Cherreads

Chapter 52 - Chapter 51

Freya

She felt him freeze as their lips met. His whole body went still in shock, and she took full advantage of it.

She hadn't planned things to turn out like this, but the joy had moved faster than thought, faster than the composure she had spent centuries perfecting, and her body had acted before she could intercede. But now that she had initiated, she wasn't going to let him misread this as a one-time thing or accidental, as she knew her restraint around him had been taken far too lightly.

This was the most purely joyful news she had received since the fall of Hera, and that alone deserved to be said clearly, in the only language that didn't leave room for interpretation. So instead of letting it stretch, she deepened it. She poured everything into it that she hadn't said and wouldn't say aloud. The time spent watching him. The terror that had moved through her when his wave of Destruction had surged toward her. The cold, unbearable possibility of a world where he simply ceased to be reachable. Showing her intent mattered far more than anything else.

She held it until she was absolutely certain that no part of him could file it away as polite affection, or impulse, or the mild warmth of a patron for a promising child. She had not kissed him like a patron. She had not felt like a patron in his case.

When she finally pulled back, she did so slowly and deliberately, drawing away just enough to let him take in her face. Close enough that the warmth between them hadn't entirely gone, but far enough that he would have no choice but to see her clearly. The silver of her eyes. The unhurried curve of her lips. Every feature composed and present, giving him something to hold onto before the world rushed back in.

Drawing a slow breath, she let herself look at him properly.

What she saw was genuinely worth looking at. He hadn't moved. His hands were still suspended in the air, caught somewhere between intention and complete abandonment, as though his body had simply stopped receiving instructions. His eyes were very wide, the amethyst in them deep and glassy, and his expression carried the particular blankness of a man who had been absolutely certain of the ground beneath him and was only now discovering it had never been there at all. It was the look of someone who had just had every prepared response rendered entirely useless.

She found it completely endearing.

She let the quiet settle between them rather than fill it, allowing the stillness of the room to hold the moment without letting any hint of awkwardness creep into the space. There was nothing to be awkward about. She had meant every second of it, and she was content to let him arrive at that understanding in his own time. He deserved the chance to feel the full weight of what had just passed between them without her rushing it.

Once she was satisfied the silence had done its work, she shifted her attention from the stunned Devil to the table beside them, inclining her head toward Kairu in a small, unhurried invitation.

The slime needed nothing more than that. Moving with his usual quiet efficiency, he settled himself in the center of the low table between them, his blue surface catching the soft glow of the room's light. He offered a cheerful jiggle in greeting, and she felt the corners of her mouth soften slightly in response.

Pricking her finger, she pressed a drop of ichor to the surface he presented. The aquatic blue light bloomed at once. She traced the Excelia distribution the same way she had during his very first update, sinking her divine perception into the memories woven through the accumulation and letting the data unspool honestly in front of her.

Going in, she had actually expected the numbers to be somewhat modest. During his first update, the sheer volume of Max's constant need for Kairu's protection had boosted Kairu a staggering amount through the Familiar Bond. But Max was considerably stronger now. He didn't need the same level of protection. Expecting a quieter record, she pushed quickly past the mundane initial moments of their daily routine, searching for the brighter nodes of experience.

What she found, however, brought her up short.

He had done a solo dive.

She hadn't known he was capable of that kind of autonomy. He hadn't trailed or waited, but had gone completely alone—without Max, without instruction, without anyone watching—and navigated the Dungeon entirely on his own initiative. She watched the memory unfold, noting the ruthless efficiency with which he dismantled the monsters in his path. It was a fluid, systematic clearing of the middle floors that was surpassed only by Max himself.

As he descended deeper, a specific presence seemed to catch his undivided attention. The Green Dragon. She watched Kairu observe the beast, analyzing the gap between its power and his own. Instead of launching a suicidal charge, the slime made a calculated, tactical retreat, choosing to wait for backup. It was a level of cleverness and restraint she rarely saw even in seasoned adventurers, and she filed it alongside the cloning capability she had just found, permitting herself a warm note of approval. Good for him.

The memories shifted, moving from the dark of the Dungeon to the quiet warmth of their suite. Here, she saw the time Max and Kairu spent side by side. She watched Kairu pour considerable effort into his Developmental Abilities, processing and repurposing raw materials with meticulous care to get everything in order. Monster stones, other harvested parts, and rare alloys were all fed through his remarkable body to forge the communication rings, the executive bracelets, Max's new armour, and finally, her necklace. She knew immediately this meticulous work would easily bump both of his developmental abilities.

