Chapter 86

Fels

Unseen beneath the invisibility cloak, Fels reached the 38th floor just as the Juggernaut tore through another layer of the ice dome.

Ouranos’s order was clear, but the scene in front of them was not. Maximus stood frozen inside a dome of fused ice and slime, the two executives were bleeding as they tried to drag the monster away from it, and a Mid Level 7 stood between Fels and all of them. Of the dome’s layers, more than half were already gone, and with every pass the Juggernaut made at it, another one cracked.

So the first thing Fels did was the one thing they knew would buy time. Slipping around the edge of the fight, they crept behind the dome and tucked a small device beneath its outermost layer of ice. It was one of their own making, built to bend a monster’s senses around whatever it guarded, and the moment it hummed to life, Fels watched to see whether it would hold.

It did. The next time the Juggernaut’s head swung toward the dome, its gaze slid right past the ice as if nothing stood there, and it turned back to the executives instead. It never looked at the dome after that.

With Maximus hidden, Fels turned to the adventurer himself. Whatever held him frozen, they needed to see it up close if they were going to help. But the moment they reached for the ice, they felt the barrier woven through it, dense and alert, and on top of the dome, the adventurer’s familiar shifted, as if he sensed something wrong. Kairu’s protection was far too tight to slip through unnoticed. Push any harder, and the slime would treat them as one more threat.

Fels drew back with a parting thought. Pull through, Maximus.

If they could not reach Maximus, they could at least keep his friends alive. Turning toward the Warlord and the Black Knight, Fels raised their hand beneath the cloak and began to weave Dia Panakeia, the healing light gathering quietly in their palm.

They never finished it. Before the spell could take hold, the slimes on the executives’ shoulders stirred, and their gel thickened against the foreign magic as if to push it away. Then the two slimes began to glow, a vivid blue that spread through both adventurers at once. Fels watched, stunned, as the exhaustion drained from the executives’ limbs and the two of them rose back up to meet the monster blade for blade.

The familiar heals them himself.

Fels let the spell fade. There was no need to fight the slime for his place. Instead, they settled for the one thing he could not do: keeping the monster from landing the blow that would end it.

Their cloak made that possible. After the mishap with Maximus on the 37th floor, when the adventurer saw straight through it, Fels spent long nights strengthening it, and now, even this close to a Mid Level 7, it held. From the shadows, they began to work making up the distractions. A flicker of movement at the corner of the Juggernaut’s vision. A shard of stone cracking under its foot at the wrong moment. A faint pull at the air that made it hesitate half a heartbeat before a killing strike. None of it was enough to turn the fight, and none of it was meant to be. It only needed to make sure that when the monster’s claws came for a throat, they arrived just a little too late.

The two executives never noticed. Neither did the Juggernaut.

But even Fels could only stretch that margin so far. When the glow vanished and the monster finally pinned them both, Fels stepped forward and abandoned all caution, ready to throw off the cloak and fight it head-on. They raised their hand, and the spell was already forming when Destruction erupted from the dome and wrapped around the two executives before it could leave their fingers.

Fels lowered their hand and stayed hidden. Whatever was happening inside that ice, Maximus was still fighting and so they watched, intervening when needed, keeping the executives of Freya familia alive.

-◈ -

General Pov

After a long time of playing dead, Max’s body finally answered him.

His fingers curled inside the knuckleduster, and the weight of his own limbs settled back onto him. Even so, he stayed still. Paranoia, sharpened by the last few minutes in his soulscape, demanded a full picture before he made his move, so he pushed his magic sense outward. It spread past the ice around him and kept going until it covered the whole floor.

The battlefield it showed him did not look like the one he left a breath ago.

The first thing it caught, though, was small. Tucked just under the first layer of ice sat a mechanical device that belonged to neither him nor Kairu. Max knew one person in Orario who left gadgets lying around like that.

The Sage.

He swept the floor for Fels and came up empty, which did not surprise him in the slightest. The Sage was nothing if not careful, and walking onto a battlefield with a Mid Level 7 on it would make Fels extra careful. But the device being here meant one thing, and Max winced as it clicked into place. Ouranos already knew.

He could already picture the Elder God, sitting on that stone throne with the kind of silence that made a lecture unnecessary. Please, wise old man. Scold me all you want later, but whatever you do, don’t go around contacting Freya.

The thought of Freya made him reach, out of reflex, for his usual way of checking whether anyone tried to reach him, and he caught himself halfway. He didn’t wear a bracelet; he never needed one to call anyone. He also never built a missed-call feature into the network, which meant that if anyone tried calling him this whole time, there was no way to know. Huh. A missed-call log. Now that I think about it, that’s a premium feature right there. Tier it, bundle it with the—

His magic sense cut the business proposal short.

