Chapter 84

General Pov

"MAXIMUS! DODGE! It is not a Level 6! It is a Mid Level 7!"

Max appreciated the warning, and if he were a regular Level 4, he might have even listened. But he was Maximus, the Primordial Dragonslayer, the spawner of Juggernauts, and the monster in front of him was the perfect test subject for his newest magic and its repertoire of spells.

Dodge? Nah. I've been dying to try this one.

So he refused to dodge and leveled his hand instead, reached for the spell he saved for exactly this situation, and bellowed.

"You shall know pain."

"Shinra Tensei!" (Almighty Push)

An irresistible repelling force erupted from Max's hand and slammed into the charging Juggernaut, halting its momentum. As if sensing the magic in the attack, its anti-magic shield flared across its plating and began eating the spell away, but by then, the force had already landed. The Juggernaut dug its claws into the floor to hold its ground, and it was thrown back, its claws gouging a deep trench through the stone as it went.

Max smirked in triumph. The shield could eat the spell, but not the force it already delivered. Even a monster born of the Dungeon still answered to the laws of physics, and the trench was proof.

Physics: one.Anti-magic: zero.

The smirk faded into something more practical as he looked past the trench at the two executives. Ottar and Hogni were picking themselves back up after the beating they took holding it back, and if they kept fighting it like this, they wouldn't last. That needed fixing.

He swept his hand toward them, and Gravity Magic washed over them both, dropping their weight in an instant.

Max winced at the spell's cost and its need for constant maintenance. He didn't reach the proficiency to maintain it subconsciously yet, so he did the next best thing and assigned the newly freed Complex Protocol to hold the gravity reduction steady around his companions for as long as the fight demanded.

Done with the work, he finally opened his mouth. "Ottar, Hogni, I'm fin—"

When a familiar yet far more devastating pressure hit him all at once, cutting him off. He recognized it instantly: it was the same malice from his first dive. Back then, it reached for him and tried to integrate him. Now it simply crushed.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me. You again?

The pressure felt like the weight of the sky coming down on him. It settled on his shoulders, spine and skull and kept getting heavier, until his knees took the load and his boots flattened against the stone, pinning him to his spot.

He ordered his arm to rise. No reaction. He ordered his legs to move. No response. He felt the commands leave his mind, but midway, they were simply flattened by a stronger will.

The Dungeon's will.

While his body locked up, his mind was dragged away. It felt like a rollercoaster plunging straight down into a lightless ocean, the bottom dropping out of his stomach, that nauseous moment at the top of the drop stretched out forever with no track and no end. The pressure clamped around his consciousness, dragging him deeper every moment.

Max tried to grab something, refusing to dive in, but there was nothing left to hang onto.

By the time thoughts of resistance and breaking free surfaced, he was already too deep. A hazy void distorted his senses and blurred the edges of his awareness. Sound gone soft. Direction gone meaningless. With the inky darkness pressing close enough to touch.

Still relentless, he pushed his intent down. He reached for Destruction. Nothing answered. Kidō—the familiar glow never came. His Devil wings, lightning, elemental spells. He called each one, and every time, his hand closed on empty air. He knew they weren't gone. They simply didn't show themselves, as if a heavy wall blocked him from accessing them.

Through all of it, the chill in his bones only deepened. Behind it came a profound ache, as if his body were finally tired of carrying so much weight. He was sinking, and he couldn't do a damn thing to stop it.

At some point, the reality of his situation began to settle, and the intrusive thoughts started.

Isn't it better to give up? What am I even resisting? he thought gloomily.

Then another part of his mind eagerly answered, A better question: Why am I even resisting? Wouldn't it be better to just give in and live carefree?

The sheer complacency of it almost shut his mind down completely as he prepared to make one last attempt to break free.

Right then, an inorganic thought pushed through the haze.

Why does this whole setup remind me of the Infinite Tsukuyomi?

The internal voice sounded like his, but the script did not. It felt exactly as if he were rehearsing lines written by someone else's hand.