Then came the expedition to Floor 28. The Goliath dive.

During the actual clash with the Floor Boss, Kairu had largely been relegated to a spectator, waiting patiently on the margins as Max systematically dismantled the Goliath. It was only near the end, when the Dungeon panicked and spawned a sudden, desperate wave of Minotaurs and Ligerfangs, that the slime sprang into action. Stepping in to fight seamlessly alongside Hogni, Kairu helped manage the chaotic surge of monsters with practiced efficiency before eagerly moving in to consume the Goliath's massive remains.

Following that monumental meal, the memories shifted to the great waterfall. The distribution here carried the unmistakable texture of something thoroughly and gleefully enjoyed rather than grimly endured, and to say the slime had been happy would have been an understatement; he had clearly loved every second of the chaotic ride. Even amidst the thrill of the rushing water, he had remained impeccably busy, diligently sweeping up and collecting all the dead monsters Max and Hogni slayed along the way.

The memories then tracked their ascent back up to Floor 24, where the dive held his return to the Green Dragon. This time, he fought. And this time, despite everything, he failed to land the killing blow.

Because of that single shortfall, the Level Up had been withheld, leaving his true potential locked behind the one monster that had survived him. Withdrawing slightly from the flow of excelia, Freya looked down at the blue blob resting quietly on the table. She reached out, resting her hand gently on top of him, and gave him a slow, reassuring pat. Next time, she thought fondly, knowing that with what this update was about to give him, he would be more than capable.

Sinking back into the memories, her attention was immediately caught by the secondary layer of his growth. The spike that had come during Max's Class Change—those violent, compressed moments when Kairu had thrown himself into the magical overflow to buy her fractions of a second—showed up in the Excelia as something entirely apart from his combat contributions. It lacked the sharp edge of kills and magic stones, replaced by something much warmer than ordinary gains. These were the returns on a choice made without instruction or guarantee, born from nothing except the simple decision that she needed to be protected.

This made her realise how she had misjudged him from the beginning. When she first read about the Familiar Bond, she had assumed it acted as a passive leech—a comfortable overflow valve that simply siphoned off Max's excess stats and allowed the slime to coast pleasantly on reflected power. But, after Max's Level Up earlier, she knew that assessment was fundamentally wrong. Max's massive overflow hadn't been siphoned off to Kairu at all; it had been entirely consumed by his own vessel to fuel his Class Change.

If Max's excess had been used for his own Level Up, then the gains she was seeing now could only mean one thing. The Familiar Bond was not a passive siphon, but a mechanism that directly rewarded Kairu's own active, protective instincts. He had been working for these numbers every single day, quietly and consistently, without a moment of recognition for it. She logged the correction with the seriousness it deserved, especially since she was not accustomed to misjudging things.

Done with the Excelia, she let the full picture settle before her eyes, expecting to see a respectable, hard-earned tally to reflect his efforts.

Instead, she looked at the numbers, and her expectations were blown away once again.

___

Status:

Kairu

Freya Familia

Demon Slime - Familiar

Level 3

Stats:

Strength: I0 - EX3156

Endurance: I0 - EX3212

Dexterity: I0 - EX3091

Agility: I0 - EX3324

Magic: I0 - EX3675

Innate Traits:

Storage

Size Manipulation

Assimilation

Rapid Regeneration

Amorphous Body

Magic:

Ars Magna (Lesser)

Skills:

Magic Resistance

Familiar Bond

Developmental Abilities:

Devourer - G

Mystery - G

___

She shook her head with a smile as Kairu's update fully sank in. Like master like familiar. Both of them were very determined to break all possible records of Falna and she was happy to tag along. Though he didn't get his Level Up like Max, he was standing right at the precipice, and she was absolutely certain that his next encounter with the Green Dragon would be enough to push him over.

Shaking her head out of the anomalies as she finally copied and sealed Kairu's falna, her attention drifted wistfully to the necklace at her throat. Without quite deciding to, she reached up and unhooked the clasp, letting the delicate, exact figure pool into her palm. She watched its beauty catch the soft glow of the room's light, feeling a distinct pang of sadness.

The shielding spells were gone. She remembered vividly how the necklace had bought her those crucial, terrifying seconds against the magical explosion, holding the line just long enough before the very slime whose Falna she had just updated had thrown himself in front of her to protect.

