Fels
From the jagged alcove overlooking the Colosseum, they watched the slaughter unfold.
Moving undetected through the Dungeon rarely posed a challenge. Eight centuries of a skeletal existence provided certain grim advantages—namely the luxury of not needing to breathe, eat, or emit a heartbeat. They were a ghost who watched, cataloged, and waited.
Maximus had held their attention since his first dive. Fels's interest had originally sparked the moment Ouranos mentioned him, describing a soul that felt entirely out of place—a presence sharing the same peculiar origin as the Fool Fels. At the time, the conclusion seemed obvious: another necromancer. Another arrogant scholar who reached too far into forbidden magic and paid for it with their humanity.
That assumption crumbled the moment they actually watched him fight.
Whatever Maximus was, he wasn't a necromantic abomination, nor a fractured echo stitched into a rotting corpse. He was potent, terrifying, and violently alive. Every attempt Fels made to fit him into known magical or biological frameworks failed.
He cast complex spells without chanting and sprouted leathery wings mid-leap. His physical strength eclipsed seasoned Dwarven warriors, his sensory perception outstripped Beastkin trackers, his mana output surpassed High Elves in both grace and volume, and his tactical instincts outpaced veteran Pallum commanders. Yet, he walked, spoke, and bled like a human.
For a time, Fels had been tempted to label him a chimera. But as they watched him casually unmake monsters with an instinctive magic that simply erased matter, that theory fell apart too. This wasn't borrowed power. It was a new category altogether, one that did not exist in any text or grimoire Fels had ever parsed.
And if Maximus himself was an unsolvable puzzle, his familiar was a walking impossibility.
Because the adventurer's Status remained hidden behind a sensory net that made direct scrying too dangerous, Fels had turned their attention to the slime. Using one of their quieter constructs during a chaotic skirmish, they managed to steal a fragmentary glimpse of the monster's parameters.
What they saw shocked them into stillness.
The monster had a Falna. That alone was a world-shattering revelation, but the emblem burned into the slime's gel paralyzed Fels. It was the crest of Freya. The Goddess of Beauty, notoriously obsessive and ruthlessly selective, had bestowed her blessing upon a puddle of ooze.
Then, Fels caught a glimpse of the stats.
EX.
Until now, Fels had witnessed the legendary vanguards of the Zeus and Hera Familias trigger the rare "Limit Off" phenomenon, breaking the Level cap to push their abilities into SS, and for a very select few, into SSS. But EX? That was a value Fels had never encountered, nor even imagined could exist. It defied the foundational providence of the gods. It sat on the slime's sheet like a localized law of reality, dictating that this particular creature was governed by entirely different principles.
Furthermore, as a familiar master themselves, Fels knew a familiar reflected its master's soul and capabilities. Simply taming one was a lifetime achievement for most; strengthening one was a monumental task. Yet here they stood. Maximus had reached Level 2 in a single week, while his familiar had already surged into Level 3. Combined with a clear Falna, the slime looked like a nascent Xenos treading the razor-thin boundary between the Dungeon's children and the gods' own.
Processing that revelation left them deeply unsettled. If a mere familiar boasted statistics that shattered the bounds of logic, what in the gods' names was etched onto Maximus's back?
They realized then how foolish they had been to even attempt measuring this anomaly. Maximus was a Singularity. He required careful observation, lest they make a disastrous first impression.
Fels wanted to step out of the shadows and speak to him, but caution held them back. Maximus treated the Dungeon as both a laboratory and a grindstone. If a skeletal wraith appeared uninvited, the adventurer wouldn't stop to ask questions; he would throw himself at the perceived threat with destructive efficiency. Fels had no desire to test if their undead bones could survive that erasure magic.
So, they remained hidden. Watching. Waiting for the right moment.
That caution deepened after Royman provided them with the items Maximus had shared with the Guild. He hadn't just proven himself a fighter; he had unveiled artifacts that mocked Fels's life's work.
Dismantling the magical ring in their workshop, they sat in silence for hours. It utilized a strange, gel-like substance—likely derived from the slime—that acted as a flawless container for embedded spellwork. It was an elegant application of what could only be categorized as Mystery. Centuries of chasing the principles of true magical item creation, and this anomaly wanted to mass-produce the answer over a retail counter. It truly solidified why Fels was the Fool.
