Robert smiled. "So, did you miss me?"

Amanda creased her eyebrows and squinted. "How dare you leave me alone worrying about you for almost fifty days! How long were you gone on your side? Twelve years and four months!"

Robert tried not to laugh. He failed. "Actually, it was one hundred and fourteen years. There’s a small time compression in-between."

She gave him that "you got to be shitting me," look.

"Remember that deal I made with Titania to let her build her mind palace for ten years in the liminal void? I found this Dungeon. It has some weird Time shenanigans. Under some controlled circumstances, I can spend as much time inside it and leave with only a few seconds passing in the real world."

He explained what he and Titania did, spending an entire year inside the Dungeon and a hundred years in the liminal void. Actually, ninety-nine. Amanda's jaw dropped.

"You'll take me there right now!"

Robert only smiled. It was one of his plans anyway. Since they were already in the true void, he just aimed at the Dungeon portal in Cairo and waited for their return to the "surface".

He appeared next to the portal with Amanda in his arms and walked into the clockwork Dungeon.

*

*

He released her legs but she kept her arms wrapped around him.

"We can stay here as long as we want, right?" She asked. "And nobody will enter because the guards are keeping the shield around the portal closed."

"Yes, on both counts. Though we might run out of food."

Amanda scoffed. "To whom do you think you are talking to? The day I run out of food is the day Ether runs dry in the multiverse."

"Oh! That reminds me. I visited this fairy forest realm in Bhutan, the fairies were really nice to me, they gave me these herbs," Robert took out the bushels. He kept them in a time-stasis crate after Veronica told him Amanda would be unavailable for the duration of their vacation.

She let go of his neck to stare at the crate. "Fairies in Bhutan. Of course. What else?" Amanda breathed in and breathed out. It was not the time to go into crazy jelly bitch mode. "Wait. Belay that. We have time. We can spread out the news. We have more stuff to talk about. And by the news, I mean your news. My vacation was utterly boring!"

Robert kept his poker face. That last remark was one of those that you were damned if you agree, damned if you didn't. "Why don't you open the crate? I have no idea if the herbs the fairies gave me are worth anything. Only that they have a lot of Ether in them."

Amanda unlocked the crate and opened it. The crate made a hiss as the lid came up. She sat on the floor as she took the bushels and examined them. "Blightbane pepperweed, All-saints epazote, an unknown Nature-affinity herb, an unknown Nature-Blood affinity herb, I have no idea what this is but it has a lot of Life affinity, unknown but potent, another I've never seen, this one seems like Earth-affinity parsley, no idea, needs research, this one has a nice smell, this might be a spice, poisonous, poisonous,..."

Amanda threw her head back and stared up at him with glistening eyes, "This is a treasure trove," she said with a hitch in her voice. "I don't have a botany compendium here but I'm pretty sure most of these herbs are not yet known." Amanda sent some of her Nature essence into the herbs to revitalize them even though it wasn't necessary.

"The realm they came from is considered very dangerous and not really worth the trip. It's in a monastery at the foot of the Himalayas."

She carefully rearranged the herbs in the crate, checked the charge level, then sealed it again. She stored the crate in her ring. "It was the best birthday present I ever received," she said softly.

"I'm glad you liked it. Happy birthday. Sorry for missing the party."

"Bah!" She grunted as she stood up. "You missed nothing." Because there wasn't anything to miss. Amanda snapped a finger, pretending she just remembered something. "Oh, you're fired, by the way. Veronica deposited your pay and severance package in your bank account. And you lost your Samson scholarship so you need to pay the Academy tuition. Though since you are the champion, the Empress granted you another one."

Robert snorted a laugh and shrugged. "Okay." He was fairly sure swapping the scholarships was another political power play but he couldn't see the reason for it nor their goals.

She studied his face. "Just, okay? Did you hate being my bodyguard?"

"I know why you did that. Fire me. And I'm quite sure I'm a billionaire by now. With all the high-paying quests I completed, the realms I visited, and the phat loot I ro–gathered." Robert stuttered as he stumbled through a Freudian slip.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Amanda became serious. "Were you the one who robbed the MCP and the Shayver group? Our sources said the thieves wiped their vaults clean!" She made an O with her mouth. "You sly dog! You moved the goods to the liminal void!"

"Come on! You don't give a shit about those factions!" Robert protested.

"Of course, I do! When they go down, we have an opportunity of taking their assets! Granny is going nuts on her evil overlord conquest plans! She's eating the MCP alive."

"What about the Shayver?"

"Nobody can attack them but it doesn't stop proxy wars from happening. They did what any smart person in their shoes would. They sold out all of their positions and disbanded. With how much losses you caused the MCP, they might go down the same route."

Despite a petty part of himself that desired vengeance, he didn't care about the MCP so long they didn't fling shit his way. With the bounty gone and most assassins and man-hunters wary of his reputation, he was a free man. An extraordinarily rich free man.

