Lyra
She had to admit, grudgingly, that the man was keeping his word.
The first floor had barely warranted a formation. The group of nine moved through the familiar upper corridors with the kind of efficiency that made the spawning Goblins and Kobolds feel more like an inconvenience than a threat. Eight of them were experienced adventurers, while the ninth sat perched on a shoulder like a particularly alert gargoyle. Alise called the shots. Ryuu cleared the flanks. The rest of the familia filled the gaps with the practiced ease of a unit that had done this so many times it no longer required discussion.
The monsters died. They moved forward. That was the first floor.
Lyra also noted, with a nod of professional approval, that neither of their tag-alongs were stopping to harvest the monster stones. In the upper floors, stopping to dig out a Goblin stone was a waste of time that killed a party's momentum. The unspoken rule of deep dives was simple. Leave the cheap stones. If they were still there on the way back, great. If someone else took them, which was almost always the case, that was just the tax you paid for speed. The fact that the little Pallum wasn't begging to stop and dig out every single Valis spoke volumes.
But the second and third floors demanded slightly more attention. Dungeon Lizards had a talent for patience that most monsters in the upper floors lacked. So the formation tightened instinctively, eyes tracking the stone overhead as much as the corridors ahead. Iska drifted closer, covering the ceiling approach. Maryuu adjusted her spacing without being asked.
The monsters came in larger groups here as well. It wasn't an overwhelming difference, but it was enough to require actual coordination. Celty took the right pocket of a six-Kobold cluster before it could flank. Neze handled the stragglers. Ryuu moved through her corner of the corridor like weather, precise and absolute.
It was, as it always was, clean.
Lyra had half-expected the tall stranger to start using the little Pallum as a human shield the moment the first monster rounded a corner. It was, in her experience, what most people who dragged rookies into dungeons actually wanted them for. But Gojo had been irritatingly consistent. On the second floor, when a pair of Kobolds had broken from a group and circled wide toward the rear, he had stepped back without a word and put himself between them and the girl before Alise even had to redirect.
Then came the third floor. A Dungeon Lizard dropped from the ceiling without warning, executing the kind of fast, ugly ambush that occasionally tagged even seasoned adventurers. Gojo had simply caught it.
With one hand.
By the throat.
He'd held it there for a second, looked at it with mild curiosity, then set it down on the stone like a houseplant he was moving to a better spot before crushing its skull against the wall. The whole thing had taken perhaps a few seconds. The little girl on his shoulder had not even been jostled.
Lyra had filed that away quietly and said nothing.
She watched the girl now as they pressed forward. Lili had good instincts for someone her age. She didn't fidget on his shoulder, didn't make noise when silence was needed, and her eyes tracked the walls with the kind of awareness that took most rookies months to develop.
She reminded Lyra of herself at that age.
It wasn't the circumstances, since Lyra's childhood had been completely different in every way that mattered. It was the look. She had that specific expression of a kid trying desperately to seem older while clearly falling short. The oversized pack made her look like a turtle wearing armor, and she held herself deliberately straight as if good posture alone could add three inches to her height.
Lyra adjusted her goggles and looked away before it became something more than a passing observation.
It was somewhere on the fourth floor, in a brief lull between encounters, that Gojo broke the quiet with the air of a man who had simply decided he was done with it.
"How deep have you been?" he asked, looking at Lili.
The girl stilled slightly on his shoulder. She wrung her hands together for a moment, the motion small and quick, as if hoping nobody would notice.
"The seventh floor," she said. "That's my deepest."
A beat of silence passed.
Gojo nodded. No raised eyebrow. No pause loaded with implication. Just a single, level nod, like she'd told him the weather.
"Alright," he said. "Today we go deeper."
Lili straightened a little.
"Do you know the monsters past the seventh?" he asked. "Through the middle floors toward Rivira?"
"I've read about them," she said, with careful precision. "I studied up on the monsters around Rivira. The Middle Floors."
"Good," Gojo said. He was quiet for exactly one second. "Right. Then let me tell you about a time I—"
"Here we go," Celty said, under her breath, as if surprised he was quiet for this long.
