Chapter 68: Who Is This Lunatic?

A few hours earlier, on the other side of the barony, one of the most important missions ever entrusted to Freya’s replica was underway.

Get somewhere safe, fast, given what was happening back at the dungeon with her real body.

She knew about it because they shared the same emotions and the same sensations, along with their skills. Which meant that if Greed activated for one, it activated for the other, that if she used a Gacha pull with the replica she couldn’t use one with her real body, and that they even shared the three butterflies, either of them able to summon them without the total ever exceeding three. And so on.

In short, they shared everything.

So she instantly shared her main body’s fear at Aria’s arrival, along with her doubts and all the rest.

Which set her shaking too, while she was still sitting across from Kyiara and trying to keep her composure in front of a woman who had had none whatsoever since the words "SSS rank" had been spoken. Something she had never expected to encounter in her lifetime, made all the worse by the sight of a pale, trembling Freya, for reasons she couldn’t begin to guess at.

"L-let’s settle this quickly!" Freya said, gesturing toward her chair.

Kyiara got up on her own, understanding that there wasn’t much time, for whatever reason. She stepped around the debris scattered across the floor and sat back down without taking her eyes off Freya for a moment.

Freya did her best to carry on despite the shaking, while the woman waited on her words.

"For now, I have th-th-three requests."

She held up three thoroughly trembling fingers toward the fox, who had gone pale herself at this incomprehensible spectacle, gripped by fear of something frankly cosmic, an endless string of scenarios each worse than the last already spinning through her head.

Because in her world, a woman like this one did not shake.

A woman who had managed to wound her and inflict more pain than anything she’d ever felt in her life without her even seeing it coming, who could resist her charm, who could set a case of mithrite down on her desk the way one leaves a tip, and who on top of all that had an SSS-rank lover.

Because yes, one of the things she trusted most in herself, nearly as much as her charm, was her ability to detect lies. And she knew perfectly well that this woman was no liar.

So this woman had absolutely no reason to be afraid of anything.

Which meant that if she was shaking, then somewhere out there existed something worse than her, or a reason capable of putting her in that state.

And Kyiara would have very sincerely preferred never having to arrive at that thought.

"O-one. Through your girls and your network, you’re going to get the rumor about Baron Frarken circulating again."

She slid her hand into her collar, and the fox flinched hard.

Because she knew now what was hidden in there. That small black thing that made almost no sound, that needed no incantation, no gesture, not the slightest moment of preparation, and that could put you on the ground before your eyes had even registered the movement.

But what came out was simply a file, which Freya set down on the table.

Kyiara opened it immediately and began reading, her eyes moving across the pages at a speed that betrayed years of practice.

"I see... but this is very thin. Do you have nothing more?"

Freya shook her head side to side, trembling.

"No, that’s everything young Paydragon could get in a day, but that’s exactly where you come in—"

Then something happened.

Just as she was about to continue, her gaze froze, the trembling stopped dead, and anger surfaced on her face.

Which only worried Kyiara further about the mental state of the woman in front of her, and about whatever might be unfolding in the part she couldn’t see, in all those scenarios she kept running through her head.

Then Freya shouted into the office.

"ANOTHER WOMAN?!"

Which made Kyiara jump out of her skin, already panicking well beyond reason.

"Wh-wh-what???? I... me? Another? Woman?"

Freya, across from her, was growing angrier by the second, her hand pressing down on the desk hard enough to split the wood, without answering the fox at all, her eyes fixed on something else entirely.

She could have answered. She could have explained everything, right there, in a few sentences.

That she was only a replica, that she shared her real body’s emotions and everything else, and that the outburst had come simply because the feeling had grown too strong on the other side of the barony, the words leaving her mouth of their own accord. She could even have clarified that the anger wasn’t remotely directed at her.

But she said nothing.

What would be the point?

She’d be throwing away a trump card, after all. The existence of the replica was known only to young Paydragon, and she could one day use it to dodge a surprise attack, an assassin for instance. And who knows, that assassin might well be sent by the woman sitting across from her.

Better this way. Let’s just leave her in the dark. Her thinking I’m insane will only sharpen her fear of me.

She then brought her fist down on the desk, with everything she had this time.

The piece was made of dense, dark wood, solid oak richly varnished, the sort of furniture passed down three generations without so much as a crack appearing. It burst apart outright under the impact, shattering into several pieces and sending splinters across the entire room.

One of them grazed the fox’s cheek, leaving a thread of blood running down her face, while the case of mithrite crashed to the floor and years of accumulated ledgers scattered everywhere.

Kyiara, now shaking from head to toe, her tails drooping and her ears flattened completely, started to throw herself to the floor to apologize all over again.

Freya raised a hand.

"No!"

It came out far angrier than it should have, and the fox flinched again at the order, no longer daring to say a word.

"Two!" she went on, controlling her anger as best she could, aware that she really, really needed to hurry back to somewhere she could put this body on standby. Which meant Medor’s house. "You’ll add your own compromising information about Baron Frarken to the rumors, and you’ll dig up more on him at the same time."

She breathed in to steady herself, without much success.

"I know there’s a shadow behind Baron Frarken, planning something. I don’t have an identity, but it has to be someone powerful. I want to know who it is!"