"Enough politics for now," Robert said as he put a hand on Amanda's waist. "I think it was unwise to come here with me if I no longer work for you."

"Uh, oh, no!" She said as she moved closer. "What could possibly happen to me? I didn't choose to come here, you abducted me! What dastardly things you'll do to me, villain?"

Robert looked over her head, pointed a finger, and the Dungeon lighting dimmed for a second. "A clockwork conductor wandered nearby. It's gone. What were you saying?"

She seemed disappointed for some reason. "Never mind."

He kissed her. She kissed back. He tickled her waist, "What was that? Did I hear something about doing dastardly things to you?"

"Don't you dare!" She pretended to struggle to break free. Giggling all the way. Then she softened and shifted her hands from his neck to his shoulders. "Can we just... cuddle for a month or two?"

Robert laughed. "Of course. I usually spend a month or two cuddling with myself, but I think the present company will prove a better cuddling partner."

Amanda snickered at the "with myself" part, her mind taking a brief dive in the gutter. But she looked around. "How safe is this Dungeon?"

"Not much, really. Even this platform next to the portal changes every now and then. Allow me to remedy this."

*

*

Amanda stared as Robert did something and the light distorted as if some lens was floating in the air. Then he caused a cone of pure black energy to flash once. An entire section of the Dungeon had vanished. He spun around, conjuring more cones, and obliterating the Dungeon. The clockwork mechanism on the platform they were standing on stopped because the interconnecting gears no longer existed.

"What was that?" She asked, still in shock.

"My stage 2 void lance. I'm using a lens of distorted space to change it from a beam to a cone."

"Stage two. Please run by me again the story of how you ascended to three stars, then went back to two?"

"I went all the way down to one. But I already ascended back to two. Here's what happened. We should sit down. This is a long story."

Amanda took a king-size bed out of her storage ring. Taking off her shoes, she climbed on it, pulling on Robert's hand. She made him lay down alongside with her, pulling his arm over her stomach.

Robert told her a story that she would've called bullshit if she read it in one of those power fantasy fiction books. He gave her an explanation on the many weird events happening in his life but the tale begged her to disbelieve it. Lampshade-Chan thought she was such a hard worker, yes, she did. But crazier stuff happened in this world.

Like some mortal defeating a two-star monster with a can of beans and a rusty knife, then manifesting an overpowered Prime Vestige (the one in Amanda’s soul) and two uniques. Lifesteal? More like Luck-steal.

*

*

"And this guy came at me with homing arrows that would kill me if they so much as nicked my skin... Are you asleep?" Robert asked.

Yes, she was. Amanda ended up falling asleep to the sound of Robert's voice. Nobody could blame her. She had been grieving and worrying for the last month, drunk on unhealthy doses of self-loathing, feeling powerless. Now that he was back, all that tension knocked her out. He got a blanket out of his ring and tossed it over them, adjusting it with telekinesis. He also missed her. Very much...

He woke up to find Amanda caressing his hair.

She planted a peck on her lips. "Good morning, handsome," she purred.

Robert startled. He checked his time senses and found that he slept for only three hours. Then he remembered time in this place was free. It didn't matter so long nobody messed with the portal back in Cairo. he made a mental note to see if he could improve the security up there. His imprint used a gilded goose pen to write it down, then poked his tongue out. Cheeky little bastard. Bury the portal in a pyramid or something like that. Though he had no idea what people would want from this place.

he pulled her closer and found she'd changed into a see-through nightgown. Amanda made a cute yelp out of surprise but let her body press against him.

"Are we dating now?" She asked, eyes swiveling to and fro as she tried to read his face.

"Dating?" Robert chuckled. "I kidnapped you. You are my hostage."

It appeared to him that she liked that kind of play.

"What about when we leave this place?"

"Who said anything about leaving? Weren't you the one bragging about infinite food?"

She hummed in agreement. "We're dating," she stated.

"What about your suitors?"

"I'd any of them believed for one moment they would get a piece of me, then they played themselves."

Robert snorted a snicker.

Amanda gracefully pretended it didn't happen. She put her hand on his chest, then pulled it out, surprised. "Your heart is beating! How? I thought it stopped for good!"

" I thought that too but I... Didn't I tell you this? When I completed the tripartite Void tempering and added the Void Gates of Nirvana to my soul, the void heart started beating again. It passively draws some essence through the gates every time it beats."

"I think I was almost asleep when you said that. But good for you! A big reservoir of extra essence and a boosted passive recovery. I'm not envious at all!" Amanda said sarcastically.

She leaned forward and kissed him again. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Sure."

She kissed him and slid out of bed, giving Robert a front-row view of what was to come. Seeing his reaction, she smirked.

Amanda planted beans in a pot she took out of her ring, grew a coffee shrub, and matured the beans in seconds. Then, she selected which ones should be roasted, pocketing the few with good evolutions and turning the rest into fertilizer.

It was the best coffee Robert ever tasted. And after the coffee he tasted something even better.