Yet, the rings were child's play compared to the bracelet.
Fels had spent decades perfecting the Oculus—the paired twin crystals that allowed them to speak with Ouranos. But the Oculus was inherently flawed. Each crystal only interacted with its exact twin, requiring Fels to juggle multiple rigid pairs to maintain any semblance of a communication network.
The prototype bracelet rendered the Oculus obsolete. It operated deep within the Dungeon's interference zones on a fraction of Mind. More importantly, it was intent-based—routing communication across a fluid network through sheer willpower rather than clunky, paired crystals. It was a masterstroke of arcane engineering.
Correlating the genius of these artifacts with Ouranos's early warnings, Fels stopped viewing Maximus as a dangerous subject and truly recognized him for what he was: a kindred spirit. A fellow enthusiast driven by a voracious hunger to peel back the layers of magic.
It was that exact sense of kinship that brought Fels to Floor 37 earlier for a delicate magical experiment.
Then, a sharp ping from one of their hidden surveillance constructs echoed: Max's presence detected on Floor 27.
The conclusion seemed simple. The Amphisbaena's spawn window was close. Max had stepped away from his shop to secure the Monster Rex before anyone else could. Fels abandoned their experiment, already calculating the fastest route up to the Water Capital to watch the confrontation.
But before they took more than a few steps, the signal shifted.
Max's presence vanished from Floor 27 entirely—only to flare back to life moments later, impossibly, right here on Floor 37. Fels stopped short, puzzled. If Max had gone for the Amphisbaena, what reason did he have to come down here so soon, especially since Udaeus wouldn't spawn for months?
They tracked the signature, narrowing in on its exact position. It wasn't drifting toward the tunnels or the monster paths. It settled directly at the mouth of the Colosseum.
Fels went still, and then understanding surfaced. Of course. It fit him perfectly—that restless unpredictability that defined every observation they had made. Abandoning a guaranteed kill on a Monster Rex to go pick a fight with an infinite spawn loop instead, apparently on nothing more than a whim.
The curiosity was immediate. If this anomaly threw himself into that pit, what would the Dungeon spit out in response? They moved at once, closing the distance to the Colosseum.
They reached the alcove just in time to see Maximus standing on the outcropping high above the arena, preparing to leap. Then, he paused.
Purple light flickered around the placid slime on his shoulder. In a single heartbeat, the creature's magical density skyrocketed. The faint signature of a lesser construct was seamlessly replaced by the overwhelming, concentrated presence of the original Kairu—its core burning a fierce blue, liquid body coiled for slaughter.
A bitter thread of envy tugged at Fels's thoughts. Teleportation like that—precise, casual, paid for with nothing more than intent—was a luxury unknown to this fool.
They set that heavy weight aside as Maximus dropped into the arena.
From the safety of the alcove, they watched the kindred spirit work. The way he moved through the horde was clean and adaptive. His strikes were heavier, his speed sharper, signifying a recent Level Up. And, as they expected, Max had an answer to the endless spawning: he gathered the monsters toward his position and erased them with his instinctive magic.
But the arena responded as it always did: kill one, replace one. The cycle never slowed.
When the swarm threatened to crush him, Max threw up a barrier. Fels found themselves fixated on the crystalline construct. Their working hypothesis held that its durability should plateau the moment it absorbed sustained pressure from multiple Level 4 monsters—a limitation baked into the geometry of layered wardcraft.
Yet the barrier didn't calcify. It flexed, redistributing the impact load across its surface with a fluidity they had never seen in a static construct. Only after it endured volley after volley did a tremor of fatigue finally creep into its structure. Fels turned the anomaly over in their mind, hunting for the trick, and found none. It wasn't layered wardcraft at all. It behaved more like living tissue, healing its own stress fractures faster than the horde could reopen them. Possibly fed by a continuous supply of Mind, they concluded.
Then Maximus dropped the shield, stepped back, raised his blade, took a deep breath, and began to chant.
Fels stilled, leaning forward. Max almost never used incantations. When he did, they were two or three verses at most. This chant was long, structured, and heavy, dragging ambient magic from the cavern air like a suffocating rain. It compressed the energy until the Colosseum itself seemed to hold its breath. From the spell's terrifying cadence alone, they understood this was Maximus's ultimate answer to the arena.
This was a spell designed to redraw the map.
