With a wicked grin, Joseph shifted her onto her side, pulling her legs apart as he thrust into her from behind. She gasped at the new angle, the sensation of him hitting deeper, harder. Her hands gripped the sheets as he leaned over her, kissing her neck, biting gently on her ear as he moved faster, each thrust sending her closer to the edge.

  They shifted again, moving into a new position—her on top this time. She rode him, her hips grinding against his, her hands on his chest for balance as she controlled the rhythm. Joseph watched her, mesmerized by the way she moved, the way her breasts bounced with each thrust. His hands roamed up her body, pinching her nipples gently, sending jolts of pleasure straight through her.

  They moved through positions, each one building on the last—the intensity rising as they shifted into a perfect 69, then to doggy style, her back arching as he drove into her from behind. Her moans were louder, her body shaking with every powerful thrust.

  Finally, as they neared the end, they returned to missionary, their bodies pressed tightly together. Joseph’s hand cupped her face, their eyes locking as he moved inside her, their breaths coming in short gasps as they both neared their climax.

  Her body tightened around him, and with a final, powerful thrust, they both came undone together, their cries of ecstasy filling the room. The intensity of their release left them both breathless, their bodies trembling as they collapsed into each other’s arms, the afterglow of their passion lingering in the air.

  They lay together, limbs entwined, the heat of their bodies still burning from the fire they had just ignited. The room was quiet now, save for the sound of their breathing, as they basked in the aftermath of the most intimate pleasure they had ever shared, knowing that it wouldn’t be the last.

  ***

  After what felt like an eternity of passion, Joseph lay beside Lady Death, their bodies entwined in the ethereal void of her domain. Their union had been intense—both intimate and consuming, a merging of souls as much as flesh. He traced his fingers along her pale skin, the aftershocks of their connection still lingering between them.

  “It’s time,” he murmured, his touch lingering on her cheek. “Send me back.”

  Death smirked, her eyes gleaming with amusement and something deeper—something possessive. “Always in such a hurry to leave me,” she mused, her fingers trailing lazily down his chest as if savoring the moment. Yet, she honored his request. Leaning in, she pressed a lingering kiss to his lips, her touch as cold as the void yet filled with an inexplicable warmth. Then, with a snap of her fingers, a radiant light enveloped him, pulling his astral form from her domain and thrusting it back into his mortal body.

  ***

  A sharp gasp filled the cave as Joseph’s body convulsed, then stilled. His eyes flew open, and he sat up with a start, sucking in deep breaths. Around him, his team froze in stunned silence before breaking into joyful shouts. They hurried to embrace him, relief flooding their expressions as they eagerly informed him of how long he had been gone.

  “Five hours?!” Joseph exclaimed, his voice filled with disbelief as he processed how long he had been gone. He glanced around, realizing they had taken refuge in a cave, with a fire crackling close by to keep his body warm.

  His mind immediately snapped back to the mission. “Have we heard anything from Izumi?”

  Yuki nodded. “Yeah. She and her team are still searching for the monster boss’s hideout.”

  As the initial shock of his resurrection settled, his team naturally had questions. Yuki, ever the curious one, leaned in with a smirk. “So… what happened with Death? You know… anything interesting?” His eyebrows waggled suggestively.

  Mai, catching on to Yuki’s meaning, rolled her eyes and jabbed him lightly in the ribs. “Really?” she muttered.

  “Ow,” Yuki grumbled, rubbing his side. “I was just asking.”

  Joseph chuckled, shaking his head. “We don’t have time for this. We need to move.”

  Not long after, they resumed their search and eventually discovered the monster boss's lair as dusk settled in. The team carefully scouted from a safe distance, taking cover behind jagged rocks as they observed the massive lair ahead. The air was thick with an ominous energy, the scent of sulfur and decay lingering in the wind.

  Mari quickly relayed the discovery to Izumi and her team, sending them their location. Moments later, Izumi and her team arrived, joining Joseph's team in a tense silence. Together, they carefully observed the lair and began formulating a new strategy to defeat the monster boss.