"—went to Floor 18 as a Level 1."
Lili's head whipped toward him. "You did not!"
"I did," he said, with the gravity of a man about to give a keynote address. "I was younger. More reckless. Objectively more impressive."
"Those three things don't go together," Neze said, from the rear.
"They do if you're me." He said with a confident smirk.
Alise didn't slow her pace. Ryuu's expression didn't change. Lyra made a point of keeping her eyes on the left wall.
"The thing about Floor 18," Gojo continued, entirely unbothered, "is that most people treat it like a destination. The safe floor. The inn in the middle of the dungeon. I treated it like a warmup."
"How?" Lili asked.
"Very carefully," he said, nodding solemnly. "And then not carefully at all."
Lili giggled.
It progressed from there.
He had, apparently, gotten into a punching contest with an Orc somewhere on the tenth floor.
"He threw a wild right hook," Gojo explained, gesturing vaguely with his free hand. "And I calmly explained that his form was fundamentally flawed. He took offense. I took his teeth. It was a victory of peer review."
"That's not how a contest works," Iska said.
"It is if you grade on a curve," Gojo replied smoothly.
"It really isn't," Ryuu said.
"The Orc didn't get back up to argue the semantics. By any established metric, I won."
Ryuu said nothing further, which was her version of letting something go.
"—and the Bugbear, this massive bear on the 19th floor," Gojo said, at a perfectly conversational volume, "just would not break eye contact. And I thought to myself—this is a creature of pure predatory instinct. It has hunted in this dungeon before I arrived. It must have ended things larger than me without a second thought. If I blink, I'm admitting I'm prey. So I just opened my eyes wider."
Lili's voice dropped to an invested whisper. "How did it go?"
Gojo answered with the grave patience of a man recounting a formative spiritual event. "We just stood there. Ten minutes went by. Twenty. At one point, a Battle Boar walked into the cavern, saw us, and awkwardly walked backward out of the room."
Lili gasped.
"I held that stare for forty-five minutes," he continued solemnly. "My corneas were screaming. My soul was dehydrated. But I held the line."
A beat passed.
"And then it left."
"That," Lili breathed in awe, "is not possible."
Lyra rolled her eyes so hard behind her goggles they actually ached. How do you even start a punching contest with an Orc? she thought, trying to logically deconstruct the sheer absurdity of both claims at once. Maybe he used an illusion spell? No, he specifically said he had zero magic. An incredibly niche taming item? Or maybe a skill that specifically confuses monsters?
Or, the most likely option: the man was just pathologically full of shit.
Celty made a sound that was almost certainly a laugh converted at the last second into a cough. Maryuu had developed the expression of someone trying very hard to maintain a neutral face against sustained opposition.
"I have no reason to fabricate that." Gojo smoothly countered.
"It ran away?"
"It made," Gojo corrected with immense care, "a dignified tactical withdrawal. It recognized my ocular dominance. Completely different."
Lyra laughed.
It escaped her before she could stop it, a short, sharp burst of sound that broke cleanly through her composure. She felt Neze glance sideways. She knew Celty's grin without even looking. She most certainly did not look at Ryuu.
"Ah," Gojo said from behind her, his tone rich with the profound satisfaction of a man who had been patiently waiting for a trap to spring. "There it is."
Lyra cleared her throat, suddenly hyper-aware of her slipping mask. "I wasn't laughing."
"Oh, you definitely were," Gojo fired back smoothly.
"I was acknowledging an auditory absurdity," she insisted, her tone dripping with defensive professionalism.
"That is literally the definition of laughing," he pointed out, thoroughly amused.
"It is strategically different," Lyra countered, lifting her chin.
"She was laughing," Lili piped up helpfully from her perch, sounding entirely too pleased to be involved in the banter.
Lyra scowled, pointing a stiff finger at the stone wall to her left. "There might be something over there. We should focus."
"There isn't," Alise sang out from the front without even turning around, the bright, teasing smile in her voice clear enough to make Lyra's eye twitch.
"You're laughing," Gojo declared pleasantly, falling back into step behind Lyra, "because you are amazed. Don't be ashamed. It's a completely natural biological response to hearing about achievements of this scale."
