What Does He Look Like to You?

Syr's little face, always adorned with a sweet smile, immediately puffed up like an angry little pufferfish.

Her porcelain-white face was clearly displeased, and reproach filled her charming eyes.

Her gaze shifted toward the lively area where the Loki Familia was seated.

She had been just about to say something very important, something about Thor's idea of recruiting new members, only to be so rudely interrupted!

Thor followed Syr's displeased gaze.

After only ten minutes or so, the white-haired werewolf Bete over there already looked drunk.

He was laughing loudly, pounding the table as he told his companions about how the Minotaur on the fifth floor of the Dungeon had chased a few "rookie" adventurers earlier that day. His tone was grating and utterly unapologetic, as if the incident were the funniest thing in the world.

His voice rang out, full of contempt for the weak.

Most of the nearby patrons were adventurers who operated on the middle or upper floors. Hearing Bete's indiscriminate mockery,

they knew he wasn't insulting them personally, but their expressions still turned sour, revealing embarrassment and resentment.

They lowered their heads in silence or awkwardly looked away. The lively chatter around them quieted.

Bete's contemptuous remarks about "low-level adventurers" struck at the hearts of ordinary adventurers like them, whose strength was limited.

Bete showed no sign of stopping his mockery.

An oppressive silence settled over the restaurant.

Some adventurers stared down at the food in front of them; others pretended to be absorbed in their drinks. The lively atmosphere from earlier had vanished.

Someone in the crowd—perhaps a patron whose pride had been wounded, or a staff member who couldn't stand the behavior—muttered in a barely audible voice, "What a jerk..."

That faint voice expressed what many people were thinking—

Mocking the weak was always despicable, no matter where you were.

However, those murmurs never gathered into a wave of protest.

The entire restaurant sank into a suffocating silence. No one dared to stand up and argue with the werewolf, who had already started spouting nonsense.

Bete's words were certainly grating and hurtful, but in the labyrinth city of Orario, they didn't seem all that "unreasonable."

Because here, strength was the only ticket in, and power was the highest authority.

The strong survived while the weak struggled. It was a cold law carved into the bones of the labyrinth city.

Here, you wouldn't hear any noble declarations about protecting the weak. Such things seemed like a distant fairy tale from another world.

Even within the Loki Familia, most of the members simply stayed silent in the face of Bete's unrestrained, vile remarks.

They knew their companion's awful personality all too well.

He was sharp-tongued and hot-tempered, with no sympathy for the weak.

As long as he wasn't targeting one of their own, everyone had long since gotten used to treating him like background noise.

After all, focusing on the delicious food, fine drinks, and joy of celebrating a successful expedition was far more practical than trying to correct Bete's awful personality.

As the patron goddess of this powerful Familia, Loki herself merely narrowed her characteristically thin eyes and watched her foul-mouthed child with an inscrutable smile, thoroughly entertained.

In the eyes of a deity who had lived through near-eternity and witnessed countless rises and falls in human nature,

her children's personalities—whether humble and polite or as arrogant and conceited as this—were merely strokes, light or dark, across a long canvas. They were part of what made each of them unique, and even possessed a certain lively charm worth "appreciating."

She saw no need to step in and stop Bete.

Until—

Bete's drunken words, full of contempt, brazenly touched on the "protagonists" of that mishap on the Dungeon's fifth floor earlier that day.

He raised his voice, directing his scorn at the two "useless idiots" he'd been talking about.

The white-haired, red-eyed kid who, in his eyes, had only been distracted and nearly gotten himself and his companion killed, and the young man standing nearby, "spacing out," who seemed just as useless.

"Ha! You should've seen how stupid those two rookies looked! Especially that tomato-haired kid. My 'trophy' doused him in stinking bull's blood, and the look on his face... Hahahahaha!"

The moment Bete exaggeratedly described Bell's sorry state and again called Thor an "idiot who just stood there spacing out," three small changes occurred almost simultaneously.

Ais's fingers paused almost imperceptibly on her utensils.

A faint ripple passed through the depths of her clear, lake-like golden eyes.

Her mind flashed back to a corner of the Dungeon's fifth floor.

The white-haired boy's desperate courage as he faced the Minotaur, and the young man's incomprehensible, eerily calm... instantaneous teleportation at the critical moment.

At the small table in the corner, half-hidden behind a screen, Syr had been sitting quietly beside Thor. The professional, sweet smile on her face vanished for the first time.

