Chapter 77

General Pov

Babel

Freya spent the late afternoon in rare anticipation, her thoughts drifting toward the promised flight until Horn entered the room with an unexpected visitor.

Hephaestus was here for an audience.

Assuming the smith goddess wanted to renew their Familia arrangements after the Rivira takeover, a matter that would take little time, Freya agreed.

She was mistaken.

What Hephaestus brought to the table was nothing so routine, and it kept them talking far longer than any renewal should have. Freya respected the audacity it took to corner her in her own chamber, and she appreciated the honesty behind it. But the matter wasn't hers alone to decide, so she promised a formal response by the following day.

Through all of it, a quieter worry sat under the conversation. Max promised he would be here in the evening. If he arrived while she was still locked in with Hephaestus, he would find her unavailable and take it as his cue to postpone.

By the time Hephaestus departed, the wall clock pointed to 5:30.

The evening Max promised was here.

Setting aside thoughts of commerce, Freya retreated to her suite. She poured a glass of wine, walked over to the window, and leaned against the frame, expecting the air behind her to warp at any second.

6:00 arrived. The floor remained empty.

Watching the sun begin its descent toward Orario's western wall, painting the sky in long streaks of amber and violet, Freya felt no irritation, only a growing amusement.

She turned the goblet slowly in her fingers, letting her thoughts wander across the possibilities. Max pushed for evening out of necessity. Manifesting his wings in the middle of a clear sky with the sun blazing overhead was an open invitation for every archer, sentry, and curious gaze in the city to look up. She conceded to his caution for that very reason, agreeing that the fading light offered the only real cover.

Even so, evening was merely a compromise.

Evening still held enough daylight for him to keep the flight brief—a polite circuit above the outer rim before returning her safely to Babel. Freya wanted the night. She wanted the sky vast, dark, and endless, where she could coax him far beyond the city's borders. She still did not know where he planned to take her, but she knew it would not be within Orario's walls.

Perhaps she could persuade him to turn toward Altena; she hadn't walked those cobbled avenues in years, and she wondered how the magical metropolis had flourished. Or perhaps they could fly farther, toward the ancient quiet of the Elsos Ruins, or even the mist-shrouded peaks of the Far East.

Her heart skipped with genuine anticipation as the minutes ticked away.

For a fleeting second, she wondered if he gave in to his reservations and chose to quietly postpone until tomorrow, using the fading evening as an excuse.

She dismissed the thought with a soft shake of her head.

Max gave his word. He was not the kind of man who hid behind silence or broke a promise out of cowardice.

The clock chimed 7:00 just as the amber warmth on the horizon dissolved into deep twilight.

Right on cue, the air in the center of the room warped. A crimson magic circle flared across the floor.

Max materialized instantly, Kairu clinging to his shoulder. Sweat lined his forehead, his chest rising and falling as if he had sprinted across three districts to get here.

Freya thoroughly savored the look.

"Lady Freya, before you say anything, I can explain!" Max blurted, throwing his hands up in preemptive defense. "Ganesha ambushed me in his courtyard, and then Astraea dragged me into a debate about Daedalus Street reforms, and Shakti—"

"Whatever you wish to discuss can wait, Maximus."

Freya did not turn from the window. Her voice was light, with the easy finality of a goddess who had already won.

She took a slow sip, set her glass down on the sill with a soft clink, and turned to face him. Her silver eyes glittered in the dim room with quiet mischief.

"Let's go on our flight first."

Max snapped his mouth shut. With the rest of his excuse dying on his tongue.

He looked past her, taking in the twilight sky and the lanterns beginning to glow across the sprawling city below. The realization hit him all at once.

Damn it, he thought, his jaw tightening at the curve of her lips. She was enjoying this.

If not for Ganesha hijacking his entire schedule and dragging him into that windowless conference room, he would have arrived hours ago, finished a quick evening lap, and been done with the whole ordeal before dinner.

Still, as he mentally replayed the meeting, he consoled himself with the sheer productivity of the afternoon.

Max gave an inward shake of his head. No point crying over spilled milk.

The trap was shut. The sun was down, the city was veiled in dusk, and with his lateness on the ledger, trying to postpone until tomorrow would be an insult she would never let him forget. His only objective now was to survive the night in the open sky without giving in to the goddess's endless temptations. Luckily, he had a tailored list of business proposals, contractual expansions, and Guild reforms ready to throw into the conversation the second they were in the sky.