Once that realization settled, the true pressure of the lightless ocean slammed into his awareness. This wasn't just dark water. It was an absolute black, infinitely denser than any ink or shadow. It felt like sinking into the primordial void—the empty nothingness that existed before the Big Bang ever sparked the universe to life.

A cynical thought pierced the gloom. Aren't these the moments you are supposed to pray to the Gods?

The obvious question followed: Who do I even pray to?

The first name on the list was naturally the woman he was closest to. Freya.

But could the gods even hear prayers in the lower world?

Maybe Ouranos, then? Isn't the Guild's founder supposed to have access to a fraction of his divine power down here?

Finally, the most absurdly valid option surfaced. Why not the Big G?

This world's Biblical God. There was precedent back in DxD, with Asia praying constantly. Without the usual restrictions on Devils here, and with this universe's God actually alive, maybe the old man would answer.

The sheer absurdity of it almost pulled a laugh out of his suffocating lungs, and for a moment, he felt like himself again.

But anticlimactically, before any god could answer, his own power did, as if it was only waiting for him to find his center.

His aura snapped outward, crimson-black magic igniting across his form, its densest concentrations flaring around his head and chest to anchor his mind and his heart against the crushing darkness. His power went all out from the first second, like a new hire trying to impress in his first week.

With his aura lighting the darkness around him, the haze finally began to clear, and for the first time, Max could take in where he was. Black water stretched out in every direction, with no floor beneath him and no end to it on either side. Out of habit, he held his breath, then realized he didn't need to. He could breathe down here just fine. The suffocating weight from before never came from the water at all. It came from the pressure.

Then he looked up.

Far above him, so far it was barely there, a faint shimmer marked the surface. The moment he saw it, the urge to reach it bloomed in his chest, sudden and fierce. He wanted out of here. And leave now.

But the pull still had him. It tugged at him from somewhere below, steady and patient, and as long as it held on, he wasn't going anywhere. At least now he knew which way was up again, and his head finally stopped spinning.

Okay. Endless ocean, a way out way up there, and something at the bottom that won't let go. Great.

With his footing back, he finally spoke.

"Sneaky bastard," he snarled. "You waited. You watched me buff my friends, and you picked that exact second to strike. All that mass, all that hunger, and the great Dungeon's masterstroke is jumping a guy mid-sentence."

The ocean stayed silent, which suited him fine. He didn't exactly expect a reply.

"Listen carefully," Max said, his aura flaring hotter. "If anything happens to them—if so much as a scratch lands on Ottar or Hogni while I'm stuck in here—you are dead. I will reach as deep as I can, and I will drag every deity in Orario down here by the collar to unload their full Arcanum on you. You think Freya is your only problem? Wait until Loki, Ganesha, Astraea, Hephaestus, and every bored god in the city march down to settle their grudges."

He felt it then. An invisible shudder ran through the Dungeon's will, small but unmistakable, and dense waves rolled against his aura as the ocean itself flinched.

A sharp grin split Max's face. "Yes. Just like that. Understand now? Keep that in mind the next time you try a dirty trick on my party."

With the warning delivered, he let his aura burn steadily. The pull continued, but slower now, more cautious, the ocean moving around him warily, as if it was no longer sure what it caught. Max was thoroughly fed up with being helpless. He was done sinking, done waiting, and completely done letting the Dungeon decide what happened.

That was when he heard it.

A dull tink, soft and distant, like a knuckle tapping against a window.

Max went still and listened. For a moment, there was nothing, and he started to think he imagined it. Then it came again, tink, closer this time, somewhere just below him.

He turned toward it, and his aura's glow fell across a strange sight. It was a mirror, but not a normal one. It looked like a one-way mirror, its glossy surface smooth as glass, standing upright in the black water as if it had always been there. He drifted closer, and the nearer he got, the more he could feel a faint energy leaking off it, quiet and old, like something that had been holding still for a very long time.

He didn't know how he knew, but he felt it plainly: the pull had to pass through this layer to drag him any deeper. The mirror was in the way.

So that's why it's been so slow. It's not just dragging me. It's trying to get through this.