She lowered her eyelids slightly, her long lashes casting faint shadows beneath them.

When Bete again uttered a contemptuous name for Thor, a cold glint gathered and flashed with astonishing speed in the depths of her formerly gentle eyes, like ice crystals forming on a winter night. It was so fleeting that anyone might have thought it an illusion.

When Bell heard Bete's mockery,

he clutched the fabric over his knees so tightly that his knuckles turned white, nearly tearing the coarse cloth.

The joy he'd felt at his greatly increased strength ebbed like a tide, leaving behind a cold stretch of sand scoured by gravel.

Fierce anger and crushing guilt weighed on his heart like two mountains, leaving him unable to breathe.

I! What was I even happy about?! My weakness and incompetence are the reason the God above me is being mocked and humiliated like this!

I haven't even done anything. I only got this tiny improvement thanks to the blessing of the God above me, yet I've already gotten carried away and forgotten where this power came from. I've even forgotten how helpless I was when we faced a powerful enemy in the Dungeon!

Bell's hands began to tremble violently, beyond his control. It was anger at his own helplessness, so intense that it seethed like molten lava and threatened to consume him from within.

And just then, someone in the Loki Familia finally couldn't stand it any longer.

Riveria, the elven royal with pale green hair, furrowed her brow and spoke.

"That's enough, Bete. When all is said and done, it was our oversight that let a monster from the seventeenth floor escape to the fifth. Reflect on that."

She tried to put out the flames of his insolence.

"Bang!"

But Bete was like a powder keg that had finally been lit. He slammed his hand on the table, rattling the cups and plates.

He stuck out his chin and shouted back in an angry growl, "Huh?! What's wrong with calling trash trash?!"

At that moment,

a sudden crash of splintering wood rang out from the corner!

The sound of a table being overturned was especially jarring!

It shattered the delicate, oppressive balance in the entire tavern.

Everyone's eyes snapped toward the source of the noise.

Bell couldn't restrain his fury and shot to his feet, his chest heaving.

Hearing the crash, Bete immediately found a direct outlet for the anger that had been building in his chest after someone stopped him.

And when he saw that the one standing up was the weak, useless rookie he'd been talking about, his anger surged to its peak, making his eyes burn red.

At that moment, Bell's fury had also reached its peak.

He didn't care how Bete insulted or looked down on him! He could even put up with that!

But this was the one thing he couldn't accept—!

"You—!" Bell had barely shouted a single word before instinctively leaning forward, as if he were about to charge at Bete and fight him with everything he had.

Even though his opponent was a high-level adventurer many times stronger than he was, and even though defeat was inevitable.

But just then,

a steady voice stopped him from doing something foolish. "Bell."

Thor had only called his name.

At the sound of Thor's voice,

Loki, who had been drinking herself tipsy and watching with narrowed eyes, suddenly looked as though she'd seen something terrifying. Her usually squinted eyes flew wide open!

The casual amusement in her gaze transformed into genuine terror at astonishing speed!

The instant he heard Thor's voice, Bell, who had been blinded by rage, felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over him, chilling him from head to toe.

His feet seemed nailed to the spot, unable to move. The fierce resentment and humiliation in his eyes nearly turned into tears of blood.

It was clear he was still struggling fiercely inside, unwilling to let the matter go so easily. His fists remained clenched tight.

Only when Thor spoke again—his voice still steady, yet carrying an authority Bell couldn't defy—

"Bell, I didn't teach you strength so you could get into meaningless brawls like this. Strength has a proper path to follow; it isn't meant for settling personal grudges."

Bell's body shuddered violently. He nearly ground his teeth to pieces, a stifled sob rising in his throat.

But in the end, he unclenched his fists as though all the strength had been drained from him.

The fierce anger inside him slowly ebbed, and he forced himself to calm down.

"Yes, my god."

However, Bete didn't seem ready to let the matter drop.

He had just opened his mouth, apparently intending to continue his cutting mockery,

when Loki, who had been tolerant and even somewhat entertained until then, suddenly reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

She practically launched herself at Bete, clamping both hands over his mouth with all her strength. Her face was full of panic and urgency, and her voice cracked as she shouted, "Shut up, you idiot!"

Then Loki hurriedly called out to the Familia captain, Finn, and Riveria, who had just spoken up to stop Bete. "Quick! Help me hold this idiot down!"