Ottar and Hogni stood encased in his Destruction, and just beyond them, the Juggernaut lunged in, flinched back as it got close to the erasure, and lunged in again the moment it pulled away. Each time it came close, the Destruction thickened in its path. It was playing chase with his Complex Protocol, and losing.

A grin crept onto Max’s face. Right. Time to properly greet my walking exp bag.

As if he heard the thought, Kairu let out an eager “Ki!” and dropped off the top of the ice, landing on Max’s shoulder in a single bounce and pressing close as if to make sure he was really there.

Just then, his magic sense caught the Juggernaut’s patience finally snapping. With a guttural shriek, it abandoned the chase and charged straight at Hogni.

That settled it. With his familiar on his shoulder, Max moved with Shunshin.

The ice shattered behind him as he vanished, and he reappeared right between Hogni and the charging beast with his fist already drawn back, the gravity around the knuckleduster squeezed down to a single point.

Surprise, motherfucker!

“Earth’s Embrace!”

BANG—!

The gravity released all at once behind the blow. The Juggernaut was torn off its feet and hurled across the floor, smashing through a stand of dead trees until it vanished into a heap of splintered wood and rubble at the far end.

“YO! Missed me?” Max greeted Ottar and Hogni cheerfully, turning around with a wave as if he just stepped out for a moment.

Hogni stared up at him, his mouth hanging open. Ottar let out a long breath and lowered his greatsword, and the tight naught of his shoulders finally loosened.

Now that he was facing them, Max looked them over properly. His magic sense gave him the shape of things, but it didn’t show him the scored armor, the blood caked across Hogni’s face, the dents in Ottar’s gauntlets, or the thin layer of slime still clinging to them both. The grin slipped off his face.

“How long was I out?” he asked quietly, all the cheer gone from his voice.

Ottar was silent for a moment, as if weighing how much the boy needed to hear. “Some time.”

“A f-fair while,” Hogni agreed, the stutter creeping back into his voice now that the worst of it was over.

Neither of them kept track, but their faces told Max enough. His jaw tightened, and he gave them a single nod. He put them through this, and apologizing with a long face would only make them carry that too, so he pulled the grin back on deliberately.

“Sorry for scaring you like that, guys. Once we deal with this bony lizard, I’ll treat you both at the Hostess. Promise!” The words came out bright and easy, a little too easy, and he didn’t give either of them time to dwell on it. Wanting both hands free for this, he let the bone sword slide back into Kairu’s gel and slipped a second knuckleduster onto his right hand. “In the meantime, take a breather and enjoy the show. Kairu and I got this.”

He flashed them a thumbs up, and by the time Ottar opened his mouth to argue, Max was already heading toward the far end of the floor.

Across the floor, the Juggernaut dragged itself free of the wreckage, shaking the splinters and broken stone from its plating. Max didn’t rush it. While it rose, he used every step of the walk to put everything in order.

Auto-Evade was still humming along on the first Simple Protocol, so Max wired the second to spike the gravity around the monster whenever it closed on him, timed to the exact instant Auto-Evade pulled him out of its path. The first Complex Protocol was still keeping Ottar’s and Hogni’s weight low, exactly where he left.

That left the second Complex Protocol, and now that he was out, he could see why it worked. The Destruction protocol he carved in his soulscape was doing exactly what he told it to: erase anything Auto-Evade marked as an enemy, leave his allies untouched. The plating ate the erasure, and the erasure ate at the plating right back. Honestly, for something I set up while being dragged to the bottom of a psychic ocean, it’s holding up great.

Still, there was no point burning it on an erasure that would never land. Against that barrier, erasing the monster outright was a lost cause. But Destruction was also the cheapest magic he had, far cheaper than any Kidō, and it didn’t need to erase the Juggernaut. It only needed to be in the way. So he left it wrapped around Ottar and Hogni as it was, a shield the monster would think twice about touching.

With them covered, he turned the gravity on himself last. The same lightness he gave the executives settled over his own body, and his weight fell away until his feet barely seemed to touch the stone.

MASTER! KAIRU IS HERE! KAIRU IS YOUR ARMOR!

The voice rang through the bond, bright and fierce, as the slime on his shoulder spread across his chest, arms, and back, settling into a close-fitting layer of protective gel.

Max’s breath caught, and the knot in his chest loosened. Back in his soulscape, he worried for a moment that Kairu’s voice only existed down there, a quirk of that drowned ocean that would vanish the moment he woke up. Yet here he was, back in his own body with a Juggernaut climbing out of the rubble, and the little guy was still talking to him.