As the surrender settled, a different spark caught in his chest.

If she wants the night sky, Max thought, a smirk replacing his scowl, I'll make sure she remembers it.

He planned a smooth cruise outside the city. But if Freya wanted to chase the stars with a Devil, he was more than happy to show her what real flight felt like.

"As you wish, My Lady," Max murmured, closing the distance between them.

On Max’s shoulder, Kairu took this as his cue to slip away. After an entire afternoon of being paraded in front of many people and one very loud elephant, Kairu had enough. He didn't even inform his master as he hopped off with a relieved little "ki!" and zipped across the floor to silently slip away to his favorite desk and clone.

Unbothered, Max stepped into her space, stopping inches away. Before Freya could raise an eyebrow at the sudden shift, his arm slid around her waist and a teleportation circle flared across the floor, and the stone of Babel vanished from beneath her sandals.

For a brief second, there was only the hum of magic and the dizzying sensation of empty air.

Then the world opened.

The biting mountain chill hit her first, rushing past her face and stealing the breath straight from her throat as she opened her eyes to an endless horizon.

They were floating hundreds of feet above the earth, level with the bruised twilight clouds. Below them, a vast expanse of forest spread outward like a dark green carpet toward a jagged mountain range. A winding ribbon of river cut through the timber, spilling into an enormous lake where the dying sunset caught the water, turning the entire basin into a sheet of rippling gold.

The view took her breath away, but as the initial shock faded, reality caught up with her senses.

Somewhere in the jump, Max swept her off her feet. She lay cradled in his arms, one hand firm at her back and the other beneath her knees, while he casually admired the scenery as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

And beneath them, there was nothing at all. No floor. No ledge. No platform.

Then gravity remembered them both.

The sudden weightlessness in her stomach turned into a sharp downward pull. With nothing beneath them, they plummeted. The air rushed upward, tugging violently at her dress and whipping her silver hair into a frenzy as the canopy below rushed closer with every passing second.

Yet rather than panic, an intoxicating thrill bloomed in Freya's chest. For a goddess bound to the mortal realm, stripped of her chariot and chained to the dirt, falling through the open sky felt liberating—a reckless drop through the golden twilight.

They fell together for several breathless seconds, the roar of the wind filling her ears.

Then, suddenly, the plunge stopped.

The violent descent arrested so smoothly that her breath barely caught. Moving on pure reflex, Freya looked up at the man holding her securely against his chest.

A pair of leathery wings now spread wide from his back, dark against the sky. They flapped gently, catching the updrafts and lifting them back toward the cloud line they had just abandoned.

Yet what caught her off guard was his expression. Max wasn't looking down at the ground, nor did he look panicked by the near-miss. He was staring peacefully out toward the horizon, watching the setting sun bathe the mountains in molten light, looking so calm and mesmerized that he seemed entirely oblivious to the mischief he just orchestrated.

He looked so peaceful it made her want to pinch him.

The moment they leveled out above the clouds, she did exactly that.

Freya reached up, catching his cheek between her thumb and forefinger, giving it a playful tug. "That drop was deliberate, wasn't it?" she accused him in faux hurt.

Max finally looked down at her, a mocking smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. "What proof do you have to claim that, My Lady? I was simply caught up in the sunset."

Freya pinched his cheek a little harder for the cheekiness, though the scowl she tried to muster melted into a breathless laugh. Max chuckled softly in response, and she could feel the vibration of it through his chest.

Looking at his amused eyes, Freya suddenly understood what this was. He was giving her the exact same dizzying rush of adrenaline he must have felt on his very first day in this world, when he plummeted from the heavens and streaked across the unknown sky.

She relaxed in his arms, her fingers sliding down to rest against the warm linen over his heart.

Her original plan had been to ride on his back—to watch the world pass below as he flew—but this unprompted cradle was far too comfortable to give up. Resting in his hold, she let the cool breeze brush her cheeks as she turned her gaze downward, taking in the landscape spreading beneath the clouds.

The distinctive curve of the canopy and rock formations caught her eye. She recognized the topography from Allen's reports and Max's initial trajectory.

