10 Days Later
The Pantheon
Royman Mardeel
He had survived over a century of divine politics, economic warfare, and the kind of labyrinthine bureaucratic nightmares that would have broken lesser men before breakfast. He had outlasted ancient pantheons, weathered catastrophic Familia collapses, and quietly, thanklessly steered Orario's financial machinery through crises that never made it into the history books.
A man like that does not unravel easily.
And yet, sitting at his immaculate desk on this particular morning, staring at the sprawling parchment in his hands, he found himself deeply, personally, and fundamentally unsettled.
It had all begun less than a month ago with a mop of blue hair.
He remembered the very first time he had laid eyes on the anomaly — standing beside Lady Freya in the Guild's private corridors as they made their way down to Lord Ouranos's chamber. Royman had taken one look at the boy and drafted an immediate, dismissive assessment.
Cocky. Disrespectful. Utterly full of himself.
He appeared to be exactly the kind of young, impulsive adventurer who confused raw talent for earned authority — a boy who had not yet had the brutal reality of the Dungeon correct that particular misunderstanding.
But there had been something else there too, lurking just beneath the surface. A suffocating density. A wrongness in the air around him that Royman hadn't been able to name. He had filed the uneasy feeling away and moved on.
He rather wished he had paid it more attention.
The official directive from Lord Ouranos had arrived the very next day.
Fast-track whatever business the boy brings forward.
Royman had read the missive three times. Then he had set it down, polished his spectacles, picked the parchment back up, and read it a fourth time just to confirm that his aging eyes were not deceiving him.
He had considered his options carefully. Technically, could this be framed as a Familia coercing Guild compliance? Could he reject it on administrative grounds? He had mentally drafted the argument, found it incredibly satisfying for approximately fifteen seconds, and then remembered exactly which Goddess had claimed the boy.
Thinking of her inadvertently made his mind wander, and he found himself missing the Zeus Familia. He truly did. He even harbored a begrudging, terrified respect for the Hera Familia's blunt, destructive efficiency. At least with Zeus and Hera, there had been a certain reliable symmetry — a rivalry between male and female that kept both sides somewhat predictable. You always knew which way the wind was blowing, and they had been invaluable, if difficult, partners in the grand pursuit of the Three Great Quests.
But Loki and Freya were a whole different category of catastrophe. They were self-serving in ways that made Hera look like a public servant, and chaotic in ways that made Zeus look like a meticulous accountant. Dealing with either of them on a good day required three cups of elven wine and a written apology prepared in advance. Crossing the Freya Familia without the full, vocal backing of the Guild was not a retirement plan he intended to pursue.
And so he had sent the directive to be filed and swallowed his pride.
He had managed, at least, to redirect the Pallum Captain's considerable attention firmly back toward the Dungeon, feeding Finn Deimne enough interesting intelligence to keep his focus pointed downward rather than at Guild affairs. The Dungeon's escalating difficulty had cooperated beautifully in this regard.
Unfortunately, he had no such clean solution for Mia Grand, who appeared to operate fully outside the reach of social pressure and common sense. And Ottar simply didn't speak to him long enough for Royman to assess anything of value.
And now, he had a third problem — one that felt determined to personally undo everything he had quietly built for this city.
The Hermes situation had been the first truly serious blow.
When Royman had first uncovered the true, horrifying nature of the gems the boy had dragged out of the Dungeon, he had acted immediately. He had dispatched the Messenger God to negotiate. Hermes was charming, slippery, and reliably self-interested — exactly the kind of proxy you wanted when you needed to secure highly dangerous property without tipping the seller off to its true value.
Lord Ouranos had requested a private word with Hermes just before the deity departed for Folkvangr. Royman hadn't known the particulars of that conversation, nor had he cared to ask. His own mandate had been blissfully simple: acquire the gems, pay the absolute lowest price possible, and be done with the headache.
He hadn't foreseen a single thing going wrong. It was a negotiation between a seasoned, silver-tongued deity and a rookie adventurer. The outcome had seemed self-evident.
It was not.
Hermes had returned to his office looking completely hollowed out. The easy, conversational looseness the deity usually wore like a second skin was totally gone. He had looked like a man who had walked into a negotiation and been systematically dismantled, and he had dropped an unfathomable figure onto Royman's desk with the exhausted relief of someone setting down a weight they had been carrying too long.