“I know you are, buddy,” Max muttered, a smile tugging at his lips.

Behind him, Hogni shot Ottar a sideways look. As far as the executives could hear, Max was talking to a slime that only said Ki.

“Listen,” Max went on under his breath, his voice softening. “Keep healing our friends in the back, and restore your clones on them. They need it more than I do. I can take care of this mindless beast myself.”

NO! KAIRU WILL DO BOTH!

Max snorted, too amused to argue. “Alright, alright. Both it is.”

The Juggernaut chose that moment to lunge. It came at him at full speed, letting out a screech that sounded like a crocodile and an elephant had a baby.

Max met it halfway. Auto-Evade slid him sideways a hair before the claws arrived, and in the same instant, gravity slammed down on the monster’s back, buckling its lunge into a stumble. Before it could recover, Max was already behind it, and his fist drove into its spine with all the gravity he gathered around the knuckleduster.

BOOM—!

The Juggernaut shot across the floor. But it never reached the far wall. Max was already standing in its path, his body so light that a single push of his boots carried him there first, and he met it with a fist to the jaw that sent it flying back the way it came.

BANG—!

He was waiting there too.

BANG—!

Every punch launched the monster, and every time, Max beat it to wherever it was going to land. Left hook, and it spun toward the ceiling. He was above it before it stopped rising, bringing both fists down and driving it toward the floor, only to catch it with an uppercut a heartbeat before it touched the stone. The knuckledusters rang against its plating over and over, and Max never stopped moving, flowing from one strike into the next like he was shadow boxing and the Juggernaut just happened to be standing where his fists went.

This one’s for Ottar.BANG—!

This one’s for Hogni.BANG—!

And this one’s for the time you spent throwing them around while I was stuck.

BANG—!

The rest of it he saved for the Dungeon. It dragged him to the bottom of a psychic ocean, pinned a weight on his back, and tried to hollow him out while his friends bled for him. The Dungeon wasn’t here to take a punch, but the thing it built for him was, and Max felt no guilt at all about which one was paying.

The Juggernaut tried to fight back. Its claws raked at him mid-flight, and a pulse of gravity burst from Max’s palm, a miniature Shinra Tensei that shoved the limb away before it came close. Its tail lashed at his back while he was busy with its jaw, and another pulse knocked it wide. It tried the claws again, then the tail, then both at once. Each time, a small burst of repulsion swatted the attack aside, and not once did any part of the monster get within a meter of him.

He didn’t need Kairu for any of it. The monster that ran rampant through this floor for this long, that threw the Warlord of Orario into walls and wrapped the Black Knight in a death grip, could no longer even reach him, and Max had no intention of letting up.

Still, the plating held. Every punch sent the Juggernaut flying, yet whenever he looked, the knuckledusters only left hairline cracks behind, and every time the monster landed, it got right back up.

On Max’s shoulders, Kairu gave an impatient wobble. Behind him, the clones on Ottar and Hogni kept glowing a steady blue as they swelled back to full size, but the original was stuck as armor on a master nothing could touch, watching him hog the entire fight, and his patience finally ran out.

MASTER IS BEING MEAN! KAIRU WANTS A TURN TOO!

Before Max could answer, the slime peeled away from his shoulders in a rush of blue, bounced once off the stone, and circled around to the Juggernaut’s other side with his shiny scythe already forming out of his body. As the monster rose again, Kairu swung it into its exposed side.

SHRRK—!

The blade bit deep. A chunk of plating peeled away from the monster’s side and clattered across the stone, and the Juggernaut let out a grating shriek.

SKREEEEE—!

The sound made Max nearly stop mid-swing.

The barrier didn’t flare. Not even a flicker. His knuckledusters were adamantite, and after all that pounding, the best they managed were a few cracks. Yet the scythe Kairu took such a fancy to slid straight past the barrier and carved into the body underneath.

Hold on. That’s very sus.

But stopping to think about it with a Mid Level 7 in his face was a great way to get gutted, so he kept swinging and watched closely instead. Every time his fists landed, the pale sheen rose across the plating to meet them, stripped the gravity away, and let only the raw force through. Every time the scythe landed, the sheen never rose at all. The blade met bone directly, as if the barrier didn’t even know it was there.

That’s a big RED flag.

Kairu clearly did not care why his scythe worked. He only cared that it did. Staying in his compact form, he darted around the monster’s flank, too small and too quick for the claws to find. Whenever they came for him, the scythe was already there, catching the blow on its curve and turning it aside, and the slime was off to the next opening before the Juggernaut could try again. Each cut shaved another sliver of bone from its hide, and each one drew a hiss of pain from its throat.

