's muttering. "Alright, Bell I am up." I groaned and after patting beside me I noticed Lili already moved so I gently pushed her to my side and put my pillow in her arms so she could go back to sleep.

I staggered up the stairs and saw Lili also looking like a zombie as she sat on the restored pews.

After nibbling on some bread and chugging a cup of cold water we set out it was so early we seemed to have missed the Hostess prepping to open so we stopped by some of the street vendors in front of the dungeon and bought a few prepacked lunches from them.

I saw a stand selling a few crossbows and they were rather expensive but then I noticed he even was selling some broken ones in a pile next to the small stall that looked to cater to supporters being sold so I picked up all the broken ones. "Hey, boss how about you give me a deal for all these scraps."

The dwarf manning the stand hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, but I was eventually able to haggle down the price of the dozen-odd scraps to about the price of a single one of his higher-quality pieces and we both left red-faced from the encounter from yelling at one another but only one of us was happy with the deal as I gleefully stuffed Lili's bag full of the scraps along with a shit ton of arrows.

Frankly, I always hated how useless Lili seemed in the anime with how she was only able to send a little toothpick into a monster's weak spots occasionally, but I would not stand for such a thing within my Familia, either she was going to be great, or we could just relegate her to guard Hestia.

Bell didnt gainsay me at buying what most people would consider trash, but Lili was convinced I was being an idiot as I dragged them down one of the alternate paths towards the lower floors after we entered the dungeon.

Seeing no one else who might have followed us in our off-the-path route I turned to Lili "Lili what I am about to do, you cannot say a word about, to people outside our Familia. Do you understand?" I said solemnly so she would understand the importance.

"Lili will listen to master Jake forever and never ever betray him." She said proudly making me facepalm...

I have my own Simpette...

Shaking my head gestured towards Lili's arm that was covered up with a robe's long sleeve. "Lili, I need your crossbow for a second."

Lili didn't even hesitate for a second and pulled it off handing it to me with a smile.

Bell on the other hand wasn't smiling at all. "Jake! You promised to make a weapon for me!" He cried out pouting.

I just patted his fluffy hair to calm him down and idly wondered how he kept it so soft before Lili herself pushed her head into my side for a head pat seeing me losing my thought process.

"Bell you just got that saber and it's pretty good for now and we can't let Lili run around with a splinter launcher." I sneered at how puny the thing was making him deflate.

"Ok, I promise on the way back we can pick up the stuff I thought to fuse for you, and we can get a drop of Hestia's blood to enchant it and stuff then."

Bell nodded smiling at the knowledge that he would be getting his weapon upgraded again so I turned back and started fusing the pile of crossbows into Lili's crossbow.

After the fusing, I was left with a Monster Hunter Light bow gun made primarily of wood, but the metal I used tightly bound it all together, and after giving it to Lili who excitedly inspected it, we learned it had two firing modes, a single fire mode allowing her to shoot three large bolts before having to reload, and a charge mode where all three bolts were shot at once at a much higher speed causing more damage on the target hit.

Lili seemed to come alive as we let her take the first shot and she used the power shot to literally nail an orc rambling at us. "Boom" The pure force of the bolts hit the monster so hard, that it lifted it off the ground and made it lose all its running momentum as it the bolts hit its upper chest making it backflip. "Crash" As the orc landed from the first of its species to ever probably backflip it exploded into ash leaving its monster stone.

We turned to Lili and despite it only being a so-called light bow gun Lili was laid out on her ass with the gun lying on the ground beside her. "WOOOH!!!" Lili cried out ecstatically after collecting herself.

Lili didnt even leave the weapon on the ground as she launched herself into my chest and hugged me tightly with her free arm. She pulled back after a second and we heard her mumble her thanks.

Bell looked to be even more jealous than usual he looked at the weapon and I just realized if I made that a heavy bow gun with how Bell fought, I bet I could make it like Ruby's Crescent Rose with the recoil and his love of bouncing around.

It didnt matter that I was willing to trade my weapon with Bell and even if he almost forced himself into mind down messing with the fire conjuring ability, he was pretty quiet the whole day in the dungeon as he clearly was dreaming about the weapon, I was going to make him.

Lili now has become a terror as she herself has learned the secret of recoil jumping she was able to hop off the ground and when kicking off the chest of an orc to shoot at point-blank range, she would be launched a dozen meters back and with her big bag and thick coat running into the thin dead sticks on the trees didnt hurt her if anything she learned she could mount the gun on some of the thicker branches and just safely sit there and shoot power shots into orcs and send the weaker shots into the smaller monster's.

"Roar! Nooo!" A feminine voice screamed and carried through the dungeon's fog shook us all as and bell shared a terrified expression at seeing the burst of flames through the fog and then the unmistaken sounds of bones being ground up in a monster's mouth started to peter over to us.

I grabbed the frozen Lili beside me and after grabbing Bell who looked to be about to rush over to... 'I don't know avenge the dead?' I hissed "Thats the infant dragon those Soma guys talked about we need to get the fuck out of here..."

Lili nodded and Bell seeing us in agreement slumped and lost some of his fervor shrugged and we started jogging off towards the upper floors to get the hell away from the monster that could kill level 2's.

"Crack." A series of pebbles fell towards us making us look up.

A set of two glowing red eyes met our gaze as the infant dragon duo stood up menacingly and started stalking towards us I knew we had to fight and quickly lest the other one heard our battle and joined.

"Bell, we got to do this quick so the other one doesn't join.

At an unknown signal, me, and Bell met the Infant Dragons who were starting to rush at us and as I hefted my charge axe in its great axe setting I made a large fireball bloom in front of me and push through the flames thrown at me by the dragon itself till I came in front of it and seeing as it was literally only 150 centimeters tall, I was able to step on its bent legs as it rushed past me.

"Bang!" Lili shot the Infant dragon who was giving Bell trouble seeing as he had to dodge all its flames in its throat making it choke and I could see the flames building up in its throat as a glowing bulge formed right below where the large bolt pinched its air-pipe.

Knowing that infant dragon would be dealt with quickly "Pop" I almost tripped at the sharp little explosion that rang out behind me and I knew the infant dragon must have killed itself trying to push its flames past the blocked throat.

I buried my charge blade in its sword form into the eye of the infant dragon and I could feel the crunch of my blade making its way past the skull and into its brain thankfully the idiot dragon was stunned at seeing its partner die making it slump with its brain destroyed due to its distraction.

Despite shaking with fear at how close we came to dying because frankly if I couldn't push away its flames with my sword's own, I wouldn't have been able to kill it without Bell helping me distract it for me to make a critical hit... Which in the end he did anyway?