"Isn't this where you first landed?" she asked, pitching her voice beneath the wind.

Max looked down at the dark trees, a wistful smile touching his lips. "It is. Feels strange looking at it from up here. Barely a month ago I was lying in that lake with nothing to my name, and now..."

He trailed off, but Freya understood. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, anchored by the steady rise and fall of his chest.

A month. To a deity, thirty days was less than a blink—an insignificant flicker in eternity. Yet in that brief span, this mortal had raised a fortress on the 18th floor under the Guild's nose, filled the city with artifacts no smith could explain, and carved an indelible place for himself in her thoughts. She spent many years growing bored of Gekai, and in four short weeks, he made it thrilling again.

As the sun slipped beneath the horizon, turning the sky into deep shades of indigo and violet, the mountain air grew noticeably colder. The draft began to bite through Freya's dress, prompting her to lean closer into the solid heat of his chest. Since his tardiness had delayed them into the night, she was in no hurry to rush their time in the sky.

In fact, she had somewhere they could visit in mind as well.

Far beyond the mountains, a pale glow sat low on the horizon, brighter than any star around it. Freya let her fingers drift across his chest toward it, and each time a bank of cloud passed beneath them, she nudged him a little further in its direction, as though the choice were entirely his.

Max let her steer for a while before his curiosity won. "You keep pointing us at that light. Where exactly are you taking me, Lady Freya?"

"Altena," Freya said, and the name alone warmed her voice. "The City of Magic. Its academies keep their lamps burning through the night, and the whole city glows like that even this far. Its scholars spend entire lifetimes arguing over a single spell." A faint smile touched her lips. "I haven't walked its streets in years."

Max looked toward the glow with open interest. Altena. The name rang no bell, but the story he remembered never took him there. A city of mages bright enough to light the horizon was new territory, and the otaku in him perked up immediately.

"Sounds like my kind of place," he said. "Are they friendly with Orario?"

"With Orario, they are amiable. With certain residents, less so." Freya's eyes gleamed with mischief as she continued. "Particularly that Nine Hell, Altena despises her."

Max raised an eyebrow. "Riveria? What did she do to them?"

"Her existence," Freya said dryly. "Every mage is bound to three slots for magic. It is the first rule their academies teach. Riveria's magic simply ignores it, and to a city that built its pride on mastering the limits of magic, that is nothing short of an insult."

Max let out a low whistle. Then a wicked grin crept across his face as he thought of every Kidō he had thrown in the Colosseum, none of them bound to anything as quaint as a slot.

"If her spells were enough to upset them," he said, "I'm sure they'd declare a blood feud the second they saw me fight."

Freya laughed, bright and unguarded, the sound whipped away by the wind. "They would. And they would lose."

The thought of an entire city of mages sulking over him pleased Max far more than it should have. If she wanted Altena, she could have a taste of the road there.

He tilted his wings toward the glow and beat them once, hard.

The world blurred. Clouds tore past in long grey ribbons as he dove into the nearest bank and burst out the other side, faster than before, then dipped into the next one before anyone on the ground could have caught their silhouette against the stars. Freya's breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a laugh as the dark land below streamed past like water.

The wind at that speed should have been brutal. Instead, Freya felt a faint ripple wash over her skin.

It passed through her hair and clothes like a breath of spring, pushing the biting altitude away. In an instant, the stinging chill and buffeting wind ceased to exist, replaced by a quiet pocket of air that left only his heartbeat and the soft rustle of his wings.

Only when Altena's glow had grown noticeably brighter did Max ease them into a long, gliding drift, matching the pace of the clouds around them.

Freya tilted her chin up, her fingers tracing a line across his chest. "So, what was your purpose at the Pantheon today?"

The grin on Max's face sharpened, as if she had just asked the one question he was dying to answer.

"The main goal," Max began, catching an updraft, "was to make Royman realize the catastrophic mistake he made, and use that leverage to make him cough up concessions."

Freya looked up at him, amusement touching her lips.

That fat pig was the greediest elf she had ever encountered, constantly scheming to maximize Guild profits above all else. She vividly remembered her dealings with him back when Zeus and Hera stood at their peak. In those days, Royman's sycophancy had been unbearable. It was only after their fall, when it became clear that Folkvangr and Twilight Manor would fill the vacuum, that he redirected his groveling straight toward her and Loki. Hearing that Max had made the creature bend was a feast for her ears.