After a few more cuts, Kairu backed off and pulled himself inward, using Compression to its limit until his body shrank into a dense little knot of blue beneath the scythe. Then he began to spin. The scythe whirled around him with ease, faster with every rotation, until the blade blurred, and at the peak of his rotation, Kairu launched himself at the Juggernaut.

KKKKRAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM—!

To Max, it sounded as if a bomb went off. The scythe met the monster’s shoulder, shattering the plating there into a spray of bone fragments, and the Juggernaut was ripped off its feet with a howl and hurled across the floor until it slammed into the far wall.

Kairu landed, bounced twice, and puffed himself up to his full size, practically glowing with pride.

“Okay, that’s just showing off,” Max laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Do it again.”

The Juggernaut tore itself out of the wall with a rattling groan and charged back in, and the two of them fell into a rhythm. Max met it head-on, pummeling it from every side and crushing it back down with gravity whenever it tried to rise, while Kairu backed away, compressed himself, and spun. Whenever the monster found its footing, the scythe came at it at the peak of another rotation.

BOOM—!

Another chunk of bone broke loose as the Juggernaut hit the far wall again, its shriek cracking into something closer to a whimper. Max caught it on the way back with a fist to the jaw, and Kairu was already spinning.

BOOM—!

-◈ -

Juggernaut

It hurt.

The ooze’s blade tore into my shoulder, and the wall broke against my back. Before I could stand, the two-legged one was there again, and its fist sent me flying the other way. I screamed. I was batted back and forth between the two of them like an Iguazu caught between two gusts, and I had enough. Every other monster in the Dungeon got to die when it was beaten.

I want to die too.

But my clock was still ticking.

I stretched out my Dungeon Sense and called to it.

Creator. I was made from your cry. I came when you called. Feed me. One bite. That is all I need to heal. Just one.

The walls stayed silent. Nothing came.

Creator?

I called again, louder, and still nothing answered. It was never silent before. From the moment I clawed my way out of the stone, I could feel it all around me, in every wall and every floor, telling me who to kill. Now I reached for it and found only cold stone.

Stingy. Useless.

The Dungeon made me and sent me to kill, and now it would not even feed me. All my sense was good for was showing me how much more of this I still had to endure.

This is not the battle you promised me.

Before, I had that boar. It met my claws head-on, hit back hard enough to shake the floor, and got up no matter how many times I threw it. Even then, it was the two-legged one I was made to kill, but I loved that fight. I was enjoying myself, if only that pointy-eared pest had not kept darting in and out, cutting at my back and ruining our rhythm. I was doing what I was made for, and the Creator was with me.

Now there was no rhythm. There was only this, and I was alone in it.

If I ever spawn again, I will stay far away from these two. Go pester some other unlucky bastard.

My eyes found the two-legged one, already waiting where I was about to land. The Dungeon spoke of enemies once.

Its Nemesis, the fragmented ones. Is this one of them—

My thoughts were cut short as the hell-forsaken scythe slashed across my head.

-◈ -

Ottar

From his spot, Ottar watched in silence.

A cool weight settled onto his shoulder, and he glanced down to find the slime’s clone swelling back to full size, its surface lit with a soft blue glow. The light seeped through the gaps in his armor and into his body, and the fatigue that dragged at his limbs for the past hour began to ebb away. His cracked ribs stopped grinding against each other with every breath. The ache in his back loosened, and the heaviness in his arms thinned until he could lift his greatsword without his shoulders protesting. It felt as if a recovery potion was being fed straight into his body, without him needing to drink it.

Ottar let out a slow breath as he observed Maximus.

The monster that threw the two of them around could not touch him. He matched its speed and then outpaced it, striking from every angle before it could turn, and every blow landed with a weight that shook the floor. Wherever it tried to recover, gravity was already crushing it back down, and whenever it broke free, the slime sent it into the far wall. Its claws never came within a meter of him. Its tail was swatted aside before it finished swinging. Somewhere along the way, the Juggernaut stopped fighting to win, and now it was only trying to stay on its feet.

Ottar fought Maximus to a standstill in the Under Garden once. He knew now, watching this, that if Maximus had been this strong back then, he would not have stood a chance.

All this time, Ottar fought this monster with everything he had, and it threw him around the cavern at will. He pushed his beastification past its limit and took severe blows, and still ended up pinned under its claws with nothing left to answer it. Now, watching the same monster being beaten from one wall to the other, he understood that it was not the true monster on this floor. Standing before the one that was, Ottar felt inadequate.

