Javi

I'm not even joking, I bawled when he kissed the other guy. CRYING SO HARD.

I have a theory of what could have been the "rudeus stays" scenario. It involves spoilers of the anime up to the chapter of June 23rd: SPOILER - Having the knowledge of the labyrinth book, he devices a plan to rescue her mom. - The husband of the demon that is a friend of Rudeus at this point wants to help, and wants to return the favor for the fight they had and for saving his wife from hunger. - Rudeus goes with elinalise and the demon to the portal and enables it for Elinalise and the demon to cross. - The demon also manages to find in time Roxy and rescue her. When she asked why, the demon says "You have to thank Rudeus, because of a debt I owe him, I came here in his stead to save everyone since he's unable to come for himself, but trust me he really wanted to come to save you people." - Roxy still falls for Rudeus, as he still indirectly rescued her, not as she imagined, but technically he did. - The demon easily defeated the hydra, since his attacks are mostly physical. - Everyone returns home safe and sound, except for Zenith, that returns in the same state. - The demon says that his debt is paid now, and laughs it off, also tells Rudeus he did the right call for sending him instead of going himself, since the Hydra was completely immune to magic. - Norn, that likely hated Rudeus for not going after hearing the demon now understands that it was truly the best thing to do, and she's happy her father is back. - Everyone ended up happily ever after. I was thinking of another theory in which things went wrong if he didn't go, but then that would have caused Rudeus to regret not going, which contradicts the man god prophecy, so I think likely this could have happened if Rudeus decided not to go, but you can't blame him at all for taking the decision he took, as it seemed completely illogical and careless for others of not going, and likely he avoided this better outcome by going. It's like in Yuyu hakusho, when the story starts because Yusuke, the MC, jumped into a car to save a kid, and was killed in the process, with the kid only having small bruises, however, the sender of god told Yusuke that if he didn't jump to help, the kid would have been saved from that situation completely unscathed, so basically he did just not throw away his life in vain, but also did a less favorable outcome for the kid in doing so, but nobody but the gods knew that.