The fox nodded quickly, without adding a single word.

"Good. And three, find me a master blacksmith, a master alchemist and a master enchanter, however you manage it. Put a slave mark on them while you’re at it."

This is the most important of the three.

Because yes, she wanted talented people brought back to her dungeon. Not so they could craft anything for her, but so they could teach the Mycofoxes.

She’d initially told herself she could simply wait for them to improve on their own, as they always had. But thinking it over, couldn’t she accelerate all of that by adding an outside element?

After all, a Blacksmith Mycofox spent his days repeating the same motions learned from who knows where, probably injected directly by the system at the moment of summoning. Nobody had ever corrected a single thing. Nobody had ever told him there was another way to temper a blade, or that an alloy might behave differently depending on the temperature.

And if the knowledge came from outside, then the ceiling on that knowledge was no longer the system’s.

In any case, it was worth a try. It was exactly what she intended to do for the Soldier Mycofoxes too, by asking Aria to—

...sniff... sniff...

The tears started falling on their own in the middle of her train of thought, without the slightest warning, her face registering absolutely nothing.

She felt them roll down to her jaw and blinked, as though surprised to find them there.

"I’m s-s-sorry if I offended you, madam!" the fox blurted at the sight.

"No... it’s not your fault..."

Her voice broke halfway through the sentence.

"It’s mine... I’m the worst... I’m a monster..."

She held out a few moments longer before breaking down even harder.

"BWAAAAAAAAH—"

And she folded in on herself, face buried in both hands, wracked with sobs that filled the entire office and carried out into the corridor.

Kyiara didn’t move, eyes wide, a chunk of desk still resting on her foot.

Who is this lunatic? Er... this madam, I mean. You never know. What if she can hear my thoughts? Let’s stay calm. First things first, let’s stop moving. Or at least move as little as possible.

...

BUT WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?! WHY HAS EVERYTHING GONE COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS SINCE THIS WOMAN SHOWED UP?!

Wasn’t killing my guards enough?! She wounds me, puts me through agony, destroys my desk, and turns out to be completely unhinged on top of it! Is she not even more insane than that supposedly possessive lover of hers?! Does she have the faintest idea that she isn’t remotely normal either?!

Watching a tear roll off her face and land on her office floor, she very briefly considered offering her a handkerchief, before remembering that all of them had been in the drawer of a piece of furniture that no longer existed.

Freya lifted her head, her face completely soaked, and made a visible attempt to steer the conversation back onto professional ground.

"Wh-whatever the case... sniff... stick to those three points... and..."

She scrubbed at her cheeks with her sleeve, as best she could, except the tears were falling faster and faster as the grief in her real body kept worsening on the other side of the barony.

"And... and... and a small fourth point..."

She hiccuped.

"Improve your security... it isn’t normal that nobody came..."

Kyiara nodded as she watched her, still afraid, but no longer of the SSS rank at all.

Definitively of Freya’s insanity this time.

She was growing more and more certain that if this woman genuinely had an SSS rank beneath her, or at any rate as a lover, it was very probably because she wasn’t normal. And that was putting it kindly.

She had spent her entire life reading people. Working out what they wanted so she could play them, working out their true inner thoughts, working out their desires.

But how exactly am I supposed to do that with this lunatic?

"Also... don’t try to run..."

A hiccup.

"If you do... I’ll kill you..."

The fox flinched violently, and Freya carried on as though nothing had happened, all while crying her eyes out.

"Contact me... directly at the Paydragon estate... if you need to... and if you make progress... I’ll leave you the mithrite... I’ll be back..."

And with that she turned to leave the office, tears still running, stepping over the remains of what had been the most expensive piece of furniture in the pleasure district.

Then she felt something grab hold of the hem of her dress.

"P-please... I’ll do anything you want, so please, don’t hurt me."

Freya looked down at her and found a terrified kitsune, curled up on the floor, ears pinned flat against her skull and tails wrapped tight around herself.

And for a brief moment, the queen of the underworld had ceased to exist entirely. All that was left was a girl from the lower districts who had never really stopped being one.

Poor little fox... she must think Aria might kill her...

What Freya didn’t know was that at that exact moment, Kyiara feared Freya far more than she feared Aria.

She patted her head gently, soaking her hair with tears in the process.

"Don’t worry... I’ll do my best..."

"Thank you! Thank you so much, madam! I swear you won’t regret it, I’ll get started tonight, the whole city will be talking about those rumors before long!"

And the little fox smiled, sincerely relieved by the words of this lunatic from another world, who had for a lover a woman just as unhinged from what she’d gathered, and who happened on top of everything else to be SSS rank.

What neither the little fox nor even Freya knew yet was that the latter’s real body would, in the very near future, hand the little animal over to a torture session at the hands of our dear Aria.

Without the slightest remorse.

But for now, our great Calamity of Greed, one of the seven Dungeon Overlords, harbinger of the world’s end and sovereign over three hundred and sixty-one potential gods...

"BWAAAAAAAH—"

...was making her way down the corridor sobbing into the crook of her arm, exactly like a teenage girl who’d just been dumped behind the school gym.