Chapter 92: The Devil’s Business

"She’s simply here to seal the contract."

Aria rose to her full height behind the little girl, and the wind picked up around her, lifting the loose straw from the floor and pulling at the fabric of her maid’s uniform.

Beneath the haze of golden quantimanas, other quantimanas appeared, orange ones that had been hidden until then by the sheer mass of gold pouring off her, and they began to climb along her body, turning over on themselves until they took the shape of three golden scrolls that hung suspended in the air.

Her eyes turned the same orange when she spoke, in a flat, mechanical voice.

"Establishing contract between the party Amélia Paydragon and the party Freya."

The scrolls shifted at those words and settled into new positions around her before she went on.

"The party Freya agrees to provide a work filled with knowledge unknown to the party Amélia, along with two small extra gifts. Do you confirm this, party Freya?"

"Yes."

"The party Amélia Paydragon agrees to grant one favor to the party Freya when the time comes. Do you confirm this, party Amélia?"

"...Um... y-y-yes!"

The little girl had answered without once taking her eyes off this woman who had appeared out of nowhere, hands still clenched around the strap of her satchel, back pressed to the bars, still reeling from her arrival, and who on top of everything else was using a kind of magic she had never heard named nor seen anywhere before.

"Both parties having given their agreement, the contract is hereby sealed. Should either party fail to uphold their half of the contract, their soul shall be seized by myself, here present, even in death."

One scroll came to circle around Freya, another around Amélia, and the last stayed around Aria, spinning far faster than the other two, before all three broke apart into particles.

"S-So... it’s... it’s done...?" Amélia asked, looking down at her hands, turning them over and back again.

But when she raised her eyes in search of an answer, the woman in servant’s attire who had been standing there a moment earlier was gone, leaving the two of them alone again.

"Yes, it’s done, don’t worry."

"B-But who... who was she?"

"That’s none of your business, Amélia, and stop asking questions of someone who owes you nothing, alright? Try thinking for yourself a little."

The little girl nodded, and Freya stepped back from the bars, brushing the dust off her knees.

"Right, let’s not waste any more time than that. I’m going to hold up my end on the two bonus gifts."

"H-Here? Now? But you don’t have—"

A wheel materialized in the air between them, cutting her off mid-sentence, while Freya kept going.

"This wheel will make any object appear, any entity, anything at all really, anywhere between rank G and rank SSS, Amélia. Pray for your luck!"

And at those words, all the little girl’s fear, all her confusion and every last one of her doubts vanished at once and gave way to something else.

She had understood that she could hit the jackpot, and she came right up to the bars, letting go of her satchel strap, hands closing around the iron, swallowed up by the wheel turning in front of her and by the numbers and symbols streaming past.

Eyes full of greed.

Freya watched her without a word, and at the sight of an eleven-year-old girl devoured by greed, she felt something rise in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

Disgusting.

Not the girl in front of her, but greed itself, that sin capable of blackening and corrupting even the youngest hearts, a sin among sins, her own.

She waved away the usual notification that had just appeared in her field of vision without even reading it.

Another reminder of exactly why I’m doing all this.

Her resolve to keep playing this role, and everything that came with it, only grew stronger, because all of it was nothing more than the first part of a much wider plan she had laid out for her purpose, because it was necessary, even if—

Her thought was cut short by the girl’s voice reading out the letters appearing in front of her.

"...SS."

What?! My first SS pull and it’s for her?? Please, please, please, System, let it be a skill and let it be something I can’t hand over, please System!!

But to prove her wrong, a small object appeared and drifted gently down from above until it came to rest in Freya’s hands.

It was a machine, a miniature slot machine that fit in a single hand, with its symbols and its lever.

A smile spread across Freya’s face at the sight, while on the other side of the bars the little girl couldn’t keep still, desperate to see what she had won, something worth rank SS.

"Wh-What is it...?!"

As if in answer to her question, the notification appeared in Freya’s vision.

[ Congratulations! You have summoned Fate Machine, Rank SS ]

"It’s a Fate Machine, rank SS, apparently."

The little girl tilted her head to one side, still not understanding what it was, eyes fixed on the object, while Freya’s smile grew wider.

"Something that isn’t really for your age, but let’s have a look at what it does together. Show me your status," she said to the object, and it appeared.

[ Status — Fate Machine ]

[ Unique Skill: Absolute Jackpot ]

[ Normal Skills: Pull | Jackpot | Accumulated Luck ]

[ Titles: Once used in a certain Domain | Lucky Strike | ... ]

Freya couldn’t help letting out a small laugh at the irony of what she had drawn, an object that ran on luck, pulled from a skill that ran on luck itself.

Now isn’t that a delicious little irony?

Still thinking it over, she held the small object out through the bars, and the girl in front of her took it in her hand, eyes shining.

"I-I have so many questions but... but... first of all, how do I pull?"

At that word the little object lifted into the air, then shuddered and grew once, then shuddered again and grew once more, but it stayed there in the air, waiting.

Freya, still smiling from her own thoughts and just as eager to see the pull, urged her on.

"What are you waiting for?? Go on, she’s waiting for you! Pull the lever, Amélia!"

"Mhm..." the girl said, stepping closer to the floating machine one pace at a time.

She stopped for a moment to look at it, then turned her head toward Freya and looked at her too, taking in that mischievous smile, before turning back to the machine one last time and pulling the lever with everything she had.

The symbols inside started to spin, and Freya couldn’t stop herself from letting out a small "Yay~" while the reels rolled past, showing cherry, strawberry, banana...

All fruit?!

