Successful courting and new stuff

After Nagumo met up with us, we continued on our way through the labyrinth. We passed through magma floors, frozen floors, and even a subterranean jungle with some form of plant monster.

During the whole time, I was very possessive of Yue. I am pretty sure that I fell for her when I saw her eyes for the first time, but now I can generally say I love her. We've been traveling for a few weeks, and she seems to like to suck my blood. She tried Nagumo's once and actually hated it. She said it tasted sour, while mine was like a sweet and juicy peach. I kept pushing for our relationship, much to the hilarity of Nagumo, who kept calling me a lolicon. I mean, she's a little small, but I'm not really that much taller than her. Yue is about 4'7" while I'm only 5'2". I'm actually on the smaller side, making me even more deadly with my fighting style.

Yue taught me some magic while I taught her CQC. Even if she's a mage, I'm not having her pull a Nagumo. She actually has a lot of talent in Judo. She doesn't pack much strength, but redirecting force is shockingly easy, probably some vampire trait that helps with that. Yue tends to ride on my back, and it's pretty cute how often she tries to snack on my blood. I think she might even be addicted. Nagumo, Beru, and I began designing some new arms for the two of us. We kept an eye out for materials and ores. We eventually made some arms that work. My arm matched my armor where it was black and had some blue energy veins running through it, sourced from a power stone. Then I had built-in claws on each finger, and finally, an energy system that paired with the greatsword we were designing. Nagumo borrowed some ideas and built a railgun that could overcharge using a skill he got and the energy core we implemented.

Now, we've gotten pretty deep, reaching a stone labyrinth-staircase room, straight from Harry Potter, with a large golden door at the end.

By this point, Yue had accepted my courting, and we became girlfriends. I want to say lovers, but with Nagumo around, neither one of us felt comfortable doing more than holding hands or cuddling. I can tell he's starting to get jealous of our pink atmosphere, but like I care. However, if he tries to pull something, he'll lose more than a new arm. Maybe I'll chop off a leg that he has yet to use; who knows.

The door begins to open, revealing a room with many crystals, with only a small gap between the ones hanging from the ceiling and the floor. A magic circle appears as we reach about halfway through the room, and a cloud of miasma forms. This puts us on edge as we jump backward. Yue, who, whenever she gets worried about something, grabs my hand tightly. I squeeze it and give her a reassuring smile before focusing on the now towering miasma. The colors change from green to purple to red; until it starts to form into a creature that my best guess would be a Hydra.

The first thing I do is summon out my legion. I call out Beru, Alpha, and Glory and go CQC with them while Beta, Gamma, and Shelia focus on protection. Shelia is one of my Mage angels that have healing abilities. Three of the seven heads focus on the group, while another three focus on the four of us. A white one is obviously healing them, but a red one keeps blocking me. A minute into the battle, I hear a scream coming from Yue. Looking over, she has dead eyes while Shelia is dragging her back to a safe distance.

Nagumo is on the other side of the room with Beta and Gamma, shooting and knifing the two heads there. A black one is focused on Yue, and I see its eyes glowing purple.

"YUE!!!! You damn bastard!" I rush towards the head and slice it clean off its neck, but it doesn't break Yue out of her trance. I don't care about this fight much or trying to get some experience now. I only care about the girl my heart is now in pain over. I summon my remaining legion and command them to decimate the Hydra while I focus on Yue. Beru picks up his pace while nearly 29 close combat types attack the hydra, the remaining doing hit and run and mage attacks.

"Yue, Yue, can you hear me?" I ask, worried about her. Her eyes are now full of tears, and I can see fear and betrayal behind the dead eyes. I don't know what's causing it, but I don't plan on letting it continue. I pulled out one of the healing slugs Nagumo made and fed it to Yue. He said they could cure status effects, so I took a chance and was happy I did, as her eyes began to clear up and refocus.

"Yue, can you hear me? Are you okay?" I ask, worried about her.

Her eyes widened and began to tear up again before she jumped into my embrace and cried. "I thought that you abandoned me. *Sobs* It felt so real,*Sobs* I couldn't break out of it *Sobs*, even if I wanted it to be fake *Sobs*, it wouldn't let me escape.*Sobs*" I hug her tighter while she tells me what happened.