"I am not amazed," Lyra deadpanned. "I am deeply questioning your relationship with verifiable reality."
"Same thing, really," he countered without missing a beat.
She pushed her goggles up, polished one lens with the edge of her sleeve, and snapped them back down over her eyes. The movement gave her hands something to do so she didn't strangle him.
"I can prove it, you know," Gojo offered, a hint of theatrical challenge entering his voice.
"Prove what?"
"My ocular dominance."
Lyra stared at the back of his head. "You absolutely cannot prove that."
Without another word, Gojo stepped smoothly out of formation and took the front, sliding past Alise with a casual grace that made the captain raise an eyebrow, though she didn't stop him. He pivoted as he walked, now moving backward down the corridor without so much as glancing behind him to check his footing. Reaching up with one hand, he finally pulled off the dark glasses.
He folded them neatly and tucked them into his coat pocket.
Lyra looked.
She had expected something remarkably ordinary underneath. Tired eyes, maybe. Or pale ones—the kind of washed-out, colorless look that usually accompanied snow-white hair. Something mundane that explained why he kept them covered up in the first place.
What she had not expected were eyes that looked like that.
They were a deep, striking blue—the kind of brilliant, crystalline azure that had absolutely no right to occur naturally in a human being. But it wasn't just the color. There was something sitting behind them that Lyra didn't have a clean, practical word for. Not a glow, exactly. More like the quality of light refracting through perfectly still, impossibly deep water. They were composed, vast, and faintly, inexplicably warm, as if whatever lived behind those eyes had looked at the world for a very long time and found it mostly amusing.
She could, she admitted privately, see how a Bugbear might have found it difficult to maintain eye contact with that.
She could also see how a significant number of people might find it deeply, intensely distracting for reasons entirely unrelated to combat.
Right, she thought, very firmly adjusting her goggles again to break the spell. Moving on.
Gojo turned back around, apparently satisfied that his point had been thoroughly made.
"Told you," he murmured, looking entirely too smug.
"I acknowledged absolutely nothing," Lyra stubbornly refused.
"Uh huh," he hummed, clearly unconvinced.
She looked sideways, instinctively seeking out Alise.
The red-haired captain had resumed point with the same easy, focused stride she always carried in the field. Her eyes were already scanning the corridor ahead, reading the ambient light and the shadows with the practiced attention of a vanguard who never fully switched off. She had laughed at the staring contest story too—briefly, quietly—but now she wore that expression Lyra knew so well. Present. Alert. Quietly ensuring that everyone around her felt like they were exactly where they were supposed to be.
It occurred to Lyra, not for the first time today, that Gojo reminded her of Alise.
Not in personality, exactly. Alise possessed a fiery, radiant warmth that was entirely her own, genuine in a way that occasionally made Lyra uncomfortable because it was impossible to dismiss as a performance. But in function, they were the same.
The way he effortlessly occupied a room. The way he kept the little girl on his shoulder from retreating into her own head and succumbing to the dungeon's gloom. He broadcasted a steady, low-level aura of everything is fine, keep moving that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual danger of the situation, and everything to do with the sheer gravity of the person projecting it.
Orario had people like that. She knew it did. She was standing next to two of them right now.
Knowing there are more people like her out there in the city, Lyra thought, watching Alise's steady red hair bob slightly ahead of her, is as comforting as it is deeply stressful.
She wondered, scanning her captain's focused profile, what was actually going through that head. Alise always looked like she had already mapped out the next ten moves and cheerfully chosen the one that left everyone standing. Lyra would have given a great deal of Valis to know exactly which move was currently sitting at the top of that list.
They reached the sixth floor in excellent time.
Alise raised a fist. The formation compressed automatically, silently scanning the wider chamber ahead before proceeding. It was clear. The air was noticeably heavier here, the stone darker, and the distant, echoing sounds of the Dungeon were more layered and complex. The comfortable predictability of the upper floors was starting to give way to something with actual teeth.
As if the moment was right, the tall man simply reached into his heavy coat.