With that feeling came an answer he could not find until now. When Maximus laid out his plan, Ottar heard the numbers, but he never truly believed them. He took the boy’s choice to bring only the four of them for recklessness. It was not. Maximus was confident, and watching him now, Ottar could see he had every reason to be.

Maximus surpassed him. There was no longer any question of it.

Ottar expected the realization to sting, yet it never did. Instead, he found himself picturing Maximus at Level 5, then at Level 6, and wondering what could possibly stand in front of him then. What in this world could reach Lady Freya while he stood at her side? His blood began to pump harder, and it took him a moment to recognize the feeling as joy.

Not even what remains of Zeus and Hera or the Black Dragon could touch them.

Her ultimate protector… no. That was not quite it.

The word he was searching for clicked into place. The Odr.

-◈ -

Hogni

Beside him, Hogni sat against a boulder with Victim Abyss across his knees, staring with his mouth slightly open and saying nothing.

The clone on his shoulder swelled back to full size, and its blue glow spread across his body. He felt it before he understood. The gash along his thigh closed, the burning in his shoulder cooled, and his ribs, which began to give inside that tail’s grip, eased back into place one careful breath at a time. His Mind still sat low from all the magic he spent, but the bone-deep exhaustion that settled into his limbs was draining away. His grip on the hilt finally loosened, and Hogni leaned his head back against the stone.

He was alive. Maximus was awake. The relief of it almost made him dizzy.

Across the cavern, his friend was beating a Mid Level 7 into the stone with his bare fists, and pride swelled in Hogni’s chest as he watched.

He remembered Maximus’s first dive vividly, and how much difficulty Maximus faced against Arachnia back then. Hogni remembered all of it: the danger his friend was in, and how much it took just to walk away from that encounter. Now that same man moved through the monster’s reach as if it were nothing, and the slime at his side sent the beast crashing into the far wall again and again.

If that bitch and Maximus were to fight now, she would not stand even half a minute.

The thought settled over him with a fierce satisfaction. Whatever this friend of his was becoming, Hogni was there to see it begin, and he was here to see it now.

He watched for a long moment, his lips slightly parted, and did not say a word. Neither did Ottar.

-◈ -

General Pov

Max watched the Juggernaut drag itself up from the stone once more.

It came up slowly this time. Its plating was dented in a dozen places, chipped away down to the bone along its shoulder and flank where Kairu’s scythe carved through, and hairline cracks spidered out from every spot his knuckledusters landed. For at least half an hour, the two of them threw it from one wall to the other without pause. The Amphisbaena couldn’t even dream of taking a beating like that, and the Amphisbaena was a Level 5 Monster Rex. Yet this thing was still standing.

So this is a Level 7 body. Max let out a low whistle. Tanky doesn’t even begin to cover it.

He reached out with his magic sense and read the anti-magic barrier, and what he found made him pause. The pale sheen that rose so eagerly to meet his fists half an hour ago now barely flickered across its plating. Between the Destruction eating at it all fight, the beating it took, and the Dungeon no longer feeding it, there was almost nothing left of it. With the anti-magic layer that weak, he could almost picture magic finally biting into it. The itch started at the back of his mind and spread. He had a whole list of spells he never tested against anything this durable, and Destructo Rasengan sat right at the top, practically begging to be driven into that chipped face to see how deep it would go.

He squashed the urge. Toying with a cornered beast was how people got killed, and his two friends were still sitting behind him, recovering from the beating it gave them while he was stuck in his own head. Playtime could wait for another day. He was ending this now.

Before he did, he turned and glanced back over his shoulder.

“Either of you want to take a final swing at it?” he asked. “Might be enough excelia for a level up.”

Hogni shook his head immediately.

Both of them turned to Ottar. The Warlord stayed silent for a long moment, his eyes on the Juggernaut, as if he were deliberating. Then he shook his head.

“I will prepare better next time,” was all he said.

Max nodded in agreement. Next time, I’ll make sure the stage is yours, he silently promised the Warlord, and turned back to the Juggernaut.

It didn’t move. It stood where it rose, its head low and its claws still at its sides, not even bothering to attack, as if it were waiting for him.

Seeing that, a smirk tugged at Max’s lips.

“Well, boy,” he said, almost gently. “I’ll send you to your maker with a worthy send-off.”

He stretched his hands wide, forming a familiar T, and began the incantation.

“Seeping crest of turbidity. Arrogant vessel of lunacy. Boil forth and deny. Grow numb and flicker.”

As the first verse left his lips, the air around the Juggernaut grew heavy, pressing down on the stretch of stone where the monster stood until the settling dust flattened against the floor and its head sank a little lower beneath the weight.