And of course, after coming this far, the Dungeon pulled harder.

The pull surged against the mirror, and a single crack split across its surface. Then another branched off it, and another, spreading across the glass in a creeping web. Max could only watch as the cracks reached the edges.

And the mirror broke.

Kssshhhk!

Max flinched, bracing for the jagged shards to shred his helpless self, but it didn't hurt at all.

Instead, the fragments drifted toward him and melted straight into his consciousness, one after another. A shockwave of pure clarity hit him, washing the fog away like an ice-cold shower, and hidden power surged wherever a shard landed, filling him with a violent high, as if he drank a whole jar of coffee at once.

Whoa. Okay. What was that?

With the clarity came understanding, and for the first time, he could see how this place was layered.

He looked up first. Far above, near that faint shimmer of the surface, was his mindscape, the familiar space where he built and ran his protocols. He knew that place well.

Then he looked around him, at the black water stretching out in every direction. This ocean was something else. It was his consciousness itself, the part of him that made him him, and it was what the Dungeon was trying to drown.

And then he looked down, at where the mirror stood. Here, at the very bottom, was something deeper still. His soulscape.

He had never been down here before. Nothing had ever dragged him this deep.

Then, to no one's surprise, the broken mirror revealed another mirror behind it, its glossy surface reflecting the shattered one in front.

That thoroughly confused him. Was this a continuation of the Dungeon's psychic attack? Some kind of prank? A trap with steps? He had half a second to weigh the possibilities and couldn't rule out any of them.

He never finished, because the Dungeon pulled even harder.

Kssshhhk!

The second mirror broke, and as its shards sank into him, he felt something come return. Destruction. Its familiar weight settled into his hands, faint but real, like a word he finally remembered.

Kssshhhk!

The third went, and with it, the glow of Kidō flickered back to life somewhere inside him.

Kssshhhk!

The fourth, and his wings stirred against his back for the first time since the cavern.

Kssshhhk!

The fifth brought back the crackle of his lightning and the pull of his elements.

Kssshhhk!

And the sixth didn't return anything he recognized. It simply poured in, deep and warm and unfamiliar, settling somewhere beneath everything else he knew about himself.

Max hung there in the water, breathing hard, as the last of the shards faded into him.

Each mirror had broken the same way and merged into him the same way, and each one poured more power and more clarity into a system that was starting to feel like his again. With every break, the haze thinned a little more. His helplessness faded with it.

Six of them. Six layers sitting between the Dungeon and... whatever this is. And every single one was holding back something of mine.

He didn't understand what the mirrors were yet. But they weren't hurting him, and for now, that was enough.

Questions could wait. With his head clear and his power stirring again, the urge he felt when he first saw the surface came back twice as strong. He looked up at that faint shimmer far above him, and this time, he didn't hesitate. He ran for it, pulling against the drag with everything he had.

He didn't trust his powers enough to cast with them yet. They were back within reach, but still faint, still settling, and the last thing he needed was a spell fizzling out halfway up. So he swam.

The Dungeon wasn't about to let him go that easily. Its pull, which had a misty feel to it until now, began to solidify, a little more with every stroke he took, until he felt a physical mass settle on his back. Real weight with real drag, pressing down harder with every foot he stole toward the surface.

Oh, come on. Now you get physical?

He kept moving regardless. His strokes grew smaller and his arms burned, but anger kept him going. He didn't come this far to drown.

Then, from far below him, where the mirrors stood, a loud bang engulfed the whole space.

RUMMMM-GWARRRR-THUUUUUMMMMP!

Max looked back to see the lightless ocean filled with a flashbang, pure white blowing the darkness apart in every direction.

And as the light covered him, a female voice echoed in his mind.

"Say Mama, Mama, Mama, Maxy-kun~"

-◈ -

When I opened my eyes, the warmth and power hit me as if I was standing at the center of a newborn star.

I know how that sounds. I'm not crazy.