In an instant, Bete was restrained by the quick-reacting Finn and Riveria, and someone stuffed the offending mouth with a sweaty sock they'd taken off. All he could do was let out muffled grunts.

Thor merely cast a calm, expressionless glance at the chaotic scene, as if watching a farce that had nothing to do with him.

He rose with composure and said to the counter in his usual tone, "It seems we're not welcome here tonight. Owner, please pack up the rest of our food."

He paid the full bill for the evening, then left the restaurant calmly with the downcast Bell.

To him, Bete was no more than a stray dog barking at the starry sky.

He wasn't even worthy of making him angry.

Only after Thor had completely disappeared through the door did the tension in Loki's body finally give way, and she sagged.

She let out a long breath. Her face was still a little pale, and she looked shaken.

She seemed like a white rabbit that had barely escaped a lion's claws.

Loki's extraordinarily strange behavior immediately caught everyone's attention.

She was the patron goddess Loki! A goddess who wouldn't even flinch in front of the great gods, Zeus included.

Captain Finn furrowed his brow. He had followed Loki for years, and this was the first time—absolutely the first time—he'd ever seen genuine terror on his goddess's face.

Something was very wrong.

Finn addressed Loki directly and asked, "Loki, who was that man who just left? Which god was he?"

His question voiced what every core member was wondering.

The young man had left so calmly, yet he'd frightened their goddess this badly?

Loki didn't answer Finn right away.

Still shaken, she returned to her seat at the drinking table, her hand trembling slightly.

She abruptly grabbed the large wooden mug of ice-cold beer in front of her, tipped her head back, and gulped down more than half of it. Only then did she seem to steady herself a little.

She set down the mug and let out a long breath, as if trying to exhale the invisible pressure from before.

At last, she raised her eyes and slowly scanned the children of her Familia, especially the executives and Ais.

She asked an odd question. "In your eyes... what does he look like?"

Ais answered first, almost without thinking, her cool voice ringing out. "An unusual young man. His presence... was very distinctive."

She recalled the inexplicable instant teleportation in the Dungeon and those eyes that seemed able to see through her soul.

As soon as Ais finished speaking, nearly all the Familia members present, except the executives, nodded in agreement without thinking.

Right, he was just a handsome, mysterious young man. Their goddess seemed afraid of him, but that was still what everyone else had seen.

That was how 99.99% of the members saw him.

However, the dwarf Gareth had seen something else: "A dark figure shrouded in terrifying pressure. Just seeing him made me want to prostrate myself..."

Captain Finn, meanwhile, habitually licked the tip of his own thumb.

He spoke in a low voice. "What I saw... was a dragon."

His instincts as a leader had picked up on something deeper.

Finally, Riveria, the vice-captain and noble elven royal, closed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to see the scene in her memory clearly.

When she opened her emerald eyes again, they were filled with unprecedented shock.

She slowly added, "It wasn't an ordinary dragon. I saw a Starry Sky Dragon. Its body was so immense that its boundaries couldn't be imagined; the stars seemed to be no more than glimmers on its scales, and the universe was its nest..."

Her voice had the ethereal quality unique to elves, yet she described a magnificent, terrifying scene beyond mortal comprehension.

"What?!"

"That... that's impossible!"

As Riveria finished speaking, the entire table fell silent. Then came suppressed gasps and disbelieving exclamations.

Everyone stared at one another in shock.

A young man? An oppressive figure? A shadowy dragon? A Starry Sky Dragon?!

Only then did they realize, to their horror, that the "Thor" each of them had seen was completely different!

This wasn't a simple difference in visual perception. It was an enormous gulf in the way they perceived him!

What kind of being could he be?!

Everyone's eyes, filled with questions and a trace of involuntary fear, once again turned to Loki.

They waited for Loki to reveal the final answer.

Based on everyone's descriptions, especially Riveria's startling account, Gareth guessed, "Lady Loki, so... is he some unknown dragon god who commands the stars? Or a powerful ancient god who wields the authority of dragons?"

Loki fell silent.

She looked at the fear and curiosity mingled on their faces, her expression immeasurably complex.

Slowly, she shook her head, her face full of indescribable reverence, with a lingering trace of dread.

"No, Gareth. You're all wrong." Loki's voice was so low it was almost a sigh. "That wasn't a Starry Sky Dragon..."

"...He wasn't even a 'god'..."