Chapter 124: The First Summit of Dungeon Overlords II

"We must take action."

The crowned silhouette had said it simply, and its distorted voice carried around the room.

BOOM—

Freya turned her head toward the source of the sound and saw the clenched fist of the silhouette with four white arms, slammed down on the table.

"Who do you think you are, this whole time? You think you’re above us, giving us orders?!"

"Whether I consider myself above all of you here present?"

Even without a face, the black silhouette’s smile could be sensed.

"That is not the question."

It had barely finished its sentence when a chair flew across the room and smashed against the spot where it sat.

Freya was left shocked, a hand pressed to her chest.

What a brute! Throwing chairs in the middle of a meeting... Some people really have no manners.

Apparently, she had already completely forgotten that, only moments earlier, she was the one who had ordered the place sliced in two.

At the same moment, just as after Kaguya’s attack, everything went back to the way it was: the chair returned to its place, and whatever it had knocked down on its way repaired itself.

The crowned silhouette, used to it by now, didn’t lose face a second time and simply replied.

"Wrath, I presume... A pleasure."

The four white arms tensed all at once. The table began to shake under their fists, and despite the silhouette’s blurred outline, Freya could see it was about to explode.

But the silhouette that had been standing behind it from the start stepped forward and whispered something in its ear, which Freya couldn’t make out despite her enhanced body.

A sound barrier?

After that, Wrath calmed down. It simply dropped back, or rather slumped, into the chair that had returned to its place, crossed its two black arms, and let out a single word.

"...Tch."

Watching all this, Freya couldn’t help smiling again.

Interesting! Really interesting.

She had felt it: Wrath had acted out of pure rage, while knowing full well it couldn’t even hurt the crowned silhouette. It had been consumed by its own sin.

And without the follower who had whispered to it, exactly as Aria had always done for Freya whenever she lost herself in one of her episodes, it would have literally turned berserk, right here and now.

The idea was as amusing as it was terrifying. Freya pictured a being with four unique skills, as powerful as those of her own gacha summons, on top of the one tied to its sin, just like Word of Greed was for her, all of it unleashed without the slightest limit under the grip of Wrath.

She was pulled from her thoughts when the crowned silhouette spoke again.

"I will now explain the why and the how of my reasoning, and of my invitation to gather all of you in this place."

No one spoke this time, and a long silence settled around the table, each simply waiting for what came next.

No one, that is, except Kaguya.

Behind Freya, the dragon girl had somehow discovered that the room had limits. She had walked up to one of them, tapped the invisible wall with her fingertips, then pressed her face against it. And then, without anyone understanding how, she had started walking on it, climbing up along that wall until she ended up upside down, right above the table, calmly pacing across a ceiling that didn’t exist.

Step by step, she tested its surface, stopping now and then to hop on the spot and check that it was still holding.

Several silhouettes slowly raised their heads toward her.

Freya, for her part, kept her eyes straight ahead.

"Ahem... hmm..."

She cleared her throat as dignifiedly as she could, to invite the crowned silhouette to carry on as if nothing had happened.

"Everything has accelerated, and far too quickly."

It paused.

"First of all, right from the start, someone found the exit, and the prophecy struck the world we were meant to invade in secret, leaving us no time to prepare and build our dungeons little by little."

"Then, our dear Maid upped the ante soon after, with the information that bodies yield mana, which drove the Dungeon Lords onto the offensive out of greed. Which, in a way, is rather ironic, considering she hadn’t even been chosen as a Calamity yet..."

This time, its voice sounded rather amused, and the silhouette lost itself in its own words, laughing to itself for a while.

...Am I the only sane one here?

It gradually calmed down, then went on.

"Which led to the death of one of us, and so to the quest that came with it, pushing the Dungeon Lords to act even more."

"And most recently, the quest that shook the world, the one calling for an attack on Maid’s dungeon."

"So yes, all these ’anomalies,’" it said, making air quotes with its fingers, "that the System had not foreseen have caused everything to spiral out of control, and our dungeons have been unable to keep pace."

Hearing all this, Freya understood one thing: these anomalies were in fact only one.

Her.

Looks like I overdid it a little...

Because she knew, and was surely the only one here who did: everything the crowned silhouette had just listed was her doing. She was the one who had accelerated everything from the start, she was the anomaly the System hadn’t foreseen, and it was because of her that the dungeons were still underdeveloped in the face of a whole world united against them.

But Freya shook her head. In the end, it didn’t matter, since every one of those anomalies had ended up working in her favor, even Belzebuth’s announcement.

It was then another silhouette that spoke up, the one whose limbs were wrapped in white chains, and which was already slumped over the table.

"So... why do you want us to take action...? Isn’t that... contradicting what you just said?"

Its voice was distorted like everyone else’s, but above all slow and tired. Yes, tired was definitely the word.

Freya wanted to speak up, but since she was the very anomaly in question, she resigned herself for now and simply watched to see where the conversation would go.

The crowned silhouette answered then.

"Granted, our dungeons haven’t kept pace. But we have a clock ticking over our heads."

"..."

The chained silhouette simply looked at it without a word, as if it didn’t understand where this was going and was waiting for the rest of the explanation.

"Maid?"

The crowned silhouette had turned its head toward Freya.

So it recognized my sin from the rings?

What Freya didn’t know was that the crowned silhouette had recognized her above all by her actions. Having already dealt with her on numerous occasions in the chat, it had a fairly precise idea of the way she operated, and since the start of the meeting, beneath its haughty airs, it had been analyzing every person present and drawing its own conclusions.

Freya, for her part, simply looked in its direction, inviting it to go on with whatever it meant to ask her.

"How is that quest progressing?"

"...Rather well, I’d say."

"And the attackers, are they natives of this world, or ours?"

"I can’t be certain, but I’d say no Dungeon Lord has ever set foot in my dungeon."

Except that damn Belzebuth, of course...

"There you have it!" the crowned silhouette exclaimed, spreading its arms. "Once again, the mission to seize the sin and everything that belongs to Maid was launched too early! Lords and Overlords alike, we are all outpaced."

It went on without stopping.

"Imagine one of us seven died at the hands of a native of this world. What would happen?"

It let a silence hang before continuing.

"Would they receive authority over that sin? Would they gain access to the System? And if so, would that make them one of us?"

With a theatrical gesture, it swept the air before it with its hand.

"Of course not! But they would have access to our information, to the chats, to the shops, to everything!"

This time, it was the silhouette with countless eyes, silent since the very beginning, that spoke up.

"But isn’t all of that just speculation?"

Freya couldn’t help stepping in, because she understood perfectly what was at stake in front of her.

"You can be just as skeptical one way as the other. It’s like flipping a coin."

"Precisely!" the crowned silhouette exclaimed. "And on top of that, a mere Dungeon Lord could be captured, and this time not killed like the first, but tortured until they feed the natives of this world everything they know about us, without end!"

The silhouette with the gaping maw picked up from there.

"It may even already be happening."

The one with the heart-tipped tail laughed, as it always did, while Wrath clenched its fists a little tighter. Because they had all just realized that everything they had ever disclosed, said, or sold, whether in the global chat or in the faction chats, might have leaked long ago already, and might still be leaking at this very moment.

Freya, for her part, immediately went back over everything she had ever posted in the chat. Every message, every trade, every offhand remark she had dropped without a second thought came back to her one by one, and for the first time since the meeting began, the smile faded from her black silhouette.

The crowned silhouette then delivered the final blow, simply repeating what it had been saying from the start.

"So I tell you again, my dear deadly sins: with this acceleration, we are out of time. We must act."