The white light swallowed everything: the ocean, the darkness, the pressure, me. It was hot, but it didn't burn. It was blinding, but it didn't hurt. And instead of dying and meeting some old man by a train, I was alive. Everything the Dungeon touched felt cold. This was warm, and I knew right away that it wasn't one of its tricks.

Then the light settled, and I felt my body.

It was wrong. Everything was too small, like being stuffed into a shirt three sizes too tight. My arms were pinned, my legs bunched up, and my chest could barely rise. I couldn't stretch, couldn't turn, couldn't even lift my head.

What the hell? Why can't I—

I tried to say it out loud. What came out wasn't words.

"Erh. Erh..."

A hand touched my stomach.

It was light, barely any weight to it, and it rubbed slow circles through the cloth. The squeezing eased at once. My chest loosened and my breathing evened out, and the panic building inside me just loosened.

"Oh? What's wrong, Maxy-kun?" a woman murmured above me, soft and fond, like she'd done this a hundred times and didn't mind a single one. "Is my little one feeling squished? There, there. Mama's here."

I didn't know her voice. I was sure I'd never heard it before.

My body did, though. It knew her before I did. It went still and quiet in her hands, and I couldn't make it do anything else.

Then she began to rock me. Side to side, slow and steady, her hand never leaving my stomach, and my too-heavy head settled against something soft. Some part of me, the part that was a Devil and a Level 4 and nineteen years old, wanted to be embarrassed about it.

That part lost.

I looked up, and there she was.

I couldn't see her properly. She was a blur, glowing at the edges like a shape behind frosted glass, and she stayed that way no matter how hard I tried. Stranger still, I could see myself too. I was the baby in her arms, but I was also watching from just outside, the way a dream shows you yourself.

This is a memory. This is... mine?

The blur leaned in until she was right over me, and her breath warmed my forehead.

"Say it," she coaxed, her voice bubbling with excitement. "Ma-ma. Ma-ma!"

I wanted to. I wanted to give her that more than I'd wanted anything in a long time, which made no sense, because I didn't even know her. I opened my mouth, but my tongue wouldn't cooperate and my lips wouldn't shape it. All that came out was a wet, toothless babble.

"Mmah... bah..."

She gasped. Then she was bouncing on her heels, jostling me up and down, and I could hear her grinning before the blur even moved.

"Yes! Good boy! See, Maxy-kun? Mommy is a genius. The best mom ever!"

She hugged me close and pressed her cheek against the top of my head, humming something tuneless and happy under her breath. I sank into it. Even now, I don't have the words for what that felt like.

Maxy-kun. She keeps calling me Maxy-kun.

Before I could stop it, my mind went somewhere else. Mac. That was what Mom called me back home. Never Max, always Mac, shouted up the stairs when dinner was ready or muttered when I did something stupid. I didn't hear it in what felt like forever.

This voice sounded nothing like hers. The name wasn't the same either. But the way she said it, like the name itself was something she loved, was exactly the same.

My throat went tight, and I didn't know which of them it was for.

Then something clicked behind her, and someone spoke, too far away for me to hear.

Her humming broke off mid-note. She went still, and I felt her breath catch. Then, slowly, she turned and shifted me in her arms, getting ready to hand me over.

Her warmth started to pull away.

Panic tore through me, far too big for that tiny body. My arms jerked, and my fingers grabbed at her and caught only fabric.

"Guugh!"

No. No, wait, don't go—

She heard me. She stopped, and her finger touched my cheek, so lightly I almost didn't feel it.

"Mama will be back, Maxy-kun."

She didn't want to go. I could hear it. She carried me toward whoever was waiting, slower than she needed to, and just before she handed me over, she leaned down and whispered right beside my ear.

"Always remember, your mama, @#%$!&, will protect you."

Her name never came through. It was right there, at the edge of my hearing, but something pressed it down and smeared it into noise. I reached for it anyway, the same way my tiny hand reached for her, and came back with nothing.

Then she was gone.

Before I could even start missing her, the power came.

It didn't feel like power meant to make me stronger. It felt like her: the rocking, her hand on my stomach, her cheek against my head. It felt like coming home to a place I didn't know I'd lost, and it poured into me and settled fast, filling every space the mirrors left behind. That was when I understood why I'd thought of a newborn star.