Lyra drifted closer, despite her better judgment.
The rings.
He produced them in small groups, sorting them with the deft ease of a seasoned merchant. Reaching up, he handed three to Lili first. The girl accepted them with the reverent, trembling care of someone holding something genuinely expensive for the very first time. Next, he moved through the rest of the Astrea Familia—slipping three rings into each waiting palm with casual precision—until he reached Lyra and paused.
He placed three rings in her hand.
Then he reached back into his coat, and deliberately placed three more.
Six total. A pair of each type, rather than one. He did it with a perfectly level expression, meeting her eyes for exactly one second with a solemn, knowing look before moving on, treating the obvious favoritism as entirely unremarkable.
Lyra closed her fingers around all six without a single comment, smoothly slipping the extra set into her inner coat pocket in a practiced motion she was fairly confident nobody else caught.
Her calculative mind instantly whirred through the possibilities, shifting through motives before landing cleanly on the obvious conclusion. She had complained loudly at the surface about losing out on a massive payday. Alise had insisted on a free, righteous escort. By quietly slipping the extra, highly valuable prototypes to her—the familia's resident pragmatist and strategist—he was secretly making up the difference. He was paying the toll without publicly offending her captain's rigid sense of justice.
Smart guy, Lyra acknowledged silently, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"Right," Gojo announced, addressing the group with the brisk, engaging air of a salesman beginning a product demonstration he had rehearsed. "The rings. Three types, one of each. First—" He held up the silver band set with an amber design. "—offensive. Lightning blast. Preloaded, single use per ring. All you have to do is channel a small amount of magic through the band, and it fires. And always," he added, his tone turning surprisingly grave, "point the stone end toward the target."
"That last part feels like something you learned the hard way," Celty drawled, leaning heavily on her spear.
Gojo offered a brilliant smile, choosing neither to confirm nor deny the accusation.
"Second," he continued, holding up the ring. "Defensive. Generates a barrier. Short duration, but it absorbs significant kinetic force. Same activation—channel a bit of magic, and the barrier comes up."
Maryuu turned her blue ring over in the dim light, studying the craftsmanship with quiet interest.
"Third." Gojo held up the last ring. Green imprints ran along the clean silver band, and a faint, elegant engraving traced the inside. "Binding. Supposedly, this one fires off the ring and binds the target."
He paused just long enough for that to settle.
A small, heavy silence followed.
Several eyebrows rose at once.
Ryuu's expression sharpened almost imperceptibly. Celty looked openly skeptical. Of everyone present, the two elves seemed the least inclined to accept that claim at face value.
Celty spoke first, one brow arched high. "You're saying this thing can bind a target without contact? Just by pointing the pointy end at it?"
Gojo gave an easy nod. "That's what I was told."
Then, as if anticipating the doubt, he pulled out his notebook from somewhere inside his coat and flipped through it with brisk efficiency. After a moment, he glanced back up and gave another confirming nod.
"Yes," he said firmly. "It is supposed to do the same."
That did not do much to ease the suspicion written across the group's faces.
Lyra could practically feel it moving through the chamber, that collective, healthy disbelief. Even Maryuu, who had been the most charitable so far, looked quietly uncertain. Ryuu remained unconvinced. Celty's expression clearly said she would believe it when she saw it.
Gojo, for his part, only shrugged.
Let them doubt, Max thought, shutting the notebook with quiet satisfaction. They would learn in due time that underestimating him was a habit best discarded early.
"Just to be perfectly clear," Alise chimed in, her tone exceptionally pleasant but laced with unmistakable authority, "we're holding the rings until the middle floors."
"I was going to suggest the exact same thing," Gojo agreed at once.
"You were going to suggest we not use untested lightning rings in an enclosed corridor?" Alise asked, smiling in that radiant way that somehow made the skepticism land harder.
"That was always the plan."
"Mm," Alise hummed, turning back toward the corridor with a bright smile Lyra had long since learned to translate as: I don't believe a word you're saying, but I find this deeply entertaining.
The formation settled back into motion soon after, easing forward into the sixth floor with the rings safely pocketed and the heavier air of the deeper levels curling around them.
