By midnight, Orario's eastern walls when the whispers began.
The rumor began as a spark in the Guild Hall, fanned into wildfire by the time dusk painted Orario in shades of burnt orange.
By nightfall, it had spread to every tavern, brothel, and back alley in the city.
The rumor had reached every corner of Orario's winding streets:
A god had entered the Dungeon. And come back. Alone. Unharmed. From the fifteenth floor.
"He what?" a burly man barked, slamming his mug down hard enough to slosh ale across the bar counter of the Bent Dagger.
The elf beside him, lean and robed in forest green, sipped his wine and nodded. "Cleared fifteen floors. On his first delve. No familia. No gear. Not even a scratch."
"It's gotta be a prank," snorted a werewolf with singed fur, still reeking of dungeon sulfur. "No god's stupid enough to dive past the first floor. Remember that one god who tried? The Dungeon spat his ass back to Heaven in minutes."
"Didn't say which god," an elf admitted. "Only that he called himself Zamasu."
The table fell silent.
Then came the real question, spoken with cautious incredulity:
"…Zamasu? Who the hell is that?"
That was the problem, really.
No one knew.
No one in the Guild's Deity Registry, no member of any known familia, no god from any major faction recognized the name.
Those who heard it thought it a joke at first—some alias dreamt up by a mortal to cause a stir.
But as the day wore on and the tale repeated—always the same, always with reverent awe and mounting confusion—disbelief gave way to curiosity. Curiosity, to intrigue. Intrigue, to apprehension.
The rumor mutated with each telling.
By midday, he had defeated a floor boss single-handedly.
By evening, he had descended to the twentieth floor and back without ruffling his robes.
By nightfall, he was said to have walked through an entire goliath's swing, unharmed, and left it crumpled with a tap of his toe.
And yet, no one could deny the initial facts: someone matching the description had walked into the Guild with his clothes full of monster cores large enough to choke a dragon—and claimed to have acquired them from the first through fifteenth floor, alone.
A god.
With green skin, white hair like spun moonlight, and a beauty so divine it nearly left mortals speechless.
A god who claimed he was not a god.
"Foolish," muttered Miach as he sipped a bitter tonic in his garden. The blue-haired god looked skyward, shaking his head. "Foolish and arrogant."
"Who?" Naaza asked, kneeling to trim a bush of bell-shaped herbs.
"Some newly descended idiot playing hero," he replied. "Zamasu, they say."
"Never heard of him."
"No one has."
Miach's eyes narrowed. "And that's what worries me."
In the marble halls of Hostess of Fertility, the rumors took on a more theatrical flair.
"Syr, did you hear?" one waitress whispered over clinking glasses. "A divine beauty emerged from the Dungeon! White toga, silver eyes, radiant like a painting of Ouranos himself!"
Syr blinked. "Who?"
"Zamasu! Never heard of him, have you?"
"Can't say I have." She smiled, wiping down a tray. "Sounds interesting."
Nearby, Loki—lounging with a drink in hand—burst into laughter so loud it startled a pair of dwarves.
"A god breaking Dungeon rules? Hah! And coming out unscathed? Either he's lying or he's got balls bigger than Ganesha's ego!"
She tilted her head back, grin sharp. "I wanna meet this idiot. Sounds like my kind of fun."
Not all took it so lightly.
In a domed villa of marble and onyx, Hermes paced before a pool of divination water.
Zamasu.
The name meant nothing. Not in Heaven. Not in Orario.
He flicked a coin into the water.
Hermes chuckled as he reclined in his chair, boots propped on the edge of a table scattered with dispatches and half-empty wine bottles.
"A god broke the rules and dove into the Dungeon… and came back without a scratch?" he mused aloud, eyes glinting with mischief.
"Either he's a fool with a death wish—or something far more intriguing. Zamasu, was it? I'll have to pay this rulebreaker a visit… before the Bureau decides to send him packing back to Heaven."
Atop the Tower of Babel, where clouds swirled around an open sky dome, Ouranos sat in silence. The missive from the Guild lay unrolled on his stone lectern, weighted with a crystal orb.
"…Zamasu."
His voice echoed faintly in the vast chamber.
Beside him, Ganesha stood with arms crossed, unusually serious. "You've never heard of him, lord ouranos?"
"No."
Ouranos's eyes were closed. He was meditating—reaching out with his own sealed Arcanum, feeling for divine essence, for the truth behind the veil of the world.
But there was no thread. No divine signature.
Zamasu's presence was clean. Silent.