The defensive magic must have burned out completely in the process, leaving the pendant hollowed of its protection, but from her understanding of the item's matrix, the communication and teleportation functions would hold. It would remain an anchor for Max to reach her whenever he needed. Pressing her thumb lightly over the Valkyrie's small shape, she mourned the loss of the shield but cherished the connection it still represented, before finally clasping it back around her neck.

As she settled back, her thoughts drifted toward somewhere much quieter—much like Max, who was clearly still lost in his own mind across the room. She thought of the kiss, and the potential consequences of it.

Turning the memory over with unhurried attention, she arrived at the exact same answer she always did: she didn't regret it one bit. In fact, she was more than willing to go all the way with him, if that was what he wanted.

The thought brought with it a deep, mature curiosity about the physical realities of that intimacy. It was a well-established truth that Gods were fundamentally incapable of bearing children, whether with each other or with the races of the lower world.

They were born as perfect, immortal beings, and that inherent perfection left them entirely without the capacity or need to reproduce. It made her curiously wonder how the deities of Max's world had actually come into existence. She was certain her kin wouldn't tolerate a rival faction much like Max's Elohim, especially if their own creations possessed the potential to rebel or rival them. But Max was a Devil, a creature built on defying Gekai's impossibilities, and she couldn't help but wonder if his very nature might someday overwrite that ancient, divine restriction entirely.

If it ever did, it would be a bridge they could cross when he was older. She certainly wasn't in any rush, especially considering how long it had actually been since she had indulged in any true intimacy.

None of the ordinary mortals on Gekai had been worth her attention for a very long time. She had only ever offered the privilege to her Captains, and all of them had politely declined. Mia had simply been uninterested, and Ottar viewed her far more as a sacred mother than a woman. As for the rest of her Familia, their devotion was so absolute that they felt entirely too insignificant to ever fathom actually touching the Goddess of Beauty. They worshipped her from afar, content to simply exist in her light.

The wider world, however, was another matter entirely. For the countless ordinary fools who sought her out, her charm was so potent that a mere glance was often enough to make their insignificant selves feel as though they had actually bedded her, entirely sparing her from the physical act.

Yet, the stark contrast between her actual, centuries-long abstinence and her public reputation remained a bitter irony. She felt a familiar, ugly surge of anger and self-loathing threaten to rear its head at the thought of that whore Ishtar, who had spent years gleefully spreading such lascivious rumors about her across the world.

She was just beginning to draw a steadying breath to pull herself back from the dark mood, when a sudden flicker of movement at the edge of her vision anchored her firmly to the present.

Across the room Max finally blinked.

His hands twitched, slowly lowering from where they had been hovering uselessly in the air as his mind began the arduous process of returning to his body. The absolute, stunned blankness in his amethyst eyes was just starting to crack, giving way to the quiet realization of where he was and what had just happened.

Freya looked at him, her lips curving into a slow, private smile in the way they only ever did when no one important could see.

Take your time, she thought, letting the fondness settle warmly and without apology in her chest.

We have plenty of it now.

-◈ -

Max

As the kiss stretched on, his hands balled slowly into fists at his sides.

He couldn't think. That was the problem. Or rather, he could think—he could think extremely well—which was precisely why things were going so catastrophically wrong.

The ironclad walls of his Sagehood, so patiently and painfully constructed over twenty-nine days of ruthless self-denial and the subsequent Isekai, were dissolving at an alarming rate. And into the breach, like a flood that had been held back too long, poured everything he had spent all this time suppressing.

It began as a formless bombardment—a film reel playing at the wrong speed, images cycling too fast to focus on. Every single anime waifu he had ever appreciated, catalogued, or quietly admired in the comfort of his previous life. All of them, in all their glory, descending on him simultaneously like an army he had absolutely no defenses against.

Then Freya finally separated for air.

Her features came into focus. Silver hair. Silver eyes bright with joyful relief. The warmth of her still radiating through the fabric of his shirt where her hands had been.

And Max's traitorous brain, which had been dutifully cataloguing Freya's features, did what it absolutely should not have done.

It cross-referenced them.

The silver hair sharpened into something more familiar. The regal composure took on a different flavor. And in the space of a single, catastrophic synaptic misfire, Freya's face was gently but firmly replaced by the image of a certain silver-haired, silver-eyed Strongest Queen in a maid uniform, and Max's heart leapt with a biological enthusiasm that his soul was deeply, deeply ashamed of.

Grayfia Lucifuge.

Shit.

The Sagehood's foundational crack widened into a full structural failure. He felt the logical sectors of his brain beginning to shut down one by one, replaced by the very instincts he had spent more than a month ruthlessly starving. The red flags were going up. The warning systems were screaming. At this rate, in approximately thirty seconds, he was going to stop being a stoic, goal-oriented Devil and become exactly the kind of Isekai protagonist he had smugly promised himself he would never be.