The blazing meteor formed high near the ceiling, passing through ring after ring of amplifying magic circles as it began its descent.
They leaned closer, gripping the edge of the alcove. He is standing at ground zero. How does he intend to survive the epicenter of his own creation?
The answer came in a flash of crimson.
Just as the monstrous sphere reached terminal velocity, Maximus dropped the barriers surrounding him. A teleportation circle flared violently beneath his boots, and in the span of a heartbeat, he vanished from the arena floor entirely.
Fels felt a distinct surge of academic appreciation. A tactical withdrawal at the precise moment of critical mass. Incredibly clever. By removing himself via teleportation, he didn't need to dilute the spell's destructive output by reserving mana for a shield. He could simply unleash carnage and leave.
A fraction of a second later, the spell reached the arena floor.
BBAAANNNNGGGGG!
BBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!
KRA-KOOOOMMMMMM!
The impact wiped hundreds of monsters from existence in a blinding flash of white.
Fels's mind reeled, running the comparison against every calibrated threshold they'd cataloged over eight centuries. A spell of that yield, that radius, that raw annihilative force—it sat comfortably in Level 6 territory. And if they were honest with the trembling readings settling in their bones, it brushed dangerously close to the lower edge of Level 7.
And he had built it from a chant barely longer than a child's rhyme.
Fels had watched archmages spend entire incantations twice this length to conjure a fraction of this output, bleeding their own life force dry in the process. In Ouranos's name, they thought, the disbelief cutting sharper than the shockwave itself. What did this boy do to earn that kind of output from so few verses?
The shockwave tore through the cavern, violently rattling the stone. Fels planted their feet against the alcove wall as the deep-floor bedrock shuddered. The displaced ambient mana hit like a tidal wave, washing over every surface.
It also hit something much more delicate.
The sheer magical backlash slammed into Fels's cloak. A masterpiece of enchanting designed to block curses and grant invisibility, the garment simply couldn't withstand the overwhelming atmospheric disruption. Its runic lattice scrambled. The suppression sigils flared, fizzled, and died.
With a soft, ugly crackle, the veil collapsed, leaving Fels bare in the shadows.
The undead mage froze, their ingrained instincts calculating the risk. Maximus's passive sensory net spanned fifty meters on his previous dive, Fels reasoned rapidly, eyeing the distance to the smoking crater. Even factoring in his recent Level Up and allowing an additional five meters for organic growth, this alcove sits at sixty-five. They are safely beyond his expanded range. They should be secure for a moment.
Under normal circumstances, Fels would have immediately funneled their Mind back into the heavy fabric of the cloak to reweave the lattice. Remaining exposed in the Dungeon was an amateur's mistake. But a far more terrifying concern rooted them in place.
They kept their hands at their sides, their gaze fixed on the crater below. The Dungeon's floor groaned, a deep agony echoing through the cavern as jagged veins of crimson light pulsed beneath the newly glassed surface. Fels rigidly weighed the catastrophic damage against the precise thresholds they had cataloged over centuries. The margin for error on the deep floors was notoriously thin. If the destruction crossed the Dungeon's hidden threshold of tolerance, the labyrinth's immune system would trigger.
Fortunately, Floor 37 was as vast as the city of Orario itself. While the localized devastation was staggering, the total structural integrity of the floor remained intact. It hadn't reached the tipping point. The Dungeon was in agony, but that wasn't abnormal.
No Juggernaut would spawn today.
Satisfied with that critical conclusion, Fels finally exhaled a breath they didn't need and reached up to grip the edge of their cloak. They began channeling their Mind into the scrambled sigils to repair the veil. Appearing and vanishing out of nowhere right after a spell of that magnitude was tactless, bordering on threatening. It was far better to retreat now, re-establish invisibility, and approach this singularity formally later, on neutral ground.
They never got the chance to finish the magic.
VWOOM.
The empty air directly in front of them shattered like thin glass.
A blur of black and crimson crossed the sixty-five-meter gap in less than a heartbeat, completely ignoring the logical limits Fels had relied upon. The singularity's sensory net hadn't stayed at fifty meters. It had grown.
Wind tore at the black robes as Maximus materialized on the ledge, his rapier already raised, his amethyst eyes locking directly onto the skeletal mage with cold, lethal intent.