"Tell me more," she prompted, resting her chin near the curve of his shoulder.

Max laid out the afternoon in broad strokes: the dual-tier network with Rehmer, then the welfare proposals he had forced onto the Guildmaster's desk—the Rookie-Veteran training initiative, retirement pensions, and death and disability insurance.

He kept one thing to himself: exactly how he cornered Royman. The smuggled bracelet was a blade best left in its sheath, and it came attached to a private conversation with Loki that Freya was better off never hearing about.

Freya listened with quiet amazement.

The sheer scale of the policies was unlike anything conceived in this world. To a deity, mortality was a cyclical transition—a soul burning before returning to heaven to be recycled or punished. The mortal concept of building systemic financial safety nets around broken limbs and lost lives felt alien to her nature. It required a unique blend of grand vision and surprising selflessness to propose such measures in a city built on raw survival.

Yet as she listened to the logistics, the administrative reality settled in. She understood why the Guild pig hesitated. Beyond the massive capital required, the system depended on uncooperative deities opening their private ledgers to Guild inspection. The strain on administrative manpower would be immense. Given the fragile balance of power in Orario, she privately thought Royman had been prudent to stall. It was a bureaucratic nightmare waiting to collapse.

Max caught the quiet skepticism settling into her posture.

Typical, he thought, feeling a mix of amusement and mild exasperation. It was their standard blind spot. Immortal gods who lived for thousands of years watching mortals play in their sandbox naturally struggled to grasp why mortal workers needed basic safety nets. To deities, a fallen adventurer was just a heroic story reaching its natural end. To the people bleeding in the Dungeon, it was an orphaned family starving in the slums.

He leaned down on impulse to meet her eyes properly, and before he thought it through, his forehead came to rest against hers.

The second it happened, Max realized exactly how close that put them. So much for staying on guard.

Freya froze.

The sudden closeness caught her off guard. Suspended in the darkening sky, the warmth of his skin pressing against hers made her pulse jump. The political calculations scattered in an instant, replaced by the intensity of his amethyst eyes looking straight into hers.

"You think it's not possible, don't you?" Max asked softly, committing to it now that there was no graceful way back.

Freya took a steadying breath, fighting through the sudden heat in her cheeks to find her voice.

"Not possible? Not completely," she whispered. "It involves too many moving pieces. The chance of error is high. You are asking selfish gods to give up their coin and pride for the sake of the broken."

Max seized on the practical critique like a lifeline. It was grounding, and it gave his mind something to hold onto besides her breath against his cheek. He wasn't some naive hero expecting the world to change overnight; he was an isekai'd otaku forcing a stagnant system to upgrade. A warm smile touched his eyes, crinkling the corners as he met her look.

"I know," Max agreed. "I don't expect them to sing along right away. I just wanted to give Royman a hard kick in the back to get him moving. He tried to delay the public teleportation network the exact same way."

Freya raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

Max explained it in a few sentences. The Guild buried his public transit blueprint for days, right up until the Freya Familia raised its fortress in Rivira, and then approved it the same day in a panic.

"Royman's inaction handed us an uncontested head start in Rivira," Max murmured. "If the public network had been running before we set up our base, things would have played out very differently."

And the fool didn't even realize he was handing me the entire board on a silver platter, he added privately, savoring the payoff.

Freya remained still in his arms, her forehead resting against his as the full picture resolved in her mind. Max didn't just build a thriving business; he weaponized the Guild's own paralysis, securing an unassailable foothold for their Familia while the city's leadership argued over ledgers.

As she looked into the eyes of the young man holding her above the world, a deep warmth spread through her chest—a quiet pride in the cunning of the Devil who chose to stand beside her.

Freya let the silence stretch, savoring the warmth of his skin before slowly easing back from their shared touch.

"If your meeting with the Guild went as smoothly as you claim," she murmured, resting her cheek on his shoulder for a better angle as they glided on, "what kept you until nightfall?"

Max let out a breath that sounded half-amused and thoroughly exhausted.

"The Loki Familia," he said. "I was reviewing ledgers with Rimuru in my Babel office when I got a call from Ouranos to pull her vanguard out of the Lower Floors."

