CHAPTER 28: AUDIENCE WITH DESTRUCTION
The doors were taller than me.
Carved stone, ancient-looking despite Tempest's youth, designed to make everyone who entered feel small. I stood before them in my cleanest kitchen clothes, holding a container of Honeycomb Tempest Cake made with the newly discovered cave amber, and tried to convince my legs that walking forward was a reasonable choice.
The guest hall guard—a hobgoblin whose expression suggested he understood exactly how stupid my situation was—pushed the doors open.
Thirty meters of polished floor stretched between me and the sitting area where Milim Nava waited.
The aura hit at twenty-eight.
It wasn't like pressure. Pressure was physical, quantifiable, something you could brace against.
This was presence. The fundamental awareness that something in this room exceeded the limits of what reality should contain. My vision blurred at the edges. My legs weakened, knees threatening to buckle under weight that had nothing to do with gravity.
[Warning: Magicule exposure exceeding AC tolerance]
[Estimated sustainable duration: 4 minutes]
Four minutes. In four minutes, my system would fail and I'd collapse on this polished floor in front of a Demon Lord who'd asked to meet me.
Then something else activated.
[Title Effect: Storm Dragon's Favor — Dragonoid proximity detected]
[Applying magicule pressure reduction: 30% (partial compatibility — subject is Dragonoid, not True Dragon)]
[Adjusted sustainable duration: 11 minutes]
The pressure didn't vanish, but it eased. The blurring at my vision's edge stabilized. My legs found their strength again—not full strength, but enough.
"Storm Dragon's Favor. The Veldora title. It's partially working because Milim is a Dragonoid, descended from dragon bloodlines."
I walked the remaining distance on legs that wobbled but held.
Milim was smaller than I expected.
The anime had conveyed her power, her presence, the sheer overwhelming force of existence that radiated from every scene she appeared in. What it hadn't conveyed was scale. She sat on a cushioned chair like a bored teenager waiting for entertainment, pink hair cascading over shoulders that looked too slight to contain the destruction she could unleash.
Rimuru sat beside her in human form, watching my approach with an expression I couldn't read.
"You're the cook." Milim's voice was lighter than I'd imagined. Higher. The voice of someone who'd never needed to project authority because authority was implicit in her existence. "The one who makes the honey thing."
"Yes, Lady Milim."
"Why is it so good?"
The question was blunt. No social padding, no diplomatic framework. She wanted information and expected to receive it.
I'd prepared for this. Meta-knowledge said Milim respected honesty and enthusiasm. Flattery bored her. Complexity confused her. She wanted simple answers to simple questions.
"Better ingredients than most," I said. "And I care about every step of the process. Every temperature, every timing, every combination."
Milim studied me.
Her eyes were old. Ancient. The eyes of someone who'd watched civilizations rise and fall, who'd destroyed nations in grief and built nothing since. They didn't match her face, her voice, her casual posture.
"You're weak," she said.
"Yes."
"Really weak. I could kill you by thinking too hard."
"Probably."
"And you're shaking."
I was. I couldn't stop it. The aura reduction from Storm Dragon's Favor kept me functional, but it didn't make me comfortable.
"You're very powerful, Lady Milim. Being near you is difficult."
She tilted her head, considering this.
"But you came anyway. To bring me cake."
"You asked to meet me."
"I did." She stood, and the aura intensified for a heartbeat—not deliberately, just the casual fluctuation of a being who couldn't fully contain her own power. "Rimuru. Make sure the cook doesn't leave."
Rimuru nodded. "I'll see what we can arrange."
"Good." Milim turned back to me, and for a moment something like genuine interest flickered across her ancient eyes. "You're interesting. Weak, but interesting. Keep making the honey thing."
She left through a side door, moving with speed that blurred her form, and the pressure vanished like a weight lifted from my chest.
I remained standing through pure stubbornness.
[Achievement Chain Progress: Veldora's Gaming Buddy — 1/3]
[Requirements for completion: Additional True Dragon-adjacent interactions]
The corridor outside the guest hall was blessedly empty.
I made it four steps before my legs gave out. The wall caught me—cold stone against my back, my breathing ragged, my hands trembling with aftershock from eleven minutes of proximity to something that exceeded the limits of my system's tolerance.
"I survived. I actually survived a face-to-face meeting with Milim Nava."
The thought felt absurd. I was a hobgoblin cook. A community manager from another world who'd died on I-95 and woken up with a system that tracked cultural achievements and cooking buffs. I had no combat skills, no magical abilities, no power beyond the careful accumulation of stats that meant nothing to beings like the one I'd just faced.
And I'd walked into her presence, answered her questions, and left alive because she thought I was interesting.
"Interesting but weak. Keep making the honey thing."
The laugh that escaped me was slightly hysterical.
I stayed against that wall for five minutes, breathing, letting the tremors subside, processing the reality of what had just happened.
The TBP feed pulsed.
[Bulletin Pending]
[Content: "Tyler Barrett granted audience with Demon Lord Milim Nava at her specific request."]
[Priority: District]
[Relevant Parties: 23 recipients]
I checked my SP: 7.
I could suppress it. Spend the points, keep the meeting quiet, maintain whatever remained of my low profile.
But suppressing a Demon Lord meeting would look more suspicious than the meeting itself. People had seen me enter the guest hall. People had seen Milim request my presence. The bulletin would only confirm what witnesses already knew.
I let it fire.
[Bulletin Delivered: 23 recipients confirmed]
Twenty-three people who now knew I'd met personally with Milim Nava.
Twenty-three more threads in the web that seemed to grow tighter every day.
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