For the first time in eight hundred years, the Fool felt the icy dread of being entirely perceived.
-◈ -
Max
Ping.
A presence flared into existence on the far side of the Colosseum wall.
Max's eyes snapped open. The potent mix of the Superior Mind and Recovery potions was already tearing through his veins, wiring his nervous system into a state of hyper-alert aggression. The lingering dread of a Juggernaut acted as a spark to the powder.
His body moved before conscious thought formed.
Driven by the stamina surge, he crossed the massive gap in a violent blur of Shunshin. He materialized directly on the lip of the shadowed alcove, his rapier already arcing downward in a lethal execution strike.
Then his eyes registered the target.
Dark robes. A tattered hood. And beneath the fabric, a rigid structure his expanded senses immediately flagged as bone.
A skeleton? Max thought, the logic violently colliding with his momentum. Juggernauts are armor-plated horrors. And a lone Spartoi wouldn't trigger my instincts like this.
Using that split-second of clarity, Max forcibly aborted the swing. He triggered Geppo, his boots kicking hard against empty air to violently redirect his mass and the sudden halt tore a shockwave of pain through his shoulder. He bled off his speed just enough to crash heavily against the back wall of the alcove, his boots skidding against the stone.
He kept his rapier raised, chest heaving with wired energy, but he didn't strike.
Less than an inch from the blade's tip, the skeletal figure hadn't flinched or raised an arm to block.
Max's thoughts raced, filtering out the impossibilities. Not a Juggernaut. Not a stray monster. Nobody sane free-climbed to Floor 37 in a cloak just to watch a boss fight. Which left exactly one entity that belonged in the shadows.
Ouranos's second shadow. The Sage.
Before Max could lower his weapon, Kairu reacted.
The slime launched off Max's shoulder, rapidly compressing the ambient moisture in the cavern. A jagged spear of ice screamed toward the skeleton's skull.
"Kairu, stand down!" Max snapped, trusting his deduction over his potion-fueled adrenaline.
The ice spear halted mid-air, stopping a hairsbreadth from the skeleton's empty eye socket. Kairu hung there, his core flickering an agitated violet, radiating a stubborn suspicion that refused to yield.
The hooded figure didn't look at the lethal ice hovering near their face. They simply turned their hollow gaze to Max.
"I apologize for the abruptness," a dry, rasping voice echoed from beneath the hood. It was unhurried and perfectly measured. "I should have led with introductions rather than proximity."
Slowly, the black-robed shape bent forward into a formal, courtly bow.
"I am Fels," they said, straightening. "Aide to Lord Ouranos. I have come only to talk, Mister Maximus."
Max stared at the figure, his stance finally relaxing. A grim satisfaction settled in his chest at recognizing the Sage, confirming his own deduction. Beside him, Kairu retracted the ice and drifted back to hover protectively at Max's side, his aggression banked but not extinguished.
What are they doing following me all the way down here? Max thought, rolling his aching shoulder to shake off the potion jitters. If Lord Ouranos wanted to contact him, the God could have pushed a transmission through the new comms bracelet. Sending his personal shadow to intercept him in the deep floors meant this wasn't an official Guild summons.
This was off the books.
Whatever Fels wanted, it had to be significant for them to risk exposure like this. Pushing his lingering combat adrenaline aside, Max allowed his curiosity to take the reins. He wanted to know exactly what this walking legend was after.
-◈ -
General Pov
The silence stretched, broken only by Max's ragged breathing.
"Before we proceed," Fels said. The raspy voice sounded like old parchment rubbing against stone. "I must ask for your forgiveness. Not merely for my startling arrival, but for remaining hidden and observing you. It was an invasive, but necessary, precaution."
Max's eyes narrowed. His hands tightened around his rapier. The adrenaline of dropping a massive spell still burned through his veins, and his chest heaved as he fought to slow his breathing. An apology from a skeletal stalker wasn't exactly standard etiquette.
"I'm listening," Max said, keeping his tone flat. He kept his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, still half-expecting the floor to crack open and spit out the Juggernaut.
Fels noted the adventurer's rigid posture and his white-knuckled grip on the blade. The arena was dead, the spawning halted while the Dungeon diverted its energy to repair the glassed crater. Yet Maximus stood coiled like a spring, his gaze darting to the shadows as if expecting the walls to devour him.