Freya's eyes narrowed slightly. Ouranos rarely intervened in Familia affairs, let alone by placing an extraction request with an outside adventurer. "You were contacted by Ouranos himself?"

"By his shadow," Max corrected, banking them into a lazy arc through the clouds. "A skeletal mage in black robes. I assume you know who I mean."

"The Fallen Sage."

"Fels," Max nodded. "I didn't want to drop in alone, though. Finn would have tried to turn me into a pincushion before I got a word out. So I called Loki on the bracelet the Guild lent her during the attack and took her down with me."

Freya's lips thinned at the reminder that the Guild had placed one of their devices in Loki's hands, but she let it pass for now. The pig would soon pay for that decision.

"And?" she asked instead.

"Ais attacked me on sight," Max chuckled, and she felt the laugh rumble through his chest. "Kairu bounced her straight back into Finn's arms. She genuinely couldn't understand why her sword wouldn't cut a slime."

Freya's laughter carried into the night air. She knew how fiercely Loki doted on her little prodigy. "I imagine that is a sensation the girl has never experienced in her life."

The temperature continued to drop as true night claimed the land below, but the barrier radiating from Max held firm, wrapping them in a comfortable pocket of warmth.

"So the extraction went smoothly," Freya prompted. "Where did the delay come from?"

"The landing zone," Max sighed. "I dropped them in the Ganesha compound. Ganesha cornered me the moment we landed, Astraea joined him, and between the two of them they kept me for many hours on city transit, Daedalus Street safety, and private teleportation networks."

He glanced down at her and caught the possessive flicker that briefly crossed her gaze. He gently tightened his hold, reassuring her before she could even ask.

"Don't worry," Max added smoothly. "I agreed to install private anchors for Ganesha and Astraea tomorrow, but their routing will be strictly capped. Their gates will only reach the 28th floor. Our Familia retains exclusive access down to the 39th."

Freya relaxed against his chest, the tension leaving her posture. Keeping the deepest anchor in the Dungeon preserved Folkvangr's dominance over the deeper floors.

"A wise boundary," Freya murmured, looking up at the scattered sea of stars. "I will classify our network as a familia secret. Once the Gullivers are back, I'll call the executives together to settle the circumstances of today, Hedin's punishment included. You needn't attend." She sighed softly. "I intended to go over all of this with you this afternoon, but my schedule was hijacked by Hephaestus."

Max's wings snapped taut.

The sudden resistance caught the wind, arresting their momentum and dropping them into a motionless hover amidst the drifting clouds. He looked down at her, his brow furrowing in surprise.

"Hephaestus?" Max asked. "What was she there for?"

Freya met his gaze, her eyes glittering with a mixture of professional respect and sharp calculation.

"She came to deliver a trade proposal," Freya explained smoothly. "It seems she managed to acquire a fragment of the wall material we used to construct the Rivira fortress from Goibniu. She analyzed the metallurgy, compared the anomalous alloy to the metal within your Rings, and traced the craftsmanship straight back to Folkvangr."

Max stared at her in silence for a long moment, processing the deduction.

A low whistle escaped his lips. "She figured all of that out from a single scrap of masonry?"

"She did," Freya said, a hint of dark amusement lacing her tone. "Instead of wasting time interrogating at the retail front or making subtle inquiries through the Guild, she bypassed the entire board and marched directly to me. She made it clear that she knows our secret, and offered to keep the city in the dark—provided we grant her Familia exclusive first-purchase rights to any new anomalous metals you produce."

Max shook his head, a smile of real admiration touching his lips. As a merchant and a craftsman, he couldn't help but respect the technical brilliance and sharp intuition required to reverse-engineer a supply chain from a chunk of stone and steel.

"A master smith with the brain of a businesswoman," Max mused. "I can respect that. We can review her proposal tomorrow."

"Agreed," Freya murmured.

A comfortable silence settled between them. Below, the dark land stretched into shadow, while above, the silver light of the moon finally crested the mountains, bathing the clouds around them in pale luminescence. Far ahead, Altena's glow waited on the horizon.

Freya let the silence breathe, savoring the steady rhythm of his heartbeat close to her. The politics were concluded. The debts were settled. The board was perfectly arranged.