“Disrupt sleep. Crawling queen of iron. Eternally self-destructing doll of mud.”

With the second verse, a black tile formed on the stone beneath the Juggernaut. Its edges spread outward, sliding under the monster’s claws and around its flanks until they met in a square that enclosed the beast, and though the Juggernaut looked down at it, it did not step off.

“Unite.”

At that word, violet seeped into the blackness and rose through the tile in thin, branching veins. As the black lifted from the square in four walls, the violet climbed with it, and its cold light spread across the cavern until it touched every face present, painting Max, Kairu, Ottar, and Hogni in the same eerie glow.

That glow reached Hogni against the boulder, and as he watched the walls climb, his grip on Victim Abyss tightened without his noticing.

Who could even withstand that?

He saw Maximus cast spells that erased, burned, and flooded, but this one was different. It carried a deliberate weight, and the longer he watched, the less it felt like an attack being thrown and the more it felt like a verdict being passed.

“Repulse.”

On the next word, the walls closed overhead and locked into place, sealing the monster inside a black box ten meters tall. Spikes began to form along its inner walls, and as they grew, a low hum rose from within, pulsing steadily with the violet veins.

Inside, the Juggernaut lifted its head one last time and watched the walls close over it, and instead of clawing at them or screeching, it simply waited. The pain that followed it across the floor for half an hour, the silence where its Creator should have been, the endless flight from one wall to the other, all of it was about to stop.

Salvation. At last.

“Fill with soil and know your own powerlessness!!”

The moment the last verse ended, everything went silent. The hum cut off, the veins stopped pulsing, and even Kairu went still on his shoulder. Max held his hands where they were, and in that silence, he could feel the spell straining to be released, waiting only on its name.

He let himself savor it, because everything led here. His friends bleeding for him, a mental assault, an abomination, the mirrors shattering and the voice of his mother. A Dungeon that turned his own plan against him and a Devil who withstood that attempt.

Then he brought his hands together as if physically crushing the Juggernaut.

“Hadō #90. Kurohitsugi.”

As the name left his lips, the whole floor shuddered.

Ottar planted his feet as the stone beneath his boots lurched toward the box, the entire cavern leaning into that single point. The pressure that bore down on him with it was nothing like the weight of Maximus’s gravity. He watched Maximus cast plenty of spells since he joined the Familia, spells that already bent the rules Ottar knew, but none of them came with a number this high.

So this is the number 90 offensive spell.

Before the thought finished, every spike inside the box drove into its center at once.

Inside, the Juggernaut never had a chance to move. The spikes punched through what was left of its anti-magic layer as if it was never there, and as they sank in, the space around the monster began to fold. Its plating, the same plating that shrugged off many bouts of fists and gravity, bent inward under a weight no armor could hold. Then it buckled. Bone cracked, then splintered, then gave way entirely, and the monster that threw the Warlord of Orario around this floor was crushed into the heart of the coffin.

Outside, the floor answered.

The pull reached past the box’s walls and dragged everything around it inward. Roots tore free of the ground with a series of sharp cracks. The dead trees nearest the coffin leaned toward it, then uprooted and slid across the stone, folding into themselves as they reached its walls. The dust that had settled across the floor lifted all at once and streamed inward, and for a moment, even the air rushed toward that single point, tugging at Hogni’s hair and pulling at the edges of Ottar’s cloak.

Then the hum surged back, climbing higher and higher until it broke into a sonic boom.

TRRRRIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG—!

Everything collapsed inward in a blinding white light, and a heartbeat later, the shockwave rolled out of it. It tore across the cavern in a ring, flattening what the pull left behind. Ottar braced against it with his greatsword driven into the stone, and against the boulder, Hogni threw an arm over his face as the wind roared past them both.

At the center of it, Max held his ground with his hands still pressed together, and as the light washed over him, a heat bloomed across his back.

It started as a warmth, then built quickly into a burn that spread from his shoulders down to the base of his spine, steady and unmistakable. He knew that feeling. It was the Falna drinking in excelia, and a huge amount as well. It’s been a while since the last time he felt his back burn like this.

Oh. Oh, that feels good. A slow grin spread across his face. Mission accomplished!

When the light finally faded, the shockwave died with it, and silence settled over the floor once more.

The walls of the coffin peeled away from the space they once enclosed, breaking apart into black and violet particles that drifted up into the cavern and dispersed. Beneath them, where the Juggernaut stood only moments ago, there was nothing left.

Only a crater remained, twenty meters deep, its sides scraped smooth by the force that carved it. No bone, no plating, not even ash. The monster that took the two strongest executives of the Freya Familia to their limits was simply gone, as if the Dungeon never made it.