257.5 Million Valis.
Royman had made a sound that had alarmed his assistant enough to knock on the door and ask if he was suffering a cardiac event. He had sent the assistant away, sat very still for a long, painful moment, and then continued listening to Hermes's report.
It had gotten worse.
Not content with making the Guild hemorrhage a quarter of a billion Valis, the boy had — through that defeated god's negotiation — requested payment not wholly in coin, but in rare metals.
Mithril. Adamantite. And Orichalcum.
His soul had briefly left his body at that last word.
He had sat with the number for the whole evening. Does the boy think Orichalcum grows on trees in the Elven forests? That all we have to do is send a cart and a pair of garden shears?! Those metals were the Guild's fiercely guarded strategic reserve — hoarded specifically to outfit the apex adventurers for the survival of the world, not to be handed out as pocket change to a Level 2 rookie!
He had heavily considered canceling the transaction outright, preferring to risk Lady Freya's wrath over surrendering his vault, until Mr. Fels materialized directly in his office. The skeletal mage had quietly, politely, and with terrifying finality requested that all of the gems be acquired. No exceptions. No matter the cost.
And so, with the agonizing grimace of a man amputating his own arm, Royman had personally counted out one hundred and seventy-five million Valis. He had pulled the Mithril and Adamantite from the deep reserves, making a vindictive mental note to redirect the boy's Familia's next S-rank expeditions toward explicitly sourcing replacement ores before anything else. He was not going through this particular agony again unprepared.
He had appointed Rehmer to handle all future dealings with the boy's operation. Royman refused to sit across a table from a teenager who had effortlessly extracted that sum from him, and he had prayed, quietly and without dignity, that would be the end of it.
The boy had his money. He would surely go away.
Then the secondary ripples began hitting his desk — and they all carried the same unmistakable scent.
The Soma Familia — a notorious, wretched den of desperate addicts — had suddenly filed two official notices in the same week, and both had been extraordinary enough to interrupt even his current spiral of administrative despair.
The first was a formal request from their newly appointed — and apparently unprecedented — Executive, requesting Guild assistance in the rehabilitation of the Familia's considerable population of chronic drunks.
Rehabilitation. Of Soma Familia members.
He had read the word three times. The document was coherent, properly formatted, and stamped with a legitimate Familia seal, which meant it was technically his problem now. He had handed it wordlessly to their assigned Familia advisor with a look that communicated, in no uncertain terms, that he wished them the very best of luck dealing with those derelicts.
The second notice had arrived the following morning, and had stopped him cold in a way that even the Orichalcum demand had not quite managed.
It was a clean, formally worded declaration stating that all individuals currently engaged in theft, burglary, mob activity, and various other categories of petty crime across the city were hereby no longer members of Soma Familia and should be treated accordingly by Guild and Ganesha Familia.
They were voluntarily purging their own ranks.
Royman had sat with that one for a full minute. In a century of Guild work, he had processed Familia collapses, forced dissolutions, divine departures, and the occasional spectacular implosion. He had never once received a notice from a Familia that had apparently looked at its own membership, decided a significant portion of it was an embarrassing liability, and simply chosen to sever them.
If they wanted to shed all that dead weight, who was he to object? It saved the Guild the cost of prosecuting them under the Soma banner.
He had forwarded it to the Familia advisor as well, with a marginal note that read: Handle this. Do not bring it back to me unless someone important dies.
The same ruthless, quietly terrifying logic ran through both notices like a thread. It was the boy's influence. It had to be.
Which brought him, inevitably, back to the parchment currently ruining his morning.
Rehmer's finalized negotiation notes.
A Protection Fund. Fine. Royman could see the political utility in that, even if the gesture itself made his eye twitch. Thirty million Valis deposited directly onto his liaison's desk — and Royman knew, with the ingrained instinct of a man who had managed this city's money for a century, that the boy hadn't done it out of generosity. It was a calculated move. A public shaming dressed up as philanthropy, designed to make the Guild look negligent if they refused to match it. The fund would be genuinely useful, which made it all the more infuriating. He had already instructed Rehmer to quote the proposed amounts in the Guild's formal reply.