Too silent.
"Prepare the Scribes," Ouranos finally said. "And contact Fels. We need to know who this being is before we speak of punishment."
"Do you believe he's truly a god?"
Ouranos opened his eyes. They gleamed with age and uncertainty.
"…I do not know. He registered just yesterday… though he denies being one, he passes as one."
Back in the Guild's lower archives, a frantic search was underway.
A red-haired Demi human stood at a cluttered desk with four thick tomes cracked open in front of her.
A junior clerk to her left sifted through registries of known deities, scratching out names with trembling fingers. Another poured over divine descent records from the last decade.
"Anything?" she asked.
"Nothing," the boy stammered. "Not in the last hundred years. Not even a variant spelling."
The girl pressed her fingers to her temple. "He had to come from somewhere. Gods don't just materialize. They descend."
A voice from behind startled her. "Unless he didn't."
She turned. Roygun stood in the doorway.
The Guildmaster stepped in, his massive frame brushing parchment off the shelf. "Assume, for now, that he's not lying."
"You believe him?"
Roygun didn't answer directly. He picked up a ledger and scanned the recent incident reports. "Even among gods, there are… anomalies."
"You mean monsters," she said quietly.
Roygun didn't correct her.
The gods reacted as gods often did—with pride, envy, fear, and amusement.
Freya heard the rumor and arched one elegant eyebrow. "A divine no one knows? How rare." Her smile was faint but dangerous.
Ishtar snarled when the name reached her throne. "No one outshines me. Especially not some nameless bastard in a toga. If he's beautiful, he belongs in my pleasure halls."
By the time night fell again over Orario, the city was ablaze with speculation. Zamasu's name had become legend.
Zamasu sat cross-legged on the creaking wooden floor of his small inn room. The rickety cot and chipped washbasin faded from his awareness as he shut his eyes and exhaled, slow and deliberate.
He sank inward, away from the world of mortals, drawing his focus deep into the center of his being.
The storm was always there—his ki—roiling beneath the surface like a sea of molten gold, wild and unruly. It crackled behind his ribs, surged in his limbs, and buzzed at the base of his spine.
His every breath stirred it, and his every heartbeat threatened to let it flare uncontrolled. But now, he did not fear it. He welcomed the chaos.
He inhaled.
The golden tide surged.
He exhaled.
A faint glow gathered beneath his skin, visible only for a heartbeat in the dimness.
Focus, he reminded himself. Control is strength.
The ki responded—hesitant, reluctant, but listening. It throbbed like a living thing, trying to escape, to lash out, but he held it with calm precision. Not by force, but by presence.
It wasn't perfect. The current still leaked, spilling faint pulses of energy into the air around him. The room grew warmer.
Still, it was progress.
Zamasu opened his eyes, and they gleamed with quiet light.
He did not need armor. He did not need weapons. In time, he would not even need effort.
Being aware of ki is the first step in fully utilizing it, the second step is to externalize it.
Meanwhile, in the secret council chambers beneath Babel, Ouranos conferred with Fels.
"There is no record of a god named Zamasu ever descending. Not in the past five centuries," the hooded mage said.
"And yet he exists."
"Yes. And more than that, he moves within the Dungeon as if untouched by its will. It should have reacted. He should be dead."
Ouranos stood from his stone seat, his shadow cast long by flickering crystal lights.
"Fels… what if he is truly not divine as he says?"
Fels was silent for a long time.
"Then we may be looking too much into this."
Elsewhere, in the deeper recesses of the Dungeon, something shifted.
The floor trembled. Walls pulsed.
A spark of awareness—ancient and confusion—twitched at the scent it had not tasted in centuries.
Not a god.
Not a mortal.
It's confused.
Back above, adventurers gathered in taverns and plazas, eyes bright with curiosity and mischief.
"I want to meet him," said a smiling Dionysus, tossing grapes into his mouth with lazy amusement. "Any being that stirs this much gossip deserves an audience."
"Fools," muttered Astraea from the shadows. "He broke the rules. No one should encourage him."
But her voice was lost in the tide.
Inside a forge, is a red-haired lady with an eyepatch frowned. 'Why deny divinity? It gains him nothing.'
"Unless," she began musing, "he's here for something... else."
The fire crackled. Shadows danced across her face.
A new name now walked Orario. Not feared. Not revered. But whispered, questioned, chased.
Who is this 'Zamasu?'
—
End of Chapter 9
Wrote this one at kfc when the ideas started pouring in so it might not be good.
So inform me if this was too early of something.