Francis was biting his lower lips. Jacob had asked him to talk in private, and the others had left the two teenagers in the room they were staying before so that they could have a chat. Francis’s mom had been skittish about it, but Epagogia had convinced her quickly with her bombast character.

“You know everything, now,” Jacob said, “you might understand what I did. I’m sorry for blaming it on you, but I didn’t know what else to do when you betrayed my trust. If people had discovered about my knowledge then, God knows what might have happened.”

Francis looked at Jacob with different eyes now that he knew how old his friend really was.

“It’s still… Listen, Jacob. All this stuff, Cultivation, you being this super-old person who lived in another life… It’s hard to accept,” Francis grimaced.

“I know,” Jacob nodded sadly,

“But I think that if we were friends in your past life, maybe we can be friends in this one too,” Francis went straight to the point.

Jacob tightened his eyelids, shutting his eyes for a second. Finally, he breathed in heavily and spoke: “Yes, I would really like that, yes, thank you.”

He got up and hugged his friend. Even though Francis could not understand the real value of what had just happened, Jacob still said: “I missed you, Frank. I really did.”

Jacob recoiled a second after, though.

“Jesus, you need a shower!” Jacob pinched his nose.

“What the hell?! You need a shower!” Francis recoiled himself.

“You smell like shit, Frank. ‘the hell is the matter with you?”

“Listen, that Devil made us train so hard we almost died. I had to reach my training quota for the day, or she would make me spar with her, Jacob. How did you even tame that in your past life?”

“Tame?” Jacob chuckled, “I never did, Frank. Epagogia was not only the strongest warrior of her kind but also the smartest and probably the most proficient Inscription Pattern specialist I have ever known.”

“Oh, those things. Yeah, she insisted we learn some too. She made me study all kinds of weird things, Jesus Christ almighty.”

Jacob and Francis started laughing aloud, with their old intimacy magically reappearing.

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“By the way, Frank. I’ll get you all back to St. Peter. I will just need to speak with your mother,” Jacob said.

Francis's face immediately fell.

“Jake, she’s just worried, man. She’s like a mama bear, you know. Please, don’t hurt her,” Francis said with a sad tone and pleading tone.

“I won’t hurt her, Frank. I just need her to understand that if she tries to hurt me or any other human in St. Peter…”

Francis nodded cautiously.

“Anyway, we have a lot of catching up to do, you and me. I will tell you some stories from my past life later, some that involve you, obviously. But now I have to speak with Epagogia first, and then there is something I have to do with those herbs.”

“Good luck, then,” Francis said.

“Yeah, I’ll need it,” Jacob figured.

Epagogia was going to be a tough nut to crack.

…

He found her in a chamber pouring over some Inscription Patterns.

“You are trying to see if you can replicate the same Formations present in this cave, but in the open, I imagine,” he sneaked up on the Devil woman.

Epagogia nodded without saying anything.

Jacob had sent Juliet to make sure that the various team would not worry about them.

“Eppy, can you look at me?” Jacob used one of their nicknames.

The woman slowly turned in all her incredible beauty.

“Jacob,” she said with a tone much icier than when she had appeared. Epagogia could be very different based on whom she was with.

That was the countenance of a Queen.

He took a moment to find the right words. With Devils and Epagogia in general, they were of the utmost importance.

“We are together once again,” he told her, simply.

“Indeed we are,” she stood her ground and didn’t speak a word more.

“You are as beautiful as always, you know?” Jacob doubted that his compliments would have much of a charm given his current looks. But Epagogia seemed to soften a bit hearing those words; she deflated, too.

“Jaji, I missed you,” she said. “You went and killed yourself in a battle you knew you couldn’t win. You left me.”

Jacob bit his lip and slowly nodded.

“And that’s just because there weren’t any more humans on Earth. So you wanted to avenge them and see if the Black Dragon was hiding a way to bring them back. But you died, and you left me alone,” Epagogia repeated herself.

When she dropped the act, she was one of the wisest people Jacob had ever known.

“I did,” Jacob felt a knot in his throat. This was the true confrontation that he had feared. The one with Francis had been easy, even too easy. This one, instead, was going to be the real deal.

“Did you ever miss me, Jaji?” she asked with the eyes of a lover, not those of the Queen of Devils.

“I never thought of you since I came back. If I did, it was in passing and not worthy of the love we shared. I was—am obsessed with humanity’s survival, and I recently realized that I might be losing myself in a suicidal mission once again,” he said.

There was no one lying in front of her. Devils were adept at manipulation and could read humans like children’s books. Even though Jacob had picked up many of their intuition, he wasn’t able nor willing to lie to Epagogia.

She went up to him, towering upon him. Epagogia was almost two meters tall and the most dashing heroic figure a woman could ever hope to own.

“Jaji, I will ask you a question now. If you don’t give me the right answer, you will never see me again. Ok?”

“I would ask nothing else from you,” Jacob said.

He had spent so many years with that woman that he knew what was coming.