A Newbie Training Program. Maddening in its presumptuousness, but mechanically inoffensive. The Guild could easily reframe it as an internal initiative. He could live with it.
A Retirement and Pension Scheme.
Royman set the parchment down. He took a long breath and picked it up again.
A Retirement and Pension Scheme for adventurers. People who had signed their names on a document that explicitly, legally, and irrevocably waived their right to compensation upon death. People who had chosen — chosen, of their own free will and supposedly sound mind — to walk into a subterranean structure that was actively trying to kill them for sport and personal glory.
He was supposed to pay them a monthly stipend for the privilege of having made a terrible career decision and subsequently aged out of it?
He turned to the final item on the list. The one he had been actively avoiding.
Death and Disability Insurance.
Royman set the parchment on his desk, folded his manicured hands neatly on top of it, and stared out of his window for a long, meditative moment.
They were to hand out insurance to adventurers. To the rabble who walked willingly into the most dangerous environment on the planet, chasing the thrill of becoming stronger, and occasionally — frequently — got themselves killed in the process.
He was to compensate them for this. For their failure to survive a dungeon they had chosen to enter.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was definitely going to develop a migraine. He could already feel it assembling itself behind his left eye.
He wanted to be clear with himself on one point: he was not an unreasonable man. He was not the naive, starry-eyed young elf who had joined the Guild over a century ago, full of grand ideas about divine benevolence and the nobility of the adventuring spirit.
He had long since learned the truth of what most Gods actually thought of this city and its people. A game. A playground. An amusing pastime. He had watched enough deities cycle through Orario's gates to know that the average god's investment in adventurer welfare began and ended with how entertaining those adventurers were to watch.
He was also aware — acutely, painfully aware, as the one who managed the ledgers — that the Guild profited enormously from the system exactly as it stood. The blood of the weak paved the roads for the strong. It was a brutal calculus, but it was the only way to forge heroes capable of completing the Three Great Quests.
And Royman was not in the business of dismantling profitable systems out of misplaced sentiment.
The boy, however, had apparently not received that particular memo.
He was not unsympathetic to the broader argument. He thought of the Astraea Familia and the Ganesha Familia. Of the people who spent their days and nights bleeding to keep Orario's streets from collapsing into chaos, and who received precisely nothing from the governing body that profited most from their efforts.
He thought of the Zeus and Hera Familia section of Rehmer's notes, and the almost imperceptible tremor he had noticed in his liaison's handwriting at that particular passage.
The Guild's abandonment of the surviving members after the fall of their champions was the kind of shame that lived in dark, unexamined corners. The kind nobody discussed. The kind that was simply filed under unavoidable loss and quietly forgotten in the relentless pursuit of the next generation of heroes.
The boy had walked into a Guild meeting room and dragged that specific, historical shame directly into the unforgiving light.
Royman exhaled slowly through his nose.
He looked at the final draft of the Guild's formal response, already prepared and waiting on the edge of his desk. Rehmer had done excellent work, as always. And setting his bruised ego firmly aside, Royman had to admit the truth of it: the boy was handing them a miracle.
The teleportation network alone was a historic acquisition — instantaneous transit to the lower floors meant that the heroes capable of completing the remaining Great Quest might actually be within reach again within his lifetime. The communication bracelets he had already distributed among himself, Lord Ouranos, and Mr. Fels had proven flawless in testing, their range and clarity beyond anything the Guild's current infrastructure could match. He had ordered Rehmer to acquire more immediately. The potions had cleared their initial apothecary review and were being fast-tracked into the newbie support package. The combat rings had impressed even Mr. Fels, who had quietly requested one for his own use — which was, in Royman's long experience, the highest possible endorsement any piece of equipment could receive.
He would have paid the full 175-million Valis cost for the bracelets and the transit network alone and considered himself ahead. Everything else was surplus.
The Protection Fund was approved and included in the response.
The rest — the pensions, the training, the insurance — was deferred, pending review by the upper council. Which was a polite, institutional way of saying: we have heard you, we cannot argue with you, and we are not yet ready to agree with you.
It was, all things considered, more ground than any single adventurer had moved the Guild in living memory.