  “We’re too late,” Izumi murmured grimly. The others followed her gaze, their eyes widening in horror as they spotted the monster boss standing in the center of his domain—his body pulsating with raw power. The elixir and potion had already merged, and he had consumed them both.

  “This isn’t good,” Mari muttered. “He’s even bigger than before.”

  “He’ll be unstoppable now,” Izumi confirmed, her fists clenched at her sides.

  Joseph, however, remained unfazed. “Not necessarily,” he said, his mind already working through a solution. “I can use my XPT tech to extract the mixture from his system.”

  Izumi’s tense expression softened with a glimmer of hope. “If that works, we’ll stand a chance.”

  “But we need to get close enough,” Yoshinori pointed out. “And right now, he’s radiating enough power to turn us to dust if we charge in blindly.”

  The team quickly devised a strategy. They would infiltrate the lair, eliminate as many of the monster’s minions as possible, and create a distraction while Joseph got into position to use his XPT tech.

  Moving with practiced stealth, the group slipped into the lair’s perimeter. Shadows stretched long under the blood-red sky as they silently took down isolated guards, dispatching them with precise efficiency.

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  For a moment, everything seemed to be going according to plan.

  Then, a deep, guttural roar shattered the quiet.

  A monstrous sentry, larger than the others, had spotted them. With a thunderous cry, it sounded the alarm, sending waves of creatures pouring from the depths of the lair.

  “So much for subtlety,” Mari muttered, drawing her weapon.

  The battle erupted in a whirlwind of chaos. Blades clashed, energy blasts illuminated the battlefield, and the ground shook under the weight of monstrous bodies collapsing. The team fought with everything they had, pushing forward despite the overwhelming odds.

  Just when they started gaining the upper hand, the air shifted.

  A powerful aura surged through the battlefield, sending a chilling wave of energy across the terrain.

  The monster boss emerged.

  His form was now grotesquely enhanced, veins pulsing with the unnatural power of the elixir. His crimson eyes burned with malice as he stepped forward, each movement sending shockwaves through the ground.

  Izumi and Joseph’s team charged toward him, but he met them with brutal force, fending off all six of them with terrifying ease. With a deafening roar, he unleashed a concussive blast that sent them sprawling, the sheer force preventing them from advancing.

  As the dust settled, Joseph gritted his teeth, forcing himself up. The monster boss loomed before them, his body radiating an unstoppable energy.

  This fight was far from over.

  Yoshinori, using his unique skill, focused his gaze and saw through the monster's aura, which flared intensely. Meanwhile, Yuki activated his visor to scan the monster, noticing its aura level rapidly rising by an additional 8,000.

  "What? 8,000?" Joseph yelled through the loud gust of wind.

  "It's over 9,000 and still rising," Yuki added, his eyes widening in disbelief as the readings on his visor skyrocketed. He was stunned when the energy surged to an unimaginable peak, causing his visor to explode from the overload of infinite readings. "10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!" he finally managed to inform the team, his voice filled with shock.

  "10 Duodecillion," Joseph muttered in disbelief, his team equally stunned by the magnitude of the power before them.

  "The monster boss has surpassed even me in every way," Izumi thought to herself, a cold realization settling in. "Defeating him would be nearly impossible."

  Despite the monster boss's staggering power boost, the group refused to back down. They steeled themselves to face the beast head-on. But as the monster powered up, his aura level surged, making him faster, stronger, and smarter. Every strike and display of power sent shockwaves through the ground, and even with their combined might, they were no match for the monster's overwhelming strength.

  Izumi’s reality warping and time manipulation abilities were effortlessly countered by the monster boss. With a single wave of his hand, he froze time, trapping Izumi, her team, and Joseph's team in place, their efforts to break free proving futile.

  Izumi, however, managed to break free with a fierce battle cry and charged at the monster with all her might. But her attacks were useless against him. In a swift, crushing movement, the monster retaliated with a backhand slap that reverberated across the battlefield, rendering her unconscious as his minions seized her.

  The monster boss approached Joseph and his team with an air of dominance, his aura flaring with every step. The ground shook beneath him as he came to a halt before them, still frozen in time. In a calm, almost regal tone, he offered them a choice: surrender and join him, or die.