Such extreme paranoia for a cleared room, Fels mused. The adrenaline of the slaughter still runs hot.
But looking closer, Fels realized the tension wasn't just combat high. The boy's eyes were tracking the stress fractures of the floor. As if he knew exactly what kind of threshold he came close. As if he was waiting for the Juggernaut.
The realization struck Fels with a sharp jolt of intrigue. The existence of the Dungeon's overwhelming, anti-magic executioner was one of Orario's most closely guarded secrets. After the fall of the Zeus and Hera Familias, knowledge of the Juggernaut was practically erased from public record. Yet this anomaly was bracing for it like a seasoned veteran. Fels immediately filed the observation away, intending to ask Ouranos if this singularity had any hidden ties to the remnants of Zeus or Hera.
"To assure you I speak with Lord Ouranos's voice," Fels continued slowly, reaching into the folds of their scorched robes.
They withdrew a heavy metallic token and held it up to the dim light. As Fels turned it, the carved visage of Ouranos gleamed with an iridescent sheen.
Max recognized the high-security watermark instantly. His tactical mind categorized the threat level down a notch—a direct agent of the Guild Head wasn't here for a petty assassination—but he didn't drop his guard. He was still waiting for the Dungeon's true immune response.
He let out a slow breath, lowering the tip of his rapier. "Alright. You're the Guild's ghost. What does Lord Ouranos want?
"Lord Ouranos sent me to observe," Fels corrected, tucking the token away. "But my presence here, revealing myself to you now, is driven entirely by my own personal curiosity. I would consider it a great favor if you indulged me."
Max tilted his head, intrigued despite the lingering tension. "Sure. Ask."
Fels reached back into their cloak. They produced a Trinitas ring & the Comms bracelet and set it gently on a piece of unbroken stone. Then, they pointed to the Ring for a long moment, as their thumb traced the runework.
"I will not waste your time with pleasantries," Fels began. The scholar overtook the spy, giving the raspy voice an intense edge. "I have studied these extensively. The construction defies nearly everything documented in Orario. The rings utilize a strange, adaptive substance as a flawless container for embedded spellwork—an elegant but impossibly stable application of Mystery."
Fels looked up, pinning Max with a hollow gaze.
"But this... this is a paradigm shift," Fels breathed, the reverence unmistakable as they pointed at the bracelet. "It operates deep within the Dungeon's interference zones on a mere fraction of Mind. It routes communication across a fluid network through sheer willpower and intent. It is a masterstroke of arcane engineering. I confess, I find myself with more questions than I have had in centuries."
A deliberate, weighted pause followed.
"How did you conceive of this framework? And is the stabilizing agent drawn directly from your partner's mass?"
Before Max could answer, a guttural screech echoed from the depths of the crater below. It was followed by another, then the faint clash of bone on stone.
Max let out a slow exhale. The rigid tension in his shoulders finally melted away. The spawn cycle was resuming. The arena was returning to its usual state of permanent war. If the Dungeon was redirecting its ambient energy back into churning out monsters, it meant the structural crisis had passed. The immune system was standing down.
The Juggernaut wasn't coming.
With the apocalyptic dread fading, Max finally pulled his rapier back, the blade sliding into its scabbard with a sharp clack.
He glanced at his shoulder. Kairu, realizing he was suddenly the topic of the ancient skeleton's admiration, puffed out his gelatinous chest and gave a proud little bounce against Max's shoulder.
The sheer absurdity of the situation finally cut through Max's combat high. Looking between his bouncing slime and the eight-hundred-year-old skeletal sage treating his retail inventory like the Holy Grail, Max couldn't help it. A highly amused grin spread across his face.
"You're right on both counts," Max said, leaning back slightly against the wall. His posture shifted, abandoning the cornered predator for the confident inventor. "The framework is mine. The theory, the geometry, folding the spellwork down to fit inside the ring, designing an intent-based pinging system for the bracelets—all me."
He reached up and patted Kairu. The slime practically vibrated under the praise. "But the actual containment medium? The physical hardware? That's entirely him. Nothing else I've tested is dense or malleable enough to hold my spells without bleeding Mind into the atmosphere."
Fels stood still.
"You speak of this freely," Fels noted, incredulity bleeding into their voice. "It is the first law of Mystery and arcane crafting to guard one's methods with absolute secrecy. To hoard the knowledge. Yet you explain the foundation of your supremacy as if discussing the weather."