Royman looked at the parchment for the final time.
He thought of the boy as he had first appeared in that corridor — blue hair, aristocratic face, something distinctly dangerous about him that Royman still could not quantify. He thought of how far the tectonic plates of this city's economy and logistics had shifted in under a month.
He was apprehensive. Deeply, professionally, constitutionally apprehensive.
He was also, somewhere beneath the migraine and the wounded elven pride and the frankly unacceptable loss of millions of Valis, quietly and reluctantly curious about what the boy would come up with next.
He picked up his official seal, pressed it firmly into the wax at the bottom of the Guild's formal response, and summoned his assistant.
"Take this to Rehmer," Royman commanded, his tone clipped and professional. "Immediately."
His assistant bowed and turned to leave. When —
BANG.
The heavy oak door flew open, rebounding violently against the frame.
This was no polite, scheduled interruption. A junior staff member practically collapsed into the doorway, gasping for air, his face drained of every drop of color it had previously possessed.
"Chief Royman, sir!" the young man wheezed, his eyes wide with pure panic, pressing a hand against the doorframe to keep himself upright. "Emergency news from Rivira, sir!"
Royman set his seal down very carefully on the polished wood.
He looked at the panting young man. He looked at the sealed document. A moment of silence passed.
The migraine behind his eye finally pulsed in full force.
He already knew with certainty of a man who had spent the last month cataloguing the impossible, exactly whose name was going to feature prominently in whatever disaster had just unfolded.
"Close the door," Royman said, his voice devoid of emotion. "Sit down. Breathe. And then tell me exactly what happened."
-◈ -
Max
He looked at himself in the tall mirror one last time while Hogni made the final, meticulous adjustments to his collar.
The Dark Elf had insisted on it. Apparently, representing Freya at an official, historic ceremony in his casual shirt was a crime equivalent to treason, and Hogni communicated this without a single word — relying fully on the sustained intensity of his disapproving stare to make the point.
Max let him work, his mind drifting back through the blur of the last ten days.
It felt like a lifetime since he had walked back into this very room and found two parchments waiting on his desk.
The first was ornate — heavy vellum, immaculate penmanship, carrying the unmistakable weight of Freya's personal authority. He read it twice just to make sure he understood it correctly.
He did, unfortunately.
Kairu — a slime — was formally elevated to the role of Executive, granted full authority over the Rivira teleportation network. Max, meanwhile, was listed as his official Representative.
His first instinct was that it was a prank. A very specific, deliberate joke from a Goddess who had offered him the post directly, watched him decline it, and was now expressing her feelings on that decision by appointing his familiar in his place. It had the exact shape of something Freya would find deeply amusing.
He had left to run some errands alone, hunting without backup, only to return and find his slime promoted to an Executive of one of Orario's most powerful Familias.
He looked down at Kairu to confirm the absurdity.
Kairu jiggled.
Not with confusion or surprise. With the serene, untroubled contentment of a slime who found the situation perfectly reasonable and saw no reason to discuss it further.
Max gave him the most exhausted, exasperated look he could physically construct, received another cheerful jiggle in response, and quietly accepted that this was simply the shape his life had taken now.
Which did nothing to stop him from wanting to do something about it.
The argument assembled itself naturally: go to her chambers, knock on the door, and calmly explain that appointing a literal puddle of ooze to a senior command position was, at minimum, worth a prior conversation. It was a reasonable argument. It was, frankly, an airtight argument.
And then he imagined the door opening.
Freya in the dim, intimate light of her chambers. Silver eyes catching the glow. Wearing her nightgown and looking at him with that particular expression — the one that made his higher reasoning functions temporarily vacate the premises. If he walked in there at midnight, high on adrenaline, running on wounded pride and no sleep, he already knew exactly how that conversation would end, and it would not end with a calm discussion about organizational structure. A daytime confrontation was the only version of this that made any sense. He would handle it in the morning, when he was rested and she was presumably wearing real clothes.
The first parchment went back on the desk.
Then he picked up the second parchment — Kairu's status update — and it drove the Freya problem wholly from his mind.
Level Four.