For a long moment, none of them said a word.

Then Max lowered his hands, let out a long breath, and stretched until his shoulders popped.

-◈ -

Freya

The Guild’s new policies had the gods talking in circles. The Rookie-Veteran program, its mentorship quotas, which Familias would be expected to take part: each point went around the table and came back again, and Freya followed along with half an ear, offering a nod whenever the discussion turned her way.

Just as she was thinking of turning to talk with Hephaestus, she felt her heart being squeezed.

The sensation was sharp and sudden enough to steal her breath, and for a moment, the voices around the table faded to a distant murmur. Pressing a hand lightly to her chest, she waited for it to pass, but it did not.

Freya did not know what it was. In all her long existence, in Tenkai and in the lower world alike, she had never felt anything like it. It was not pain, not quite, and it was not fear, though fear followed close behind it. It was foreign, and the harder she tried to make sense of it, the less she understood. The table tilted slightly in her vision. Her breaths came shorter, then ragged, and she had to fold her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling.

She kept her smile in place. She inclined her head when Loki made some quip across the table and let a soft laugh slip out at the right moment, and not one of them noticed anything amiss. But she could feel the facade thinning with every breath, and she knew she could not hold it for long.

Cold began to seep into her heart. It started as a single point in the center of her chest, then spread outward through her veins, slow and relentless, as if the abyss itself had reached up through the floor of Babel and closed its hand around her.

“—another short recess, then,” Ganesha’s voice boomed from somewhere far away.

Freya rose before the words finished echoing. She crossed the chamber without looking back, ignoring the gods who called her name to continue their conversations, and made straight for her sanctum atop Babel. Allen fell in behind her without a word.

The moment the doors of her sanctum shut behind them, she turned to face Horn.

“Horn. Take my place for the remainder of the Denatus,” she ordered, her voice steadier than she felt. “Allen, guard her. No one is to know I left.”

Horn bowed without question. Allen’s eyes narrowed a fraction, reading something in his goddess’s face that he clearly didn’t like, but he bowed as well and followed Horn out.

She did not want either of them to see her struggle any longer than they already had, and part of her hoped that distance would loosen whatever this cold was. So she took a teleportation parchment from the supplies Horn kept stocked there, laid it flat on the floor, and let its light carry her home.

She arrived in her chamber in Folkvangr, dark and undisturbed, but the cold came with her all the same. And as it went on spreading, her mind went to the one person thick-headed enough, and capable enough, to be the source of this: Max.

She channeled her will into the necklace and reached for him.

No answer.

She tried again, then reached for Ottar. If Max was hiding something from her, Ottar was the one she trusted to tell her the truth. The necklace chimed softly in her mind, reaching out across whatever distance separated them, and received nothing in return.

Freya’s fingers curled against her chest. Neither of them ignored her calls. Not ever. Barely an hour ago, Max called her asking permission for a dungeon experiment, and she granted it without a second thought, pleased that he asked. Now neither her Devil nor her Warlord would answer, and wherever Max was, she knew Ottar was right there with him.

Then the cold stopped spreading.

It did not leave. It simply settled, and something stranger began to gnaw beneath it. It was as though she stood somewhere far away, watching her own heart sit encased in ice, and could do nothing but look at it. For a long moment, the Goddess of Beauty stood in the middle of her own chamber, at a complete loss for what to do.

Slowly, she grew accustomed to it. And as her thoughts cleared, the reality of her situation settled in.

She did not know where they were. Somewhere in the Dungeon, and nothing more. She could order Trent to search for them, but even if he tried, she was not sure he would find anything. Max could be remarkably sneaky once he set his mind to something, and he would have set it very firmly to this.

There was nothing she could do but wait, and hope that whatever lunatic ordeal they had thrown themselves into, they would push through it.

Her first idea was to wait right here in her chamber. Whatever they were doing, they would surely come to report to her once it was done. That was how her warriors always operated.

Yet the longer she thought about it, the less certain she became. Max did not choose his words lightly, and he chose experiment. A secret that careful was not the kind they would rush to confess.

Whatever they have done, it is monumental, she thought. And they will not come to me first.

But they would go to Max’s room eventually. Of that much, she was fairly sure. No matter where the adventure took him, that was where her Devil always returned.

So she went there instead.

The manor was quiet at this hour, and her footsteps echoed through the empty corridors. On the way, she passed the executive meeting room and glanced inside, only to find it just as dark and just as empty as her own chamber.

Max’s door was unlocked. She pushed it open and stepped inside.