Before they fully moved out, though, Alise glanced back toward Lili.
The girl straightened instinctively under the captain's attention.
"You can do what you want with the rings," Alise told her with an encouraging smile. "Don't worry about us."
Lili blinked, clearly startled by that, then nodded quickly.
Alise then looked at Gojo and gave him a firm, meaningful nod. It was not quite a warning and not quite a request, but the message was obvious enough.
Keep an eye on her.
Gojo answered with an easy smile and a small lift of his chin.
They moved forward into the sixth floor, rings pocketed, the looming threat of the middle floors somewhere ahead of them. As they walked, Lyra's hand rested once, briefly, against her coat where the extra three rings sat quiet and unremarked.
She was looking forward to seeing them in action.
-◈ -
Max
As they made their way deeper into the floor, he didn't have to wait long for the rings to be tested.
The dungeon played one of its cruelest tricks. A War Shadow peeled itself off a blind corner near the ceiling, its spawn completely masked by a jutting rock formation. The rest of Astrea Familia had their attention angled toward the other spawns ahead, leaving that flank unchecked for half a heartbeat.
Lili caught it from her perch on Gojo's shoulder.
The monster glided through the dimness with silent, reaching claws, all stretched shadow and hostile intent. It was fast, ugly, and built in a way that seemed specifically designed to terrify anything smaller than it.
Lili let out a sharp, entirely justified gasp.
Now, Max thought, leaning forward slightly, let's see if she trusts it.
Through the link, he felt Gojo's stance shift by a fraction. Not stepping in. Not interrupting. Just adjusting, ready to intercept if the ring failed or if the girl froze at the worst possible second.
Her panic spiked.
So did her resolve.
Her small fingers fumbled frantically over the rings she'd slipped on earlier, brushing one band, then another, before she found the raised amber print by touch. She shoved her hand forward so quickly it was more instinct than aim, pointing it straight at the lunging War Shadow.
Then she forced a burst of magic into the ring.
VWOOM.
Raikōhō did not travel, it was unleashed.
A roaring lance of condensed yellow lightning erupted from the band in a single violent line, thick as a tree trunk and bright enough to bleach the corridor white. Jagged forks of current crawled around its core like living veins, snapping and shrieking through the air. The temperature in the tunnel spiked for an instant as ozone and scorched stone filled the passage.
The War Shadow vanished.
Not pierced. Not blasted back. Gone. Its body came apart inside the spell's path so completely that it left behind no recognizable remains, only drifting ash and a blackened scar carved into the dungeon wall behind it.
And only then did the attack reveal the two Frog Shooters crouched deeper in the gloom.
They had been completely hidden behind the War Shadow's angle of approach. The outer edges of the blast caught them a heartbeat later. One exploded into blackened fragments. The other was flung sideways in a burst of steam and ash before disintegrating against the wall.
The corridor fell silent.
Not quiet. Silent.
Even through the link, Max could feel the shock ripple through the group.
Alise had stopped dead, her rapier drawn, eyes fixed on the smoking trench cut through the stone. Ryuu's gaze had narrowed to a rare blankness, the kind that only appeared when reality had momentarily failed to match expectation. Lyra had pushed her goggles up without seeming to realize she'd done it. Celty's mouth had actually parted. Neze's ears were flattened tight against her head from the concussive crack. Maryuu had both hands clamped over her mouth. Iska, her heavy weapon lowered by inches, looked from the crater to Lili and back again, as if running the comparison twice would somehow make it more sensible.
And Lili—
Lili was frozen, her arm still extended, her wide eyes locked on the thin ribbon of smoke curling off the ring.
Raikōhō, Max thought with deep, private satisfaction. Yep. Still ridiculous.
A line was already forming on Gojo's lips.
Then—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Max blinked.
The sound came from somewhere behind him in Folkvangr. He ignored it, trying to stay in the link as Gojo shifted his weight and prepared to say something insufferably well-timed.
The knocking came again. Sharper this time.
Three raps. A pause. Three more.
Max exhaled a long, irritated breath through his nose.
Now? Seriously?