Max laughed. The arrogant sound echoed off the bone-white ledge.
"I'm telling you because it doesn't matter who knows," Max said, crossing his arms. His Pride flared warmly in his chest, reveling in the mage's shock. "I could give you the exact blueprints, the math, and the runic structures right now. But you can't replicate it. No one can."
He tapped his chest, right over where his heart hummed. "The magic powering those items is a variant unique to me. It's chantless for speed, relying entirely on will and imagination. And the containment?" He smiled down at Kairu. "Good luck finding another familiar who can consciously manipulate its own cellular structure to act as a living magic battery. I'd pay good Valis to anyone in Orario who could replicate even one ring."
Fels absorbed the words, a chill of academic awe settling deep into their bones.
Not a volatile anomaly, Fels realized, staring at the adventurer's relaxed posture. A controlled, deliberate system. He hasn't stumbled into a miracle; he has engineered a localized law of reality.
To a scholar who had sacrificed everything for knowledge, that untouchable genius was breathtaking. Fels understood now. Maximus wasn't sharing secrets out of foolishness; he was sharing them out of unassailable supremacy.
"I see," Fels breathed, the dry voice carrying a note of ungrudging respect. "Then I will dispense with the rest of my preamble. I wish to experiment further with the cursed gems you submitted to the Guild. To safely contain their parasitic nature, I require the hand of a fellow practitioner of Mystery."
Max raised an eyebrow. The logistical path clicked into place. So that's where the Dragon's loot ended up. It made perfect sense that Royman would pass highly volatile materials straight up the chain to Ouranos's personal shadow.
He recalled bits of lore about Fels investigating Knossos, planning something massive with the labyrinth. Not that it mattered to Max now. The Guild had paid out a heavy bounty to take those gems off his hands. As far as he was concerned, that transaction was closed.
However, Max thought, the gears of his inner merchant turning rapidly, this opens a brilliant new angle for negotiation.
Since Fels operated with the Guild's infinite resources, they definitely had access to Orichalcum. Or, at the very least, they possessed the precise coordinates to unmined veins deep within the Dungeon. Max considered demanding a solid ingot of the elusive metal—or a map to it—as his starting price for whatever magical consultation the skeleton was about to propose.
That's when Fels's gaze shifted deliberately to the slime on Max's shoulder.
"I would like to request access to a portion of your partner's mass."
Max blinked. The amusement vanished instantly. He uncrossed his arms, his posture stiffening as his protective instincts reignited.
"You want a piece of Kairu," Max said flatly.
"A small amount. It will not harm him, and it will allow me to—"
"I don't care what it allows you to do," Max interrupted. The temperature around him plummeted, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy tone. "He's not a livestock animal or a resource node. He's my partner."
Fels went still. Most adventurers viewed familiars as tools—convenient beasts of burden or disposable shields. But Maximus was looking at Fels as if the skeleton had just asked to amputate his arm.
Max turned his head, ignoring the mage standing ten feet away, focusing entirely on the blue blob.
"It's up to you, buddy," Max said softly, the harsh edge leaving his voice. "He wants some of your mass for his experiments. If you don't want to, we tell him to kick rocks and we walk away right now. I don't care who he works for."
Ki?
Kairu tilted his body, looking from Max to the skeletal figure in the black cloak. The slime pulsed thoughtfully. He felt his Master's protectiveness through their bond—a warm, fiercely loyal anchor that made his core hum with happiness.
But Kairu also understood the transaction. He was a monster, adapted to survival, and he recognized that giving up a fraction of his regenerating mass was a trivial price if his master could extract something of value from it. He bounced once, firmly, on Max's shoulder. Ki! ki!
"You sure?" Max asked, raising an eyebrow.
Kairu extruded a tiny pseudopod and gave a confident thumbs-up.
Max sighed, the tension finally bleeding out of his shoulders. He turned back to Fels, his expression strictly business once more.
"My partner says yes. But this isn't a charity." Max's amethyst eyes narrowed, assessing the Guild's ghost. "What are you offering in exchange?"
Fels didn't answer verbally. Instead, they reached into their robes, produced a sealed parchment scroll, and released it. A faint shimmer of magic caught the scroll mid-fall, ferrying it across the gap until it settled into Max's waiting hand.