Eventually, she begins to hyperventilate a little, so I do the only thing my panicking and teenager hormone-fueled mind could think of; I give her a deep, passionate kiss. I guess it worked because she responded, and the kiss got deeper until I pulled back. She looked at me longingly, a fire built up, clearly about to rampage. As she was about to continue, I put my finger over her lips and smirked as she pouted. "Later, they just finished, so we have to continue, but I promise, this isn't over," I say this, but I could tell she could see the passion in my own eyes that refused to die. Unless something happened, that would probably stay there like that until something hit my switch and turned me off completely.

There was no way some 50 higher leveled shadow legionnaires would lose to some random Hydra, even if it were supposed to be the last boss. Entering through the set of doors at the other end of the hall, we're greeted with a huge forested meadow with a mansion placed in its center. Searching through the manor, we found a bath, a couple of rooms, some pottery, a workshop, a library, and finally a kind-of throne room.

When the three of us enter the throne room, the lights light up. Nagumo was the first to walk forward and enter a circle in the middle of the room, triggering it. "Seriously, Nagumo, you didn't learn your lesson after the last circle!? At least that one was hidden! You straight-up walked into this one!" I yelled out, perplexed at how stupid this guy could actually get. Even Yue was shocked at how dumb of a move that was. He didn't even give us a warning, just walked into the room and directly into the now glowing circle.

Next thing we know, a glowing man appears from a skeleton sitting on the throne. He explains the purpose of the labyrinth, who he is, and about the Mavericks. Hearing about it actually pissed me off. If a god is going to decide fate and such, why the fuck was he abusing that authority to control the world into its own end. I'll have a chat with Dad next time I see him. He would be in a better position to deal with this Ehit guy than me.

After the recording fades away, Nagumo bends over in pain but stops after only a moment. I looked curiously at him, wondering what just happened. He then explains the ancient magic and how we can heavily upgrade our gear and even upgrade the designs we were planning for the swords and such. Nagumo directs us on using the magic, and Yue doesn't seem to have much ability in it but succeeds after a while. Meanwhile, I show great promise in it and can recreate things I read about and planned back at home. We spent a week in the house, exploring it and figuring out the purpose of the labyrinths. We also discovered the key to most of the things here was Oscar's ring. Yue loved the library, while Nagumo and I would get ourselves stuck in the workshop, just making stuff that only Otakus would ever even attempt to dream of. Beru even helped us design an exoskeleton that works with our new updated arms.

Beru is secretly way smarter than we could give him credit for. I'm not ever sure dad understood how much of a genius he is. He's an expert tactician, a heavy hitter, healer, mage, and a general genius in designing technologies. Between Nagumo being a long-time Otaku and Beru and I fleshing out the designs, we made a variable armory of stuff. We even made a few orbital cannons that magic could fabricate in orbit. So if one ever got somehow destroyed, we could simply spend some time and make another without having to send it up. Think of it as regenerative from a small pod that we launch into the atmosphere with some magic placed into it.

We also made drones, vehicles, bombers and made designs for a few artillery pieces that needed more material than we had. The vehicles consisted of an APC, three motorcycles, the batmobile from the Arkham knight game, and a mobile command center with an area for the batmobile and motorcycles. It also had a split level, one for bedrooms and another for a living room, kitchen, and workshop.

(A/N: The pic won't represent the proper size, just the look. Think Agents of Shield Zephyr style with a garage, workshop, and storage, then upstairs is bedrooms, kitchen/bar, and living room.)

We also built 2 hovercraft, one for Nagumo and another for Yue and me. We were small enough that the size didn't change, yet we could fit 2 seats instead of one. These parked on top of the command center. The command center also drove itself, so all we had to do is set the coordinates, and the satellites would direct the truck there. Of course, we'd have to drive it in storms or on overcast days where the truck couldn't even connect to the satellites, but that was fine. The hovercraft had 2 railguns, each magnetically mounted with a stabilizer, so there wasn't actually any recoil. Mine was black with red accents, while Nagumo went with the opposite.

Our new arms were generally the same, just with a new power system and far more durability. We also installed shield generators into them. We developed a new line of weaponry that mounts onto the exoskeletons and made Yue one as well. It didn't have mounted weapons, but it did increase her strength, stamina, and agility.