The developmental ability was Protection. The description sitting neatly beside it read: The will to protect manifested. Enhances the host capabilities as needed. It was an obvious, expected pick, earned through everything the slime had put himself through. Kairu spent half his combat time acting as a literal shield for Max — and occasionally from him, he supposed. A dynamic buff to his defensive and supportive output was a perfect, highly practical fit.
What he hadn't expected was the additional skill listed quietly beneath it.
Aqua Vitae — The water of origin. Bestows special properties to the user's water.
Max stared at the text. It was vague to the point of being almost useless, leaving the exact mechanics frustratingly open-ended. Did "special properties" mean healing? Rejuvenation? Some kind of limb restoration? Kairu had absorbed so many different materials, potions, and monsters over the past few weeks that pinning down a specific trigger for it was pointless.
Regardless, for a creature fully composed of liquid, fundamentally modifying his foundational element was a massive upgrade. Max settled on the conclusion that his familiar had gained something incredibly versatile, even if neither of them fully understood its limits yet.
Then, his gaze caught one final shift near the bottom of the page.
Ars Magna (Lesser) had officially evolved into Ars Magna (Medium).
Max let out a quiet breath, the full utility of that change washing over him. A quiet elation settled in his chest as he realized Kairu wasn't just getting stronger; he was becoming exponentially more adaptable. Max gave his familiar a deeply appreciative look, set the parchment down on the desk, and finally went to sleep without further deliberation.
He went to bed determined to clear things up with Freya the very next morning.
That morning never came.
He told himself he would handle it when he was in better condition, and then days passed, and the excuse quietly evolved into something that looked more like pragmatism: the Amphisbaena was still ahead of him as his next major milestone, which meant no status update, which meant no legitimate professional reason to seek her out. It was a very clean chain of logic. He chose not to pull at any of the threads.
Instead, he threw himself into Daedalus Street.
Night was the only time worth exploring it. During the day, the street wore a face of poverty and decay — miserable, but navigable. After sunset, it shed that skin totally, revealing something older and considerably more dangerous underneath. The criminal networks that ran the district didn't surface in daylight. They surfaced when the torches guttered low and the city above stopped paying attention, and what they looked like in that light made the organized brutality of the surface Evilus seem almost quaint by comparison.
Territorial disputes resolved with rusted blades in alleys too narrow to properly swing them. Protection rackets operating on a block-by-block basis with their own quietly savage internal hierarchies. Entire communities living in spaces the city's architects had never intended for habitation, surviving through methods Orario's upper districts simply pretended didn't exist.
He mapped what he could. Carefully, methodically, one layer at a time.
It wasn't enough.
Every time he believed he'd found the end of an alley, another entrance opened — behind a loose wall, beneath a rotted staircase, inside what appeared to be a sealed room until it wasn't. Daedalus built the district with the apparent specific intention of making thorough cartography feel like a personal insult. Three separate mental maps. Three discarded as incomplete.
Between the nights in the street, he spent the daylight hours at Folkvangr building stock. The warehouse was filling steadily — rings sorted by tier, packed in secured cases, ready for the shop the moment it opened. He had a number in mind before launch, enough inventory to absorb the inevitable first-week surge without going dry, and he was close but not there yet.
The Guild situation, meanwhile, stalled in precisely the infuriating way he expected.
Instead of outright rejections, it was a war of bureaucratic attrition. Rehmer regularly contacted him through the communication bracelet, hesitantly asking for more and more granular details on behalf of "higher officials." The pinnacle of this nonsense had arrived yesterday, when Rehmer — sounding like a man reading his own execution orders — pitched the idea of diverting Max's personal revenue from the sale of his magical items to fully cover the Protection Fund's operational costs.
Max had shut the idea down with such chilling finality that he ensured Rehmer would never ask a foolish question like that again.
He had sighed afterward, his irritation giving way to a dry smirk. He knew exactly whose idea that had been. Guess the pig is too scared to talk to me himself, huh? Royman was clearly unwilling to divert a single Valis of the Guild's existing revenue, but Max was equally determined to force his hand. It was almost funny, watching poor Rehmer become the collateral damage caught between them.
Almost.