When the flash faded, her warmth stayed in my chest. My mother's warmth. I didn't understand the how or the why, and I didn't ask. My body felt light, my head felt clear, and for the first time since the pressure landed, I felt ready.

-◈ -

As the memory faded, Max found himself back in the ocean, his mother's warmth still glowing in his chest. And his power, finally given a target, erupted out of him as Gravity.

It roared out of him in a column, and this time nothing stood in its way. The force seized him and launched him straight up through the ocean, the pressure falling away within heartbeats.

The weight on his back refused to let go. As he rose, it thickened and clung to him, taking on a shape of its own as it tried to drag him back down, and Max's gravity hauled it up with him like an anchor ripped off the seabed.

Oh no, you don't get to stay down there. You're coming with me.

Max burst through the surface into a world of myriad colors.

A vast expanse of clouds stretched above the ocean, wispy and towering, drifting in endless layers. It took him a moment to recognize it. This was his mindscape, the same sky he saw the day he used the Grimoire, the place where he built every protocol he had.

Home turf. Finally.

But there was no time to admire it. The thing on his back writhed, straining to drag them both back into the ocean. Max planted himself in the air and, fueled by the clarity humming in his veins, carved a new Complex Protocol: Destruction would act on its own to erase anything Auto-Evade marked as an enemy, leaving his allies untouched. Then he turned to face the weight that tried to drag him down.

It loomed behind him, its pale, violet-grey meat swelling upward into a towering shape. Dark blood wept from pocked flesh, oozing around a vertical maw that split its chest to expose a cavern of teeth and a curling tentacle-tongue. Eye clusters bloomed across its bulk, swiveling to track his every movement, while wrongly jointed appendages thrashed around its core. Behind it all, ribbed, fleshy wings spread wide, flinging gore with every twitch.

It looked like a patchwork of everything the Dungeon had ever spawned, stitched into a single body, and it was staring at him with every one of its eyes, black blood oozing down from them in slow threads. Looking at it, Max accepted the name that came to mind. Abomination.

A pulsing cord was attached to its crown, stretching up into the clouds. Max stared at it, feeling a heavy thrum bleed down its length, and his stomach dropped. He recognized the sensation instantly. It was the same suffocating malice that paralyzed him in the cavern, pumping directly into the creature's core.

The pieces clicked together, each one colder than the last. That cord was a conduit for the Dungeon's will. The labyrinth was trying to drown his consciousness, hollow out his mind, and take over his body, folding him into its ecosystem like everything else it ever ate.

Fine. I'll introduce myself properly.

He unleashed the protocol, and waves of crimson-black Destruction rolled off him to engulf the creature.

But the Abomination didn't fold.

Instead of burning away, the black ooze leaking from its eyes surged outward to meet the erasure and drank it, like water pouring into a drain that never filled. Wherever the Destruction tore a gash in its bulk, the flesh stitched itself back together, regenerating as fast as he could damage it.

He hit it again, harder. Same result. The ooze ate it, and the meat closed.

Nothing in the Dungeon ever ate his Destruction before. Monsters resisted it. Monsters regenerated around it. Nothing ever stood there and swallowed it.

Stunned, he shifted tactics. He leveled his hand, gathered his magic, put his shoulder into it this time, and fired.

"Hadō #88. Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō."

A pillar of pale lightning slammed into the beast, and its fleshy bulk absorbed it. Electricity danced across its wet skin and spiderwebbed down its body before sinking into the meat and fading without leaving a single scorch mark. No scream. No damage.

Max lowered his hand, and the truth settled in cold.

It was built to counter me.

The Dungeon watched his dive. It took note of his Destruction and his Kidō, then stitched this thing together out of its own graveyard with exactly one goal: to make his arsenal useless. He wasn't fighting a monster. He was fighting a custom made Max neutraliser.

Then a stray thought cut through his frustration. If it's completely immune to my magic, how did I drag it out of the ocean with me?