"That is all from my side," Freya said softly, shifting in his arms as her voice dropped into an intimate purr. "Are you done with your report as well?"

Her hands slid upward, resting flat against his collar.

"If the ledger is clear... can we finally begin enjoying this flight?"

A faint shudder ran down Max's spine.

Shit.

Holding the Goddess of Beauty in his arms, suspended in the quiet night with her perfume filling his lungs, his resolve felt like it was standing on thin ice. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to drop the stubborn restraint, let the professional act burn, and simply give in to the warmth looking up at him.

I'm eighteen, he reasoned with himself, his heart thumping hard against his ribs. I look nineteen. Back home, I'd be an adult. Here, I'm a Level 4 powerhouse who just erased a Monster Rex solo.

He wasn't blind to how natural it had become to wrap his arms around her. The self-delusion of maintaining some noble 'sagehood' had completely shattered the moment she kissed him during his level-up. And truth be told, Freya wasn't just alluring—she was clever, sharp, and genuinely fun to be around. She had her dark edges, but so did he, and he had long stopped judging her by the incomplete anime tropes of his past life.

So why am I still holding back?

The answer was simple: frustrating pride.

Because I want to stand as her equal, not her latest interest.

If he reached High-Class status, virtually nothing in this world—short of the One-Eyed Black Dragon—could ever threaten his autonomy again. That goal was only a level or two away. Until he hit that benchmark of undisputed power, or pulled off something so extraordinary that his name echoed through history on its own merits, crossing that final line felt premature. He didn't want to be a handsome trophy gathered into a goddess's collection; he wanted to be the man who conquered the world alongside her.

And right now, he thought, catching himself with a sharp mental slap, is definitely not the time to have an existential crisis over relationship milestones.

What he needed was an immediate tactical pivot before the atmosphere choked him completely.

His survival instincts slammed the brakes, and he grasped at the first conversational shield within reach.

"Actually," Max began, his voice pitched slightly too casual, "there is one more thing. I was wondering about my official alias. Haven't the gods decided on one yet?"

Freya suppressed an amused sigh at the transparent deflection. She decided to play along for just a moment longer.

"Not formally," she answered smoothly. "I intended to force a vote during the next scheduled Denatus. With the Loki Familia safely back on the surface, I expect a Denatus to convene within the next two days."

Max's lips twitched, curling into a remarkably smug smirk.

Freya narrowed her eyes, instantly sensing a trap. "Why do you look like you know something I don't?"

Max let out a hearty laugh that echoed over the open sky. "Because when I went to pick up Loki at the Ganesha compound... Lord Ganesha took it upon himself to bestow an alias upon me on the spot."

Freya froze.

Her teasing composure shattered in an instant, replaced by a sudden flare of possessive alarm.

She surged upward in his arms, her fingers bunching tight into his shirt, pulling herself flush against his chest and ignoring their elevation.

"He did what?" Freya demanded, her silver eyes flashing with fury. "Maximus, what did that masked idiot call you?!"

Max looked thoroughly amused by the panic, his wings beating in steady strokes to keep their glide smooth. "He was incredibly enthusiastic about it. Struck a dramatic pose, bellowed it across the entire courtyard, and proclaimed it right in front of Loki and Shakti."

Her fingers tightened on his collar.

The absolute nerve of that masked fool, attempting to brand the man who chose her outside the sacred halls of the Denatus. Ganesha had an infamous history of bestowing carnival-tier titles that sounded like festival sideshows—atrocities like The Crimson Elephant's Little Peony, The Gallant Roaring Trunk, Thunderclap Tusk of Justice, or some dreadful spectacle like Lord Ganesha's Sparkling Parade. It was the very reason the assembly of gods had barred him from participating in the naming debates long ago, relegating him strictly to the role of loud host just to keep his absurd naming sense away from their children's records.

If that elephant had saddled her magnificent Devil with a circus title, she would march Folkvangr's entire vanguard to his doorstep before dawn and tear the compound down brick by brick.

"Why didn't you resist?" she pressed, her teeth gritted as her glare bore into him. "Why didn't you contact me the moment his mouth opened, so I could put that fool in his place?!"

Max met her furious gaze with an earnest expression, not a shred of mockery in his tone. "I didn't want to look petty bickering over words in front of a goddess and a captain. Besides, if you hated whatever he came up with, I knew you had the power to overturn it at the Denatus anyway. Who in that room would dare stop you?"