Max broke the seal. He unrolled the top portion, his eyes scanning the dense runework and cramped handwriting.
"That scroll contains every basic and intermediate application of Mystery that I have deemed safe for practical use," Fels explained softly, watching the boy's eyes widen. "A foundation for your partner to build upon. And for you—I have outlined methodologies for refinement, compression, and containment."
Fels gestured slightly toward Max's frame. "Ways to rein in the passive magical leakage that currently follows you like a lit torch through a dark room. It will help you conceal your unique nature from those who are sensitive to such things."
Max's breath hitched slightly. He read a paragraph, letting the value of the information sink in. It was exactly what he had been trying to figure out in his suite just days ago—a manual on how to scrub his destructive signature and perfect his aura control.
This isn't a trade, Max realized, looking up at the skeleton with newfound respect. It's an investment.
Fels had purposefully structured the exchange so the knowledge Max received was worth infinitely more than a handful of Kairu's biomass. It was the calculated opening move of someone securing a highly valuable ally.
Max rolled up the scroll, tucking it safely into his pouch.
"Alright," Max said, giving Fels a respectful nod. "We have a deal."
Kairu bounced eagerly off Max's shoulder, landing with a soft squelch on the ledge. He met Fels halfway. The skeletal mage knelt, unfastening a mana-lined storage pouch from their belt.
With a rhythmic hum, Kairu sloughed off glowing blue portions of his own mass, depositing them into the bag as casually as if he were handing over spare change.
Fels watched the cheerful, lethal little monster with quiet wonder. To see such casual defiance of biological limits up close was mesmerizing. They sealed the pouch carefully once it was full, treating the goo with the reverence of a holy relic.
"You have my profound gratitude, both of you," Fels said, standing up. For the first time, the raspy voice actually carried a trace of unburdened warmth.
Kairu bounced back to Max's side, structurally unbothered, his core flickering cheerfully as he reformed himself on Max's shoulder.
Business concluded, Fels prepared to leave. The air around them began to warp with the quiet displacement of space.
"One more thing," Fels added, pausing as their skeletal form began to turn translucent. They glanced toward the dark tunnels leading back up the dungeon. "I take it your presence in the dungeon was originally to hunt the Amphisbaena?"
Max rubbed the back of his neck, offering a faintly sheepish nod. "Yeah. I checked Floor 27 on the way down, but it hadn't spawned yet. Figured I had some time to kill, so I came down here to get a feel for the Colosseum."
Fels stared at him for a silent moment, processing the sheer absurdity of diving into an infinite monster spawn loop simply to kill time.
"I see," Fels finally replied with a slow nod, their voice fading as the teleportation magic took hold. "As you know, the Dungeon is unpredictable. The Monster Rex has already spawned. And an Evilus party is currently engaged with it."
Before Max could even open his mouth to process the weight of that warning, Fels was gone. They left nothing behind but the scent of old parchment and the distant clashes of the Colosseum falling back into its rhythm.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
Important Note:
I am very happy to share I added few character pictures and other pictures like Max's soul, Trinitas Rings, etc,. on Patron available even for Free Members. So if you are interested to see how Max, Kairu looks at various stages of the story, you can check that out and also suggest if you want to see any particular scenes brought to life as well.
Back to Chapter:
No Juggernaut yet, haha. As mentioned, Floor 37 was said to be the size of Orario and the Colosseum is not that big to make the Dungeon spawn its ultimate killing machine. For now as Max won't let that be the case for long. :)
For those wondering why does Fels repeat they are a fool so many times?? I mean it was not only a physical reminder but something that made them purposeless in the end and they just exist now to see the end of the Black Dragon is my take on them.
Aside from that, we finally see where the Gems vanished to and I wanted to add another addition in which Max shares his experiment results with Fels, but felt that doesn't fit well with the setup/pacing of the scene. It would just be another surprising scene for Fels and casual thing for Max but it would give Fels better insight into the functioning of the Gems and sets up for the next interaction where they can possibly pry deeper on that aspect. What are your thoughts? If you want it added, I will add it below as an extra not disturbing the chapter, drop a comment.
The next chapter will be Evilus screwing up and finding out why they should not to poke a peaceful Devil ;)
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, 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 Tuesday.
Ben, Out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.