Then a 7 went by, but the machine didn’t stop on it, the first slot landed on a banana, the second one too, and the third...

"JACKPOT!" Freya shouted, hands wrapped around the bars, while all around the machine, which had started shaking again, small fireworks burst to mark the occasion.

The little girl backed up a few paces at the sight, but her eyes were full of wonder, and then the machine gave one final shake, and where the coins should have come out, quantimanas of every color came pouring out instead and wound themselves around her.

Freya couldn’t help laughing again.

"Hahaha! This is completely ridiculous, it looks like you’ve just become far stronger than your brother, maybe even stronger than Mei, off one single pull. But it’s temporary, isn’t it?"

Amélia wasn’t listening. She was looking down at her own body, unable to see the quantimanas surrounding her, but she could feel that strength perfectly well, the strength that had settled into her small frame all at once.

She opened her hands, closed them, opened them again, and looked at her fingers as she moved them one by one, her mouth slightly open.

Then she bent her knees and took one step to the side, just one, and that single step carried her much further than she had intended, which froze her where she stood.

"What is... what is this...? My... my arms are..."

She clenched her fists, feeling the blood beating in her forearms, and the beginning of a smile escaped her before she caught it, caught between shock and the urge to do it again.

The slot machine shook and shrank down to fit into the little girl’s hand, and before answering she was still looking at it.

"Yes... it says it’s temporary, until my next pull, in one day."

Freya’s smile widened all over again.

"I see. Overwhelming strength, but it depends on what you pull each day."

Aaaah... that’s beautiful.

Freya spread her arms wide, looking at the little girl in front of her, and then laughed at the top of her lungs, which pulled the girl out of her thoughts and made her flinch.

She couldn’t stop herself from asking.

"So you really are the devil? Did I just sell my soul with that contract?"

Which only made Freya laugh harder, the whole situation far too funny for her to hold it in, and she went on like that for a while, one hand on the bars and the other against her stomach, unable to stop until the laughter finally dropped away into a few hiccups.

Then she answered.

"In a manner of speaking, yes, I am."

The little girl flinched at her words and stepped back once, then again, and at the sight of it Freya couldn’t help laughing all over again.

No no no, pull yourself together, Freya! This is bad, what you’re doing here! Teasing a young girl like this? Imagine Luna watching you from up there!

The laughter cut off after that, coming back in fits and starts, and she was about to keep going when shouting broke out somewhere outside, along with the sound of impacts.

"BRING OUT THE SAINTESS!"

"GIVE HER BACK, YOU DOGS!"

"SHE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! NOT A THING!"

Something heavy slammed against a door up above, and the shouting doubled, mixed in with orders being screamed that nobody was listening to.

"Aaah... looks like our little chat is going to be cut short here. I’ll come and find you for the rest of the contract, don’t worry."

"But..."

"No buts, I already told you, off you go Amélia, go on, before it’s too late!" she said, waving her toward the exit.

The girl clutched the machine against her chest with both hands and ran.

But—

On the very first push of her foot she took off, literally, tearing forward at an insane speed and smashing straight through the wall.

The silence came back down, and all that was left was the gaping hole in the stone, the dust drifting slowly down and the last few pieces of rubble rolling across the floor.

Amélia stood in the middle of it, motionless, the machine still clutched against her chest, chips of stone caught in her hair and on a dress far too clean for this place.

She turned her head toward Freya without a word, shoulders drawn in and eyes wide, wearing the face of an eleven-year-old who had just done something she shouldn’t have and was waiting to be told what to do about it.

And Freya, who had managed to calm down, couldn’t stop herself from bursting into laughter all over again, harder than before.

It was a short while later that a soldier came bursting down the stairs, sword already drawn, drawn by the noise of the wall coming apart.

"What in the—"

But by the time he reached the bottom step, the laughter was gone, and so was everything that came with it.

Her shoulders had dropped, her hands had come together in front of her, and her whole bearing had shifted back into that of a woman kneeling in the dust of a square over a dead child.

"Forgive me, sir. The little one was frightened and she ran off. I fear she may have hurt herself."

"That doesn’t explain the wall being destroyed!"

"Sir, I don’t know. I was simply praying, with my eyes closed, when the wall was destroyed."

He looked at the wall, then at her, then at the wall again, and muttered.

"Is Gaïra’s wrath already coming down upon us...?"

But why would he think that? Is he an idiot? Or is that simply the medieval mindset, even under the influence of magic?

Freya really was giving it thought. Even a knight, who ought to have had some minimum of learning and education behind him, almost certainly didn’t reach the academic level of an Earth middle schooler.

Which made it fairly logical, in the end, especially since religion was far more deeply rooted in the collective imagination of people here, and since the deities in this world genuinely existed, which naturally pushed people toward leaping to conclusions.

But a knight, all the same? Isn’t that just completely ridiculous?

Or perhaps it was the situation itself that had led them there. A frail woman who trembled constantly, yet who seemed moved by the strength of Gaïra whenever she prayed and spoke up for the good of others, now sat locked inside their own prison.

Perhaps every knight in the place was simply on edge and dreading the consequences of what they had done.

But that doesn’t mean my final act won’t play out even better than planned. Now isn’t that just beautiful?

Freya, in good spirits, looked at the panicked soldier in front of her, remembering that she still had the rune Gacha she hadn’t used yet.

Seeing that the others weren’t coming, and that they were most likely outside trying to calm the beginnings of a revolt, she smiled, but this time a smile that belonged to her role, that of a simple, pure and gentle saint.

"Tell me, sir. A contract — would that interest you?"