The worst part—the truly damning part—was that some newly liberated corner of his mind was already whispering that it might not be a very big loss.

No, said the last surviving rational neuron in his skull. Think. Think logically.

He grasped at the first argument that came to hand: She could potentially be your mother.

The battlefield fell silent.

...She could potentially be your mother.

He clung to that thought desperately. It was a flimsy lifeline, admittedly—his features matched neither Sirzechs nor Grayfia in the slightest, which could very plausibly be the Isekai Gods' most diabolically thorough cover story to date. But it was something.

Then his Devil side, lazy and entirely unhelpful, ambled into the debate and pointed out, with devastating simplicity, that they were Devils, and that the particular implication he was worried about was therefore significantly less of a moral obstacle than it would be in polite human society.

That argument did not help. That argument detonated the lifeline entirely.

Okay. New approach.

He reached for the mantras. The old standbys. The mental architecture that had seen him through the worst nights of No Nut November. He started cycling through anime themes with grim, methodical focus.

Guren no Yumiya.

The instrumental thundered through his mind—noble, martial, stirring. Good. Stable. Except the theme brought Mikasa with it, dark-haired and impossibly composed, and that was not helping.

Blue Bird.

Tsunade and Samui immediately arrived, presenting a combined visual that aggressively undermined his efforts. Also not helping.

Moonlit Sonata.

He didn't even get to the first chord before his brain supplied Beta and Gamma simultaneously, and he abandoned that avenue entirely.

Drums of Liberation.

That one lasted almost three full seconds before the One Piece gallery arrived in full force, and he made the critical, irreversible mistake of following that particular mental thread. Robin. Hancock. Viola.

One Piece was a mistake. He had known this. He had always known this. He'd simply forgotten in the crisis.

His heart was hammering now. The last coherent structures of his composure were beginning to sway. The temptation had graduated from significant to overwhelming, and he was running out of countermeasures—

Ping.

Something tugged at the edge of his awareness. Clean and precise, like a thread pulled taut.

He seized it.

It was a presence. Faint but unmistakable, registering through his magical senses with the peculiar resonance of a soul he didn't recognise. It was coming from the direction of his warehouse—the abandoned church he had converted and claimed. Someone was using it. Or something was moving through it.

The sudden puzzle knocked the flood back by sheer force of novelty. His Sagehood, starved for a genuine intellectual problem to anchor itself on, latched on with both hands.

Before he even returned to reality, he reached out through his magical senses. Rather than just checking the anchor he had embedded in the church walls, he cast his mind across the city to connect with a much more familiar signature.

Gojo.

He should be watching over Lili. But given how late it was—well past midnight—the Pallum should be safely sleeping away at her residence by now. He reached through the mental thread that tethered them and felt the signature pause. A beat of sudden, acute awareness flared, as though a pair of impossibly blue eyes had just turned directly toward him across the distance.

Max projected the thought clearly:

I'm occupied right now. Something is moving through the church, and our important inventory is stored there. Ensure Lili is safe for the night and go find out what's happening.

There was a pause on the other end of the connection that somehow communicated an entire paragraph of theatrical complaint without a single word. Even as a clone, Gojo's personality was obnoxiously intact. Then, a pulse of acknowledgement returned.

With that crisis delegated, Max let the connection settle back into quiet background awareness.

In the space of a single minute after the ping, his hands uncurled and settled comfortably on his knees. Max's eyes refocused.

He blinked. The room came back into clarity—Babel, the night light, the low table between them, the faint sweetness of wine still in the air. He looked up.

Freya was watching him from the chaise, her wine glass raised, a smile of quiet, surgical amusement playing at the corner of her mouth. She had clearly been watching the entire internal war play out across his face and had apparently found it deeply entertaining.

He elected not to comment on that.

His attention moved to the low table, where a parchment had been placed at some point during his near-catastrophic episode. Kairu's updated status. He reached for it, grateful for something tangible to look at.

He read through the numbers carefully, and a genuine, uncomplicated warmth replaced the last dregs of chaos in his chest.

Three thousand points across every stat. Even without the level up, the density of Kairu's growth was extraordinary—a direct testament to the slime's relentless work. The double rank-up in both Devourer and Mystery told its own story.

He glanced over at the slime, who had settled contentedly by the table.

I'm sure that Green Dragon won't give you much trouble next time, buddy.