"Master Maximus."
Raymond.
Even muffled through the heavy wood, the merchant's voice carried that careful, modulated calm that meant there was something serious.
Max held still for few more seconds.
Then he pushed a firm command through the link: Be yourself. Use your judgment. Keep everyone safe.
Gojo settled immediately into autonomous action, the transition smooth enough that Max barely felt the handoff. He only hoped Independent Action didn't adopt Gojo's more insufferable habits along with his instincts. He stood up and opened the door.
Raymond was waiting in the corridor, composed as ever, but there was no trace of his usual jovial demeanor.
"Master Maximus," the merchant said, his tone perfectly flat. "We have things to discuss about the Gem you brought."
Max raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The gem? he thought. He was confused why that specifically would warrant Raymond's panic, but he nodded. He glanced down at his nightclothes and suppressed a grimace. "Give me one moment, Raymond."
The merchant gave a curt, understanding nod and stepped back without comment.
Max closed the door, walked quickly to the washbasin, and splashed cold water over his face, scrubbing away the phantom chill of the dungeon. He stripped off the sleepwear and swiftly changed into his usual, practical adventurer's clothes, strapping on his gear out of sheer habit. Fully prepared and sharp, he stepped back out into the hall.
He followed Raymond downstairs and across to the office in silence.
That silence told Max almost as much as the summons itself. Raymond was not a man who wasted time. If he wasn't filling the walk with polite reassurances or casual banter, then either he had been ordered not to speak, or he had decided on his own that this was far beyond a casual business negotiation.
When Raymond opened the office door and stood aside, Max entered already braced for a problem.
The hat was the first thing he saw.
Wide-brimmed. Feathered. Deliberately stylish.
Then the amber eyes beneath it.
A man sat in Raymond's chair like he belonged there. One leg was casually crossed over the other, his posture loose in that very specific way cultivated by people who were never actually off-balance. He wasn't wearing the broad, openly playful grin Max associated with him from the anime. But neither was he cold. If anything, he looked alert. Interested. Like a man at the start of a game he fully expected to win.
Hermes, Max thought, his mind stalling for a second.
And suddenly, the quiet dread he had been successfully keeping at bay since arriving in Orario came crashing down on him.
Talking to gods.
This was the exact scenario he had meticulously planned to avoid. It was the primary reason he had deliberately refrained from visiting the Hephaestus or Goibniu familias to commission custom weapons and armor, settling for Kairu's supply instead.
It wasn't that gods were physically threatening. It wasn't even that he was afraid their infallible lie-detection would expose his secrets.
He was afraid of the exact opposite.
As a Devil, his nature acted as the perfect, absolute counter to their divine perception. Freya had already shared as much—she couldn't sense whether he was lying or telling the truth. His complete unreadability was a void. And to a sharp, perpetually bored deity, a mortal who was completely immune to their natural lie-detection wasn't just an anomaly; it was a blinking neon sign demanding investigation. Talking to Hermes, a god with a notorious penchant for meddling in the most suspicious shit Orario had to offer, was like painting a massive red target on his own head. He would inevitably be drawn into the god's schemes.
Frankly, Max was surprised Freya wasn't the one sitting in that chair, given her nature. Either she hadn't been shared the full details of the gem's recovery, or she was letting this play out for her own amusement. Regardless, he hated being forced into this corner.
More importantly, if Hermes himself was here instead of some Guild bureaucrat, then this was serious. Serious enough that a god had gotten personally involved to handle a single gem.
Max forcibly schooled his expression into polite neutrality and stepped fully inside.
Raymond closed the door behind him with a soft click.
As he entered, the Messenger God finally spoke.
"Maximus, was it?" Hermes said pleasantly.
There it was. The canon smile. Not big, not foolish. Just easy enough to disarm you if you didn't know better.
Max took a slow, deep breath. From the moment he opened his mouth, the cat would be out of the bag, so there was no point worrying about it now.
"Yes, Lord Hermes," Max replied, his tone respectful but carefully measured.