Gravity. The upward burst hooked it perfectly.

Something loosened in his chest. The Dungeon studied him and prepared for him, but it had no answer to his Gravity.

You did your homework. Too bad you skipped the last chapter.

Setting the rest of his arsenal aside, Max reached for the space around the beast and locked it down.

"Gravity Prison."

The air around the Abomination warped into a visible geometric box, and for the first time since it rose out of the darkness, it shrieked. Not a bellow, but a shriek, high and wrong, the first sound of pain it made. It poured out more ooze and thrashed its tentacles, but its appendages only slammed against invisible walls. No countermeasure. No ooze, no regeneration. The Dungeon simply didn't have time to account for his newest ability.

Max drove his hands together, and the prison became a vise. The invisible walls forced the mass inward from every direction. Tentacles crushed against their own bodies. Eye clusters popped and sealed shut one by one. The shriek wound down into a creak, the creak into a groan, and the beast compacted into a shuddering cube.

Through all of it, the link fought back. It pulsed harder and harder, forcing fresh power down the cord, and Max felt the meat trying to swell back against his grip, a tug-of-war between his gravity and the labyrinth's will. His arms burned from holding so much pressure folded into a box.

They ached, but he tightened his grip.

Looking up at the dark cord descending from the sky, Max smirked. To think you planned this so well to swallow me. You deserve more credit than I gave you. He poured more magic into the gravity well, tightening the vise with every word. But you'll feel my wrath, and I'll make you regret ever touching me.

"Fuck you, Dungeon!" he finally roared, and he channeled all the power coursing through his body into a swipe of his hand that severed the link.

With the connection cut, the Dungeon's refill stopped. Under the pressure of his magic, the compressed cube finally gave way, and the Abomination shattered into nothing, crushed under his power and dissolving into the clouds.

For the first time since the pressure hit him in the cavern, his head was silent.

He turned to leave, but the questions running at the back of his mind finally surfaced.

The voice. Clearly, that was his mother. Well, this body's mother, but after what he just felt, that distinction didn't seem to matter much anymore. He pressed a hand against his chest, where her warmth still lingered. Maxy-kun. And right behind it, without meaning to, Mac. Two mothers, two worlds, and he didn't even know the name of one of them. Who was she?

And did this mean the Isekai Gods planned to send him back to DxD once he was done here? That dragged a whole rabbit hole of questions along with it: the mechanics, who if anyone would be allowed to come with him, the backstory of this body. He had to forcibly push them all down, because there was a bigger question waiting.

The sealed power.

Why was it sealed? Who could have done it? Six barriers shattered, Seven if he counted the final flashbang, so were there more? The flash blinded him, and the vision that followed left him too shaken to check, but now he wanted to know.

He needed answers, but they would have to wait. Ottar and Hogni were still fighting for their lives against the Jugg—

Ki! Kikikiki! KKKKKKIIIIIIIIII!

A frantic pounding cut him off. It started small, half-swallowed by the lingering quiet, so faint he almost mistook it for ringing in his ears. Then the silence shattered completely, and a barrage of calls bombarded him from every direction, hammering down the bond.

MA-ST-ER.

His mind snagged. Those were syllables. That was what Kairu always called him, broken into pieces and shoved through the connection one fragment at a time, like someone shouting through a heavy vault door.

MAS-TER. MAST-ER. MASTER!! MASTER!!!

The calls came faster than he could process, heavy with raw emotion. The moment Max was dragged under, the familiar bond sealed itself shut to keep the Dungeon's will from seeping into Kairu through it, cutting the slime off from him completely. Kairu spent the entire attack hammering against a wall he couldn't break, and he kept hammering, working his way from frantic squeaks to actual syllables through sheer stubbornness.

Now that the Abomination was dead and the Dungeon's interference was gone, the bond flew open, and everything Kairu was trying to say poured through in a single flood. Magic dumped down the contract in fistfuls. Frantic attempts to physically shake a master who wouldn't wake. And beneath it all, a protective ultimatum: If Master won't wake up, Kairu will go in and get him.