Kairu pulsed with a warm, agreeable Ki in reply, and Max felt an uncomplicated flicker of pride for his strange, resilient Familiar.

He set the parchment down and turned his attention back to Freya—this time with his composure fully rebuilt, if slightly scorched around the edges.

"Seeing how you're back," Freya said, setting her wine glass down with unhurried precision, "do you want your level up known to the Guild?"

He thought about it for a genuine moment. He had been deliberately keeping a low profile, building his foundations in the shadows. But the Class Change had happened. The spar with Ottar had happened. He was not the same unknown variable he had been a fortnight ago, and pretending otherwise was starting to cost more than it protected.

He nodded. "Yes. It's time. I want my feat officially recorded."

Freya's expression registered something close to approval. She gave a slow, thoughtful nod. "I'll send word to the Guild tomorrow, then." A pause settled between them, measured and deliberate, and then the corner of her mouth curved. "Any preference for an alias?"

He looked at her blankly.

Her smile widened—the particular smile she deployed when she was enjoying having information he didn't. "The alias an adventurer receives on a notable level up," she elaborated. "The Gods convene in a Denatus. They debate. They propose." A beat. "They bicker, for the most part."

Max processed this. He was, in fact, aware of the Denatus—the great divine assembly in which the Gods gathered and, with all the gravity and solemnity of their celestial station, proceeded to give adventurers wonderfully overwrought titles that the adventurers in question usually had to live with till they level up again. It was, in the most affectionate possible reading, extraordinarily chunni.

He absolutely loved it.

He shook his head, smothering the smile that wanted to break through. "I'll leave it to them. I'd genuinely love to see what they come up with."

Freya narrowed her eyes slightly. "Something worthy of you, I'm certain," she said, and there was an edge of quiet steel beneath the easy tone—a promise, or perhaps a warning directed at any God who might consider submitting something embarrassing.

Max shrugged, privately appreciating that more than he showed. He absolutely wanted a good title. He simply wasn't going to be the one to demand it, because that felt very self-important in a way that made him uncomfortable. Besides—much like the great Octagram of Tensura and their gloriously over-the-top sobriquets, he had genuine faith in the assembled Gods of Gekai to rise to the occasion.

And more to the point, he had faith in Freya.

He was honestly grateful she hadn't brought up the kiss again. He had finally wrestled his wandering mind back under control, and he genuinely didn't want to unpack the sheer, terrifying complexity of navigating a romantic relationship with a literal Goddess right now. The absolute rule of any world was simple: power attracts.

Once he reached the level of a High-Class Devil, he could afford to think about the logistics properly. Or maybe he'd just wait until he found his 'true love'—a concept that felt like a massive stretch considering no girl at his old school had ever held his interest for more than five minutes. Then again, getting Isekaied into a fantasy world with a Devil's body had been an even bigger impossibility, so he supposed anything was on the table.

A soft, deliberate clearing of a throat broke his train of thought.

He looked back up at Freya, and in his newly relaxed state, his eyes inevitably did the one thing they absolutely shouldn't have. They noticed the details he had been so desperately ignoring. The deep, plunging neckline of her dress. The distinctly mischievous glint returning to her silver eyes. The undeniable, gravity-defying presence of her Sacred Treasures leaning just a fraction of an inch further toward him.

Alright. Diversion. Need a diversion! Max screamed internally.

"I believe," Freya murmured, her tone practically dripping with velvet, "you still owe me a flight, Max. Unless you've forgotten your promise?"

Max stared at her, fighting to keep his expression perfectly neutral while projecting a massive, spiritual Are you kidding me? over his head. He was rather proud of his composure, having built an unshakable persona designed specifically to survive embarrassing situations like this. But if he took her up in the air right now—where she would inevitably have to hold onto him, pressing all those newly noticed details against his back—he would instantly lose the very last shred of Sagehood he had managed to salvage from the evening.

He paused, a sudden, bizarre existential question hitting him out of nowhere. Why was he trying so hard to save it, anyway?

He was in an Isekai, for fuck's sake. It was practically mandatory for the protagonist to end up with a harem. There were countless precedents. Every single protagonist had a bunch of beautiful women throwing themselves at them—even that gender-equality fanatic Kazuma had managed it. So why was he fighting tooth and nail to salvage a celibate stoicism he knew wasn't going to last? Did he actually like the torture?

Or... was it the influence of the Isekai Gods?

He stopped. Everything had gone almost suspiciously in his favor so far, aside from today's experiences. What if his rapid progression wasn't just the system? What if the Isekai Gods had tied his monumental growth directly to his restraint?

