The next morning, Axel woke up surrounded by girls once more.

His head was clear, and he could remember what happened the entire night without a single gap. How they almost refused to back off, pushing him further and further until he’d been drained to his very limit before the girls were finally satisfied.

Queen Wisteria, for one, was the worst of them.

The most aggressive by a wide margin—going on round after round the moment she had enough rest to continue, with a stamina that bordered on inhuman. She even outpaced Fenrir, who was herself no slouch and only fell behind by a slim margin.

It was a tiring night...

But a smile found its way to his lips anyway, quiet and unbothered, as he watched the girls sleeping peacefully around him.

"Thank you, everyone..."

He whispered under his breath—barely audible, the kind of thing that wasn’t really meant to be heard.

He was still in pain, both physically and in places that didn’t show on the surface.

The scenes he witnessed inside his soul still lingered at the edges of his mind, clinging there the way bad dreams sometimes do. It had broken him—his heart, his spirit—shattered something deep and foundational. But now... it felt just like a bitter memory.

It had completely lost its edge.

Recalling the face of the woman who he loved, who betrayed him, now barely triggered a reaction from him at all.

Placing a hand against his chest, Axel understood.

The potion that Queen Wisteria used on him had stabilized his shattered soul. He couldn’t really explain the mechanism of it, but he knew that for a fact. Was even quietly confident about it.

But the problem was that...

’It’s only stabilizing my soul, but didn’t fix it...’

His soul was shattered, fragmented, and barely keeping its shape now. Held together more by circumstance than anything resembling genuine recovery.

If not for the potion acting like a "bag" wrapped tight around the broken pieces—pulling them together, keeping them from drifting apart entirely—he might’ve lost his soul, and his life along with it, long before morning came.

Technically, he was a patient right now. One that needed rest and time and careful tending before anything could truly mend. Like a broken bone that needed a long rest to let it set.

But still, life wasn’t so kind as to let him rest in peace.

"I still have a lot to do..."

Axel stepped out of bed and equipped his usual suit, going through the familiar motions with practiced efficiency.

He fixed his tie and checked his hair in the full-size mirror inside the queen’s room, his reflection looking considerably more composed than he felt. Only after he found himself acceptable did he turn and leave—stepping out quietly, the still-sleeping girls left undisturbed behind him.

He had no time to waste.

Without waiting for anyone, he jumped to the previous dimension with a return scroll prepared by the girls—the dimension he’d built his new defensive base on—and arrived to greet the rest of the girls already stationed there.

"M-My King...!"

The moment he appeared, a small queen launched herself straight into his arms. Her face buried deep against his chest, fingers gripping the front of his jacket as tears threatened to overflow from the corners of her eyes.

"I was worried... So worried...!" She—Eve—mumbled into the fabric.

With a gentle smile, Axel raised a hand and began patting her hair, slow and deliberate and kind.

"Sorry to make you worry, but I’m fine now." He whispered, voice kept soft for her sake. "We defeated Envy already."

Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure of the full picture just yet. But it was true that Envy had disappeared—and the proof of that was the sigil that had once been etched into his back, now gone without a trace.

Their dive into his soul space last night had been intended to answer a few questions, Envy’s survival among them. What they’d found instead was an entirely different set of mysteries, ones without clean answers attached.

But it wasn’t the time to get into all of that.

Axel continued patting Eve’s hair until the tension left her shoulders and she finally calmed.

After her, the others welcomed Axel’s return with warm smiles. Arianne, Beatrix, Mary and Cherry. None of them moved to embrace him the way Eve had, however.

Then, with Eve at the lead, the group made their way to Queen Sharika’s abode and reported on how things had progressed. Although the girls had already covered the broad strokes, Axel filled in the gaps—particularly the parts concerning the demon and what he had been working toward.

"So that’s how it is..." Queen Sharika nodded, closing her eyes in deep thought. "If not for you, Great King Axel, our little community would’ve disappeared already."

"It definitely would’ve." He nodded.

Axel didn’t tone down his achievements or reach for false modesty.

There was no need to, either way.

After all, with this, he had completely fulfilled his side of the "deal" they exchanged—to help Queen Sharika clean her house of traitors, no matter how deep that rot had settled.

As if reading exactly what had crossed his mind, the queen whose face Axel still hadn’t fully seen—expression hidden behind her veil—chuckled lightly.

"Of course, I wouldn’t back off of the deal. Now that you’ve saved us, you have proved you have more than enough capacity to support our people."

She waved her hand, directing one of her maids forward with a small crested chest. Axel received it and opened the lid—a single scroll sat inside, rolled and waiting.

"This scroll is the proof of royal descent. As long as you have this, all of this land’s people, its resources, and everything else are now yours."

As soon as she finished speaking, a familiar ping echoed in his ears.

[Congratulations, contractor! You have successfully cleared the quest: To the Next Stage! Your rewards are being processed...]

[System will be upgraded from Version 1.02a to Version 2.86b]

[Upgrade complete.]

[More system functions are now available for unlocking.]

[You have unlocked Metallurgy System and Mana Manufacturing.]

[All things related to crafting (speed, limit, etc.) have doubled.]

Reading through all those familiar yet unfamiliar notifications, a thin smile crept up to his lips.

He slowly closed the small chest, slipped it into his inventory, and turned to face Queen Sharika with a measured nod.

"Alright, now that you all are my people, I wouldn’t let you live in poverty." He said. "Luckily, I just finished making your new residence. You think you can handle the migration smoothly?"

The queen tilted her head, a flicker of confusion crossing what little of her face he could see.

"A new residence...? Wait, could it be...?!"

Only for realization to hit a beat later.

"Yes." Axel nodded. "All the facilities we made over the past day. Everything from the defensive implements to the housing. All of them are for you and your people to use."

"No way...!"

She genuinely couldn’t believe her ears.

At first, she had assumed it was all infrastructure for Axel to station his own troops and keep watch over them from a distance. The idea that those formidable defensive implements would fall under her people’s direct control hadn’t even occurred to her as a possibility worth entertaining.

"Of course, that’s not all either."

Axel continued, giving her no room to linger in disbelief.

"We’ll be connecting this place to mine with a teleportation array soon. Using that, you or a representative can visit anytime you need something. Resources, food, manpower, anything."

Right now, he had already unlocked everything he’d need for the crafting recipes he had long been avoiding like the plague.

In short, he could now install the Kalbi Model 88 Interdimensional Teleporter with no problems!