  Before he could elaborate further, Joseph stunned everyone by agreeing to surrender, leaving his team in shock as they vehemently refused to yield. As Joseph swore his allegiance to the monster, he was freed from the time freeze, while his team remained frozen, helpless and enraged. They yelled at him, calling him a traitor, but he ignored them.

  Kneeling before the monster in reverence, he extended his hand, offering Joseph the chance to kiss it as a sign of submission. But instead, Joseph grasped the monster’s hand with both of his own, angling his face near the hand to create the illusion of a kiss before rising. The monster, oblivious to the subtle act in that brief moment their hands touched, remained amused. With a cruel smile, it ordered Joseph to kill his team while they were still frozen in time.

  However, Joseph, ever the strategist, suggested that killing them in their frozen state would dishonor them as warriors. He proposed sparring with each of them one at a time, ensuring they met their end in battle. The monster found this idea highly amusing and agreed to the challenge.

  The monster boss then released Yuki from his time freeze, designating him as the first challenger. As Yuki and Joseph locked eyes, Yuki demanded to know why Joseph had chosen to side with the enemy, his voice filled with fury. The two combatants clashed with intense force, steel meeting steel in a brutal struggle. The monster boss and his minions watched with amusement as the battle unfolded, eagerly awaiting the outcome.

  "Now I understand the rivalry between you and me," Joseph said, breaking away from their intense clash. "You're weak, sentimental. You're just a man with cosmic power, while I am a god made flesh."

  "You need help," Yuki retorted, his anger flaring. "I'm just glad I was the one freed first, so I could end you before you had a chance to try and do it."

  "Do it?" Joseph sighed lightly. "I'm not some comic book villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there was even the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it 20 seconds ago." With a wink, Joseph's meaning became clear to Yuki in an instant.

  Without warning, Joseph spun around, throwing his sword toward the monster boss in a seemingly careless arc, intentionally missing. The creature, in a fit of fury, charged forward, certain it had dodged the strike. But as it moved, the sword was caught mid-air by Izumi, her descent an embodiment of wrath. Without hesitation, she cleaved the monster boss in half, the creature’s roar dying in an instant.

  The moment the monster collapsed, the time freeze shattered, and the teams were freed from their temporal prison. The battlefield was chaotic, but the remaining monsters were quickly dispatched. Silence fell over the ruins as the threat was neutralized.

  As they regrouped, Joseph’s team asked how he had managed to turn the tide. He revealed that he and Izumi had planned a contingency in case their original plan failed. They had anticipated that the first plan would fail but went through with it to make the monster believe in their surrender. "Since the monster believed he had the power to do and undo, he thought himself untouchable," Joseph explained. "That was his greatest mistake."

  He continued, "While the first plan was for me to execute the final move, we both knew the monster would want us to surrender, and that was our perfect opening." He further clarified that by falsely swearing allegiance to the monster, he created the perfect distraction. "I had to pick Yuki to battle with. It's a good thing he understood my signal because using thought communication would have exposed our plan."

  Joseph then explained how he had boosted Izumi's aura level with his XPT energy to create a believable duplicate for the battle, while the original arrived once given the signal.

  "Sorry for keeping you in the dark about the contingency plan," Joseph said, "but it was the only way to make it believable for the monster without raising suspicion."

  Yoshinori, eager to know the details, asked, "So what about the mixture? Did you get it from him?"

  "Of course I did!" Joseph replied, handing the vial over to Izumi. He explained that his XPT tech had isolated the specific portion of the elixir they had retrieved from the monster boss. However, unbeknownst to everyone, including Joseph, the XPT—having fused with his essence in the past—had subtly replicated the mixture, evolving alongside it for future use.

  As the team returned to the city, they reported their success to the lord, who greeted them with heartfelt gratitude. Joseph and his team, their mission accomplished, prepared to leave. But just as they made to depart, Izumi stepped forward, her expression softening. She offered a final word of thanks, her voice filled with sincerity.

  “Thank you,” she said, her eyes briefly meeting Joseph’s before turning to the others. “For everything.”

  With that, the team made their exit, the weight of their next mission already on their shoulders.