His room was dark and neat in the way of a space rarely used for anything but sleep. Freya crossed to the bed and lowered herself onto it, folding her hands in her lap, and let the silence settle around her.

Only then did she turn her attention inward.

The cold was still there, sitting in her chest exactly where it had settled. But the gnawing beneath it, the sense that something was wrong that followed her from the Denatus, through Babel, and across the city, was gone, and she could not find it anywhere.

Freya could not tell what that meant. She hoped it was a good sign.

A dungeon experiment. What did Max consider an experiment? He called the slaughter in the Colosseum an experiment. Perhaps he was testing some new spell deep in the Dungeon, something powerful enough to go wrong. Perhaps he took the Rivira garrison and marched it against an Evilus base, striking at Knossos from below while every eye in the city was fixed on the Denatus. By Max’s reasoning, even that would technically qualify as an experiment in the Dungeon. The thought made her fingers tighten in her lap.

You promised me, she thought. After you fought Hedin without a word to me, you promised you would never throw yourself into danger like that again without coming to me first. Not even a week ago.

For a moment, she considered contacting Ouranos. The Elder God watched over the Dungeon. If anyone could tell her where Max was, it would be him.

Then she shook her head. Involving others would only turn this into something larger than it needed to be, and the questions that followed would be worse than the silence. Besides, whenever it came to Maximus, whatever she felt, whatever she feared, he always surprised her with his tenacity. He clawed his way out of every corner he backed himself into.

So she chose to trust him, however much trouble he put himself through.

Freya closed her eyes and let herself sink into the feeling in her chest, the cold and the stillness beneath it, and held onto a single hope.

Emerge victorious, my Devil.

She did not know how long she sat there. The night outside deepened, and the manor grew quieter still.

Then, without warning, the cold in her chest snapped.

It shattered like glass, all at once, and warmth flooded back into every corner of her heart where the ice had sat for so long. Freya let out a shaky sigh, her shoulders loosening for the first time since the Denatus.

Whatever ludicrous idea Max was chasing, he came through it. She could feel it.

As the relief settled, the anxiety that had gripped her since Babel turned into eagerness. She wanted him back in this room, standing in front of her, whole, so she could see it with her own eyes.

Yet as the eagerness grew, something else rose right alongside it. Max made her a promise, and at the first opportunity, he tricked her. He asked her for permission knowing full well she would never grant it if she knew the truth, and then he walked into danger with her captain in tow.

How dare he.

Freya smoothed the fabric of her dress over her knees and settled back against the headboard. She was going to reprimand him thoroughly for putting himself in danger, and she would not let any of them off that easily.

So she waited, while the clock on the wall ticked on. The cold that clamped her heart was long gone, but her anger stayed, and the Goddess of War sat in the darkness of her Devil’s room, patient and utterly still.

At last, a crimson magic circle bloomed to the side of the room.

Three figures emerged from its light into the darkness. As the circle faded, the magic-stone lamps along the wall flickered on one by one at their arrival. Freya did not move. She remained seated on the bed in silence, curious to see how long it would take them to notice her.

“That was a great run!” Max declared, stretching his arms above his head until his shoulders popped. “It’s not every day you get to slay a Level 7.”

--> Devil in a Dungeon <--

AN:

Hahahahahaha. There we have it, people. Freya knows. SHE KNOWS!

What a chapter, we went from Oh no! Juggernaut to Oh, the poor Juggernaut. I hope you enjoyed the Juggernaut pov I sneaked in. ;)

I heard that the Light Novel has a panel with the Juggernaut thinking how Bell was a great opponent, showing its thought process and I felt that's ironic and added a small bit from it.

And poor Max, I feel he is always tempting Freya to become her canon self and screw himself. He feels like the real definition of a daredevil, pun intended. :)

I will start making arrangements for his funeral, I expect you all to bring some scented flowers and be ready to recite Kurohitsugi, haha.

Would Kairu make a better MC to fill his master's absence??

Oh yes, we finally get to witness Kurohitsugi in all its glory, hope you enjoyed the slow built up and the spell in action.

The next chapter will be the consequences. Also with this chapter, we are finish Arc 6. Arc 7 begins in the next chapter. Please suggest yours names for it.

Do share how you felt the chapter was. Was it good or did you feel it was a bit forced? Please share your feedback/suggestions on how to improve the story in a comment/review.

If you'd like to read 13 chapters ahead(around 55k words), support my work, check character images for free, read a free chapter(Ch 51.5), or commission a story idea, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash

Please note that the chapters are early access only, they will be eventually released here as well.

Next update will be on Friday.

Ben, Out.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Here is how Freya looks anxious.