He ran the data in his head, looking for precedents — and the first one that came to mind was possibly the reason the Isekai genre had taken off in the first place: Rimuru. The guy started with the Great Sage skill, and as a literal slime, he lacked the anatomy to do anything even if he wanted to. The result? He eventually evolved into a Chaos Creator and the fifth True Dragon. Utterly overpowered.

Then there was Cid Kagenou. The ultimate background character and secret mastermind of Shadow Garden. He had seven of the most beautiful, deadly women in the world hopelessly in love with him, and a literal princess, Alexia, as a fake girlfriend. Yet Cid completely ignored them, prioritizing his money and his chunni roleplay over everything else. The result? Also unfathomably overpowered.

Just to make it a completely unbiased study, he looked at the other side of the spectrum. Kazuma. A hopeless NEET and an unapologetic pervert who constantly chased women and couldn't save his own life half the time. Sure, he had a literal goddess with him, and she was beautiful on the outside—but the moment she opened her mouth, she became the ultimate mood killer. Kazuma might have eventually defeated the Demon King(which is a big IF), but he scraped the bottom of the barrel through endless suffering to do it.

Or Subaru, the poor sod who got arguably the absolute worst Isekai experience imaginable simply because a cosmic-level crazy yandere happened to fall in love with him. His Return by Death was fundamentally one of the most broken abilities in existence, but it came packaged with the debilitating mental and emotional trauma of watching everyone he loved die, or killing himself just to reset the timeline. If the guy had possessed some kind of trauma suppression, he would have spammed that ability more than Naruto spammed the Rasengan. But he didn't. He just suffered.

He didn't even want to think about the 'others' who populated the generic trash-tier harem genre.

The pattern was undeniable. Romance and lust equaled suffering, trauma, and mediocrity. Absolute restraint equaled absolute, world-breaking power.

The bigger the Sage, the higher the rewards.

It was a completely wild, unhinged theory. But as he sat there staring at the Goddess of Beauty while his heart hammered in his throat, he felt a terrifying certainty that he might have just deduced the cosmic gimmick of his existence.

With that conclusion locked firmly into place, he marshaled the absolute last reserves of his composure, looked up at her, and replied.

"Not today, my Lady," he said, his voice impressively steady. "I've had enough surprises for one day."

Freya looked at him quizzically for a moment before giving a slow, thoughtful nod. "Alright then," she murmured. "In compensation, you will sleep here until Ottar gets back."

Max opened his mouth to protest, but the words died in his throat. She was wearing a ruthless, deeply satisfied smile that told him instantly this was a losing argument. She had laid the trap, and he had walked right into it.

Knowing better than to fight a battle he had already lost, he shifted tactics. "I'll agree to that," he countered smoothly. "I'll stay and guard you until he returns. But only on one condition."

She raised an elegant eyebrow, waiting.

"You agree to postpone this flight on my back until I reach High-Class," he said, offering a distinct smirk of his own.

Freya's eyes narrowed a fraction. She gave a small, distinctly unsatisfied nod as she stood gracefully from the chaise. "In that case, let us prepare for sleep."

She turned and walked into her expansive wardrobe, leaving him alone in the chamber. Max exhaled a massive breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Crisis averted. Dignity—and Sagehood—intact.

He was just raising a hand, preparing to teleport his own bed from his suite into the bedroom, when the mental tether in his mind snapped taut.

Another ping from Gojo.

Not a casual notification this time. A sharp, violent spike of alarm that bypassed their usual banter entirely and translated into a single, urgent word:

Emergency!

--> Devil in a Dungeon <--

AN:

Hope this chapter answers what Max's and Freya's views on potentially getting closer. I thought Danmachi Gods can't have children on Gekai, wasn't aware they can't have children at all. And I would say here Max was a bit too blindsided by the kiss to think completely straight, and if his rational and logic sides would have come to a better decision about the relationship and the whole The bigger the Sage, the higher the rewards thing.

And the realization, does it make sense to you or do you believe Max conjures some fictitious thought to anchor himself??

Other than that, the chapter covered many things from Freya's thoughts, Kairu's Status, Max's thoughts and finally whatever this emergency Gojo's facing in the abandoned church.

In the next chapter, we will see what this emergency is and in addition going to finally see our most favorite elf. ;)

Don't forget to share your thoughts on the story in a review/comment.

If you'd like to read 8 chapters ahead(around 40k words), support my work, 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.

More Chapters