Max was at the end of his patience with their deliberate inefficiency. He had intentionally held off on setting up the teleportation markers for his Familia until yesterday, wanting to launch both the public transit network and the Freya Familia's private version simultaneously. But after that ridiculous question yesterday, he realized the Guild was just going to keep dragging its feet. He wasn't going to stall his own Familia's progress for Royman's comfort any longer.
That fucking pig.
Ping.
A soft, clean chime rang in his mind.
Max stopped mid-thought and focused on the sender.
Maria.
The irritation dissolved almost immediately, replaced by the image of the Daedalus Street orphanage — warm light spilling under a door in a street where warm light was a rarity.
He had met her the night after the patrol with Alise and the others, slipping back into the slums to follow up on what Alise had mentioned about the orphanage. He expected to find a struggling woman managing an impossible situation through sheer stubbornness. He found that, but beneath it lay something else: a deliberate choice. She maintained the place with a warmth and quiet competence that caught him fully off guard.
He offered high-quality meats, enough staple food to keep the children fed properly, and a pouch of Valis that was generous by anyone's measure. She tried to decline. It wasn't out of embarrassment, but rather a calm, immovable dignity — the pride of a woman who had spent years preserving her self-respect through circumstances far harder than a well-meaning stranger with a full wallet.
He told her it was on behalf of Mama Mia. That he was her business partner. That the Hostess had specifically asked him to ensure the orphanage was looked after.
The name relaxed something in her shoulders that no amount of his own persuasion had touched.
She accepted everything after that.
Her late husband had been an adventurer, she mentioned, closely affiliated with the Zeus Familia in his time. Which explained why, when Max reached into his storage pouch to move supplies, she watched his display of spatial magic without blinking. She was already intimately familiar with the impossible, and simply grateful for the help. Max was more than happy about the lack of questions.
The ping this morning was a standard restocking notification — nothing urgent. Max pulled the pre-packed crate from his storage and sent it through with a brief confirmation. Under thirty seconds, start to finish.
He stared at himself in the mirror a moment longer, perfectly anchored back in the present morning, thinking that whatever else Royman's bureaucratic machinery was grinding up on his end, at least this particular thing was working exactly as it should.
"Done," Hogni said quietly from behind him, stepping back with a single satisfied nod.
He took one last look at his reflection. Sharp, handsome, charming, and unnecessarily formal. He felt Hogni had a genuine gift for this type of thing. Finally ready, he left the administrative headaches and memories behind, as they made their way down toward the grounds.
He had to hand it to Hedin. The White Elf was an undeniable monster when it came to logistics.
Hedin had worked through the whole night without a single break, transforming the designated spot from raw dungeon terrain into a functional military base. Building materials had been teleported down in carefully sequenced, mathematically precise loads. On the receiving end in Rivira, Hedin had personally overseen a specialized, highly compensated crew of Goibniu Familia craftsmen, directing the overnight construction with a ruthless, demanding perfectionism that left no room for error.
Building a fortified, permanent structure inside the Dungeon usually required weeks of bloody, attritional labor—assuming it could be done at all. Hedin and the craftsmen had pulled it off in twelve hours.
Word had come back that the construction in the Under Resort was finished. The anchor point was secured and fortified. Once this morning's group crossed over, the outpost would be officially established, and there was absolutely nothing the Guild could do to reverse it. They could note it in their ledgers, convene their endless committees, or send Rehmer running back and forth with polite letters about oversight protocols.
It didn't matter. It would be already real.
Kairu bounced on his shoulder as they walked, clearly aware that today was significant and expressing this awareness through increasingly enthusiastic jiggling.
The internal administrative pieces had fallen into place just as efficiently. Trent was officially appointed Head of the Rivira Outpost — an excellent call. The man carried exactly the right balance of competence and unflappability for a permanent posting this deep in the Dungeon. Van was confirmed as Head of Personnel at Folkvangr, overseeing daily operations across the board except for the Executives and the smaller inner circle: himself, Heith, Horn, and a few others whose roles sat outside standard reporting structures.
The other promises were kept too. Trent and Van got their night at the Hostess — a proper one, featuring food that justified every word of its reputation and an atmosphere Mia maintained through pure force of personality. Afterward, Max teleported them directly to the 24th floor. The shock on the duo's faces at bypassing twenty-three floors of the Dungeon in a single breath had been priceless.