So he did, straight through the open bond.

Max looked across the cloudy expanse.

A slime the size of a skyscraper came bounding toward him across the sea of clouds, his true size, moving with the same easy bounce as his compact form. The absurdity of that sight arriving in the middle of all this hit Max right in the chest, and for the first time since the pressure first pinned him, he threw his head back and laughed.

Seeing him awake, the rolling mountain of gel crossed the final stretch. In the span of a single leap, he compressed himself down, shrinking rapidly until a seven-inch blob launched through the air and landed squarely on Max's chest, where he clung on tight as if to make sure his master couldn't run off again.

"MASTER!! MASTER!!! KAIRU WAS WORRIED! THE SCARY HUNGRY FEELING CAME BACK AND MASTER WENT SLEEPY AND KAIRU WAS WORRIED!!"

Max froze. The words crashed over him, clear and articulate. The voice echoing in front of him was high, bright and endearingly childlike, and it washed over his frayed nerves like a cool balm after the Dungeon's suffocating malice.

"KAIRU TRIED, KAIRU REALLY TRIED, BUT THE HUNGRY THING STILL MANAGED TO JUMP INTO YOU! KAIRU IS REALLY SORRY, MASTER. REALLY, REALLY SORRY!!"

"Wait." Max blinked down at the quivering slime on his chest. "You can talk? Kairu, you can actually talk?!"

The apologetic trembling stopped instantly. "KAIRU CAN TALK?" he asked in disbelief, and then he bounced happily in place, vibrating with pride. "KAIRU CAN TALK TO MASTER NOW!"

A joyful grin broke across Max's face. "That's amazing, buddy." He reached up and patted the slime's head, feeling the last of his tension drain away. "I'm fine, and I won. You don't have to apologize for anything. But since you're here and talking... how are things outside?"

Kairu puffed up. "Kairu's body is still wrapped around Master's body, keeping it safe, and a Kairu clone is watching over everyone! Kairu's other clones are helping Hogni and the strong boar guy fight the big bone monster!" The slime bounced once, then settled, his bright voice dropping into a hesitant mumble. "Master was sleepy for a long, long time. They are fighting hard, but... the bone monster is really fast and really mean, and... Kairu doesn't know..."

He trailed off, jiggling nervously on Max's chest as if unsure how to deliver bad news.

Max gently stroked the top of his head. "Hey, it's fine. You did great holding the line. We can finish our chat as soon as we deal with the Juggernaut." He smiled, his voice softening. "Thank you for all the help, buddy, and for what it's worth, I'm really sorry I made you worry."

Kairu fiercely wobbled his whole body from side to side. "No, Master! Kairu is always here to protect Master!!"

Chuckling at the fierce conviction in that soothing voice, Max reached up and affectionately pinched a stretchy handful of the slime's gelatinous cheek.

"I know you are. Now, let's end the Juggernaut."

--> Devil in a Dungeon <--

AN:

Yo! Been a while huh. I am well and recovered thank you all for your support. 

Coming to the chapter, it is a tough cookie with many complicated aspects. I initially thought of writing the mental battle and physical battle simultaneously until I settled on the above decision to separate them. I feel the chapter could have been better but I finally settled this version as it is the best I could articulate everything I wanted without breaking my head. 

The Dungeon's will was first written as pulling and then pushing, that's due to the increased clarity, Max understood he was not pulled, but pushed, from above. Which was proved when he reaches his mindscape, as the pressure coming from above, from the Dungeon.

Then there is the whole mystery of the mirrors, the flashbang and his mother. What do you think all of them signify? You are free to share your thoughts in the comments and I will say if its true or not ;) 

I will be answering Questions on Monday after the updates are some what caught up.  

We will get into Ottar's & Hogni's side of things and finish with the Juggernaut in the next chapter. 

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 11 chapters ahead(around 55k words), support my work, check character images for free, read a free chapter(Ch 51.5), or commission a story idea, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash

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

Next update will be on Saturday. 

Ben, Out.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Juggernaut:

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