The flattery landed with effortless precision.

Hearing him place unquestioning faith in her authority stoked her pride, smoothing away the sharp edges of her wrath. The tight clench of her fists slowly relaxed, her palms flattening against his chest as she smoothed the crumpled fabric.

However high and mighty she acts, in the end Freya is a woman who loves praise, Max noted, relieved that his honest appeal had disarmed the goddess before she could burn half the city down.

Freya drew a slow breath, letting the cool night air steady her racing pulse. Her eyes remained sharp, but the murderous edge had melted into intense curiosity.

"Well?" she murmured, her voice dropping into a quiet hum. "What is this alias he gave you?"

Seeing that the storm had safely passed, Max raised one hand in mock surrender, letting his wings carry them in a slow, peaceful glide beneath the starlight.

"I shall be known as the Primordial Dragonslayer."

Freya blinked.

She remained still, turning the heavy syllables over in her mind as the night breeze whispered through her hair.

Primordial Dragonslayer.

The lingering irritation vanished, replaced by reluctant appreciation. It wasn't an insult, nor was it one of Ganesha's bombastic parade jokes. Her mind immediately seized on the word Primordial and linked it to the ancient calamity looming over the world—the One-Eyed Black Dragon.

Ganesha hadn't just honored Max's solo slaughter of the Amphisbaena; the God of the Masses had subtly acknowledged Max's boundless potential to one day stand before the ultimate beast and finish what Zeus and Hera could not. Best of all, it carried enough grandeur and undeniable weight that no god in the upcoming Denatus would dare challenge it with a lesser name.

A weary breath slipped past her lips. She leaned her forehead lightly against him, a faint smile touching her face.

"Of all the theatrical aliases he could have chosen, he chose this," Freya murmured. "Primordial Dragonslayer." She repeated the words softly, as if tasting them on her tongue, before offering a satisfied nod. "I suppose I can forgive Ganesha this once."

Max let out a quiet breath of relief. Crisis averted.

Before she could pivot back to any dangerous questions, he kept the momentum going. "So... what were your picks if Ganesha didn't beat you to the punch? I doubt you were planning on anything boring."

Her eyes lit up with immediate interest. "Boring? Never. I had an entire list ready to shove in front of the other gods."

For the rest of the evening, Max made sure her mind stayed occupied, by making her walk through every single alias she considered, humoring her as she broke down the dramatic flair of each one, the petty digs she'd built in to piss off Loki and Ishtar, and which ones she thought fit him best.

Whenever the topic started to run dry, he grabbed onto whatever else he could find—gossip from Daedalus Street, plans for the familia, how to deal with Evilus and her thoughts on his future plans. Midway, Freya leaned into him, thoroughly enjoying the discussion, while Max quietly congratulated himself on steering them through the evening without another close call.

--> Devil in a Dungeon <--

AN:

This chapter purely focuses on the blooming relationship between Max and Freya. Barring the status update chapters, I think this is the longest personal chapter between them at almost 5.8k words.

We get the full reaction from Freya and Max being the best pacifist he could be. ;)

What do you think of his motivations in holding back instead of moving forward? Do you think they are solid or is he being foolish? I feel thinking about the amount of commitment involved for him to take the final step since they both will live long and what he knows of her character portrayal from canon, he is definitely being cautious. Share your thoughts on it though, I would love to hear your take on it.

On the questions of Ais level, she is a Level 3, her Ariel made her faster and about how far Loki and Max are to Ais, its not the distance, its their perception. Loki, enhanced by Kairu's bubble could see Ais charging at 0.25x speed and hence had the few seconds needed for the conversation to take place. That's a side effect of Kairu's bubble as they are in the Dungeon, the bubble acts as both a suppressing layer for her aura and enhancing layer for her perception due to Kairu's close proximity.

The next chapter will be the next steps with Max setting up the teleportation circles and taking his next step of lunacy in the dungeon ;)

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

If you'd like to read 10 chapters ahead(around 50k words), support my work, check character images for free, read a free chapter(Ch 51.5), or commission a story idea, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash

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

Next update will be on Friday.

Ben, Out.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Bonus:

Max and Freya in the sky