But they proved their worth as true battle junkies almost immediately. The surprise barely lasted a minute before it dissolved into fierce, unadulterated joy, and they launched themselves at the surrounding monsters with reckless enthusiasm.
Max handed them a summoning sheet to ping him whenever they were finished, leaving them to their grinding while he stayed behind working on other things. Since they had packed heavily under the assumption that all three of them would be diving together, the duo had more than enough supplies to survive. They didn't ping him for a return trip for three whole days. Max felt a quiet satisfaction at the outcome, happy to have given them one last violent, exhilarating push before the administrative weight of their new jobs swallowed their schedules.
As for his own experiments, the Lightning Armor was coming along. The theory was sound; the practical integration was taking longer than he liked. His other project was considerably more abstract — whether Haki, as he understood it from his previous life, could be genuinely replicated here. Of all the power systems he carried, One Piece offered the most transferable concepts precisely because Rokushiki and Haki were fundamentally physical and spiritual rather than magical. No system required. No Blessing required. Just the human body and enough willpower to push past what it believed its own limits were.
This world had no shortage of either ingredient. The translation would take time.
But it would work.
They reached the grounds before his thoughts could drift any further.
Max scanned the area. Fifty-odd people stood in formation — all Level Three, geared fully in their combat attire with the focused, settled readiness of warriors who understood exactly what kind of morning this was. Trent stood in front of them, composed and solid as always. Heith waited near the raised platform, ready to make the crossing with the group. Rest of the familia were positioned to the side.
Max and Hogni stepped up to the podium, and the murmuring began immediately. Fragments drifting through the crowd — people recognizing him, recalibrating, putting pieces together.
— really is him —
—what is that —
— he was the Madman, didn't believe it —
— how is he even up there, he joined barely a month ago —
He let the whispers wash over him without reaction, waiting patiently as the murmuring rippled through the ranks. A few moments later, the hushed voices were severed completely by a sudden, collective shift in the atmosphere.
Freya had arrived.
It was the first time Max had seen her after his update, and she was even more stunning than usual. She wore a layered gown of soft lavender, white, and gold, the fabric catching the morning light with a subtle luminescence. Its fitted bodice was trimmed in fine gold thread that traced the neckline and seams in clean, precise lines. With her silver hair arranged simply but deliberately, the ensemble commanded the occasion effortlessly, striking a perfect balance between regal and commanding.
She moved toward the podium with natural, unhurried grace, her silver eyes sweeping the assembled adventurers with warmth and quiet authority. Reaching the platform, her gaze found Max and the enthusiastically jiggling slime on his shoulder, her expression welcoming and privately amused in equal measure.
When she offered them a warm, dazzling smile, Kairu lost all composure, vibrating on Max's shoulder with uncontrollable joy. Max, however, kept his own expression strictly neutral through disciplined effort.
Ottar followed two steps behind the Goddess, with his crushing presence. But walking right behind the towering captain, to Max's genuine surprise, was an exceptionally sour-faced Allen.
Seeing the famously hostile Vice-Captain attending this specific event of his own volition was shocking enough to warrant a sideways glance. In return, Max received a scowl of such concentrated, specific displeasure that it actually clarified the situation immediately. Allen wasn't here because he wanted to be. He was here because Freya had asked him to be, and Allen would gladly walk into an active volcano if she requested it. That certainly didn't mean he had to pretend to enjoy the surrounding circumstances.
Max wisely decided not to acknowledge him.
Freya stepped to the front of the platform, looking out over her assembled warriors, and let the heavy quiet settle over the courtyard before she finally spoke. When she did, her voice carried without effort—not raised, not projected, but simply present in the way only a divine voice could be, filling the space effortlessly without seeming to try.
"My Einherjar," she began, her silver eyes moving across the assembled faces with slow, deliberate weight. "Today, you stand upon the very edge of history. The names of those who cross this threshold will be remembered forever as the first to establish a permanent, fortified base within the Dungeon itself."
She let a warm, radiant pride touch her features. "But before we take this monumental step, I must express my deepest gratitude to our newest Executive, whose unparalleled efforts have made this triumph a reality."
With a graceful sweep of her arm, Freya gestured directly toward Max and the happily jiggling slime on his shoulder.
