Sayuri was eight weeks into her new pregnancy and climbing the walls.
Not literally (though with her Sacred Mother vines she absolutely could have), but emotionally.
The valley was paradise, but paradise can feel like a gilded cage when you've spent months either pregnant, nursing, or commanding an empire from a throne of pillows.
One evening she cornered Kai in the garden, hands on hips, eyes sparkling with mischief.
"I'm bored, husband. I want to see a city. A real one. The broken kind. I want to level up, feel the rush again, and I want you to take me on a proper date while we're at it."
Kai's aura flared for half a second (killing intent thick enough to wilt the flowers around them).
"If anyone who even looks at you wrong dies screaming.
Sayuri poked his chest, completely unfazed. "Whoa, easy there, Mr. Apex Sovereign. I just want to murder some monsters and eat overpriced street food with my baby daddy. No apocalypse required."
Kai exhaled, the pressure vanishing as quickly as it came.
He kissed her forehead. "Fine. But we do it my way."
Two hours later they stepped through a private portal Kai had anchored in old Shinjuku.
Tokyo – or what was left of it – greeted them.
The city was a beautiful ruin.
Skyscrapers leaned like drunks, windows shattered, vines and monster nests crawling up their sides.
The streets were a mix of abandoned luxury cars, makeshift barricades, and the occasional burned-out tank.
Huge cracks in the pavement glowed with dungeon light from below.
Billboards flickered with half-dead ads for things no one needed anymore.
The air smelled of ozone, blood, and distant smoke.
And yet… it was alive in a savage way.
Low-level Awakened scavengers scattered the moment Kai and Sayuri appeared.
A Level 38 Berserker gang on the corner took one look at Kai's face (Level 92 Harvest King aura leaking like a nuclear reactor) and literally dropped their weapons and ran.
A Level 55 raid party that had been farming the subway entrance saw Sayuri's glowing Sacred Mother emblem floating above her head and the visible pregnancy bump, and they knelt.
No one dared come within fifty meters.
The street cleared as if an invisible bubble of pure terror surrounded them.
Sayuri laughed, delighted. "It's like we're celebrities."
Kai smirked, wrapping an arm around her waist. "We're the final bosses, love."
They strolled hand-in-hand through the ghost city like it was Paris in spring.
Kai bought her takoyaki from a terrified street vendor who refused payment (he left a D-rank core instead, enough to buy the entire block).
Sayuri fed him pieces while they sat on the hood of an abandoned Ferrari, legs swinging, watching a pack of mutated crows fight over a corpse three streets away.
"This is the best date ever," she sighed, licking sauce from her thumb.
Kai kissed the taste from her lips. "Wait till you see where I'm taking you next."
He led her down cracked marble stairs into the old Shinjuku subway: now a registered S-rank dungeon called "Abyssal Catacombs."
The entrance guardian (a Level 70 Cerberus variant) took one sniff of Kai's aura, whimpered, and curled up like a scolded puppy.
They descended.
Fifty floors of nightmare creatures, traps, and environmental hazards… and Kai treated it like a romantic evening walk.
Floor 1–10: undead samurai horde
Kai walked forward, sword still sheathed.
The moment the first skeletal warrior raised its katana, Kai's presence alone shattered every bone in a 30-meter radius.
Thousands of skeletons exploded into dust that rained like snow.
Sayuri clapped, laughing as bone fragments pinged off Kai's invisible aura shield.
Floor 11–20: giant spider nest
The queen spider (Level 82) dropped from the ceiling on a web the size of a house.
Kai looked up, bored.
One finger flick.
Power Strike (no weapon needed).
The shockwave turned the queen into red mist and every egg sac into confetti.
Sayuri collected the silk like it was wedding lace.
Floor 21–30: lava elementals and fire drakes
The heat was infernal.
Sayuri's hair floated from the updraft.
Kai simply exhaled.
Harvest King skill: Dominion.
The lava cooled into obsidian around his feet. The drakes bowed. He walked through the magma river carrying Sayuri bridal-style while the elementals parted like the Red Sea.
Floor 31–40: mirror maze of illusions
Illusions of their worst fears appeared: Sayuri losing the baby, Kai failing to protect the family, their children growing up in chains.
Sayuri's eyes filled with tears.
Kai kissed her once, softly.
Then snapped his fingers.
The entire maze shattered into harmless glass dust.
"No illusion gets to hurt you. Not even in here."
Floor 41–49: the final gauntlet
A Level 90 Abyssal Behemoth (tentacles, eyes, mouths, the works) rose from a lake of black ichor, roaring a challenge that shook the walls.
Kai set Sayuri gently on a floating platform of hardened light he created with a thought.
"Watch me work, my love."
What followed was twenty minutes of pure, overwhelming dominance.
The behemoth lashed a hundred tentacles.
Kai caught one in each hand and ripped the creature in half down the middle like tissue paper, roaring with laughter.
Mouths spewed acid; he opened his mouth and drank it, converting the damage into healing with a passive he'd earned on floor 167 of the tower.
Eyes fired disintegration beams; he stared back and the beams reflected, blinding the monster in its own attack.
He never even drew his sword.
He toyed with it.
Punched holes through its carapace just to watch it regenerate and punch new ones.
Let it wrap tentacles around him so he could flex and shatter them like glass.
At one point he rode its back like a cowboy, one hand in an eye socket, the other waving to Sayuri while the creature thrashed and screamed.
Finally, when he was done playing, he placed one palm on its forehead.
Harvest King ultimate skill: Reap.
The behemoth's entire existence (levels, essence, soul) was sucked into Kai in a single heartbeat.
The massive body withered to ash.
‹ Solo S-rank Dungeon Clear – No Damage Taken ›
‹ Level 92 → Level 99 ›
‹ Sayuri (party proximity) → Level 38 ›
‹ Loot: Abyssal Heart (Legendary material), 12 S-rank cores, Title "Mercy is Optional" ›
The dungeon core room materialized around them: a beautiful crystalline chamber with a single glowing heart floating in the center.
Kai absorbed it without ceremony.
The entire catacomb became his personal pocket space, just like Elysara.
Sayuri watched the whole fight from her platform, one hand on her belly, cheeks flushed, thighs pressed together.
When he walked back to her, covered in ash and glory, she pulled him down into the softest kiss of their lives.
"You're ridiculous," she whispered, voice trembling with love and awe. "You just bullied an S-rank boss because you were bored on our date."
Kai grinned, lifting her into his arms.
"Had to make sure my queen has a good story to tell the kids."
He carried her to the center of the new chamber, laid her on a bed of conjured silk in the glowing light, and made love to her right there on the dungeon floor (slow, reverent, celebrating).
No rush.
No audience.
Just the two of them and the quiet knowledge that the world could turn hell itself into a honeymoon suite if she asked.
Afterward, curled together in the afterglow, Sayuri traced lazy hearts on his chest.
"Thank you for the best date ever," she murmured.
Kai kissed her forehead.
"Anytime, my love. The world ended so we could have this."
And in the heart of a conquered S-rank dungeon, with the ashes of a behemoth still warm around them, they fell asleep in each other's arms.
The city above could keep its ruins.
They had each other.
And that was more than enough.