For a fraction of a second, the easy smile on Hermes's face faltered. His eyes narrowed subtly, and a minute, almost imperceptible scrunch formed between his brows. The divine senses that had served him for eternity had just hit a solid, impenetrable wall.
Then, just as quickly, the mask was back. Hermes watched him for a beat, then smiled a touch wider. "Relax. This isn't an interrogation. If it were, I'd have picked a better chair."
Max almost laughed.
Almost.
Funny. Light. Socially graceful. Testing the waters. This was much more like him.
But Max wasn't some terrified rookie. He had an active agreement with Ouranos, he lived in Freya's domain, and frankly, he just found this deeply inconvenient.
"I'll keep that in mind," Max said smoothly.
"The reason I'm here," Hermes began, folding his hands loosely in his lap, "is that you recently came into possession of something... troublesome."
Max kept his face perfectly neutral. "I found many things. I would like to know which one you're talking about."
"Unusual is one word for it," Hermes said lightly, seamlessly sidestepping the evasion. "Dangerous is another. Valuable is a third. Inconveniently rare would also fit."
Raymond remained utterly silent by the wall.
Hermes continued before Max could answer. "The Guild would like custody of any remaining pieces."
"And they want them badly enough to send you?" Max asked, letting a second pass.
Hermes chuckled softly. "You're observant. That's usually helpful in Orario. They are sensitive," he corrected gently. "And sensitivity tends to make everyone involved prefer fewer witnesses, fewer rumors, and faster resolutions."
"I understand," Max said, leaning back slightly. He wasn't going to play a long, drawn-out game of evasions. He brought the gems to sell, and that was exactly what he was going to do.
"The Guild is prepared to compensate you generously for your cooperation," Hermes added, his tone slipping effortlessly into that of a seasoned negotiator. "A flat million Valis per piece. No tax complications. No awkward paperwork. A clean transfer."
Max didn't flinch. He didn't gasp at the number. He just looked at the god, mentally running the math.
He's trying to steamroll me, Max thought. But he can't actually touch me without starting a war. So I have the leverage here.
"Five million," Max said flatly.
Hermes paused. The easy smile froze.
"Five million," Hermes repeated, tasting the number.
"A million without tax is something I could get with a lucky Jackbird egg," Max pointed out reasonably. "I found these much, much deeper in the dungeon. They should be significantly more valuable."
Hermes immediately raised both hands in a gesture of dramatic surrender. "Five million is the entire income of my familia for a month! My boy, I wish you could share this Jackbird harvesting spot with me if you're pulling in those numbers."
Max smirked. "It's on the first floor."
Hermes frowned deeply, the absolute picture of a man mourning lost profits. "That's entirely too high. It's above my paygrade. I can do one point five million. And that's the guild being generous."
Max shook his head slowly. "Four million."
"One point seven-five."
"Three million," Max countered, his tone hardening just a fraction to show he was serious. "And I'll bring them straight to you the next time I find anything like them."
For a second, something shifted behind Hermes's eyes — not quite uncertainty, but the distinct, calculating look of a god who had just been handed a variable he hadn't accounted for.
Hermes sighed, a long, heavy exhalation that sounded like it physically hurt him. "I want to keep my commission on this. Let's cut it at two point two-five million."
"Two point five," Max said instantly, extending his hand across the desk.
Hermes stared at the hand for a long moment, then reluctantly nodded. He reached out and they shook on it.
"Two point five it is," the god conceded.
Max stood up with a cheerful, victorious smile. "Excellent. Give me a moment, I'll go count exactly how many I have."
He made his way to his room to contact Kairu.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
That was fun. We see more of Astrea Familia pov and how similar to some extent Lili and Lyra are, see Gojo's theatrics and the first ring in action in the dungeon. Most importantly, Hermes is introduced, yay!
As for what the gems are, don't worry about it for now. Whatever they are, Max just got more richer.
In the next chapter, we will see rest of the week pass and hopefully Max finally goes on his dive to face the Goliath.
If you'd like to read 8 chapters ahead(around 40k words), support my work, or commission a story idea, visit 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.
I am going on vacation next week and won't be available to update the chapters, so the next update will be on Tuesday May 5th.
Ben, Out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.