At that precise, terrible moment, Kairu's bravery spectacularly failed him. As if the weight of hundreds of intense, reverent stares had suddenly pierced through his exhibitionist joy, the traitorous slime instantly flattened himself, slithering rapidly down Max's back and disappearing from view to hide in his collar.
With the slime gone, Freya's elegant gesture was left pointing squarely, undeniably, at Max.
For a second, the crowd simply blinked. Then, the realization washed over the veterans. They didn't know exactly what the blue-haired rookie had done to pull this off, but if the Goddess herself was naming him an Executive for delivering them the Dungeon... that was enough.
A cheer erupted from the front row, quickly rippling outward until the entire formation was shouting, slamming their fists against their breastplates, and roaring their gratitude directly at him.
Max stood frozen, completely mortified as the thunderous cheers washed over him. Why would she do this to me?
He looked at Freya. The Goddess briefly adopted an expression of perfect, innocent confusion regarding her suddenly missing slime. Then, with the flawless grace of a deity who had just executed a masterful "mistake," she flashed Max a brilliantly mischievous smirk.
She let the cheers echo for another moment before raising her hand. The crowd quieted instantly, hanging on her every word as she smoothly pivoted back into her speech.
"What you are about to do," she continued, letting the solemnity return to her voice, "has never been done before. The Zeus Familia. The Hera Familia."
She let both names land heavily in the courtyard.
"They were the two greatest powers this city has ever produced. Between them, they held Orario's dominance for a thousand years. They pushed deeper into the Dungeon than any force before or since. And yet..." She paused, clean and absolute. "Not once did either of them establish a permanent, fortified foothold inside the abyss."
Silence reigned over the grounds.
"Today, we assert our dominance over the history of Orario. Today, we do what they could not!"
Max watched the words move through the crowd. He saw the shift in their posture, spines straightening, witnessing the exact, fierce expression that crosses fifty faces when warriors understand they are standing inside a moment that will be written down in legend.
"In a few moments, the warriors standing in that circle will be moved—not marched, not rappelled, not guided through floors of hazard and attrition—but moved, directly, to our new stronghold in the Under Resort. To Rivira." Her gaze found Trent, steady and acknowledging. "The Outpost will be led by Trent Gillthunder—a Level 3 veteran who understands the weight of what he carries."
Trent inclined his head. Nothing more. It was a quiet confirmation; he had already decided he would not fail, and felt no need to announce it aloud.
Freya let the silence ripen fully before she continued.
"The moment has arrived, my Einherjar."
Her voice softened into something warmer without losing a single degree of its authority, carrying the profound, familiar weight of a Goddess who had sent generations of warriors into the dungeon.
"I wish you fortune. And I entrust you to carry the name of Freya into the dungeon, and return with the prosperity this Familia has earned."
Her gaze moved to Max. A single nod.
He didn't hesitate.
The teleportation circle ignited beneath the assembled warriors—a clean, steady surge of energy expanding outward in concentric rings of purple light. The fifty-odd Level Threes held their positions as the light rose around them, and then, between one breath and the next, they were gone.
The grounds were significantly quieter.
Max was already focused on Heith before the last echo of the transfer faded. A nod of readiness, and he sent the healer through separately—a direct anchor to the Rivira circle, silent and instantaneous.
He let out a slow breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
The network was live. The outpost was staffed. The foothold was real.
What followed would transform Orario forever.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
Coming to the chapter, we finally have a big time skip and things have considerably picked pace. We finally see Royman's pov which was something I thought of writing since his introduction and got the opportunity now. I hope you understand what news the assistant got from Rivira? ;)
And Freya didn't stop with her pranks, lol. As if one was not enough, she played 2 on Max, both of them putting him in a tough situation. Poor guy. We also see how his time had passed as well and him being forced to dress like a Noble for the first time, heh. He should have gotten the hint then itself. So bad that he got lost in his head, haha.
I feel in the end, it was Royman's complacency that costed him everything, lol. Now he doesn't have a choice...
The next chapter will be the Guilds and Orario as a whole reacting to the news and more of Freya's scheming ;)
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.
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Next update will be on Friday.
Ben, Out.
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