Chapter 89: You Little Amateur
While the tension in Evangel kept mounting between the people and Baron Frarken, on Freya’s side, her real body this time, it had taken her seven full days to gather the 50,000 points needed to upgrade her dungeon.
How did I even manage to spend more than 5,800 points in six days, seriously...?
It remained a mystery to Freya, who had nonetheless turned the question over in her head a fair number of times without ever arriving at a satisfying answer, or at least at an answer that wouldn’t implicate her too heavily.
Then she saw, sitting right across from her, little Laïa, cross-legged among the cushions, already peeling a frozen mango with remarkable dedication while she still had a whole one in her mouth, which distorted her cheek completely and made it impossible for her to close her lips.
Freya looked away immediately, exactly like a mother ashamed of giving in to her child’s every whim because of the sheer joy it brings her to see them happy, then cleared her throat while very quickly casting about for something else to say in order to cut that particular thought short.
"More importantly, it’s finally time! System, upgrade this very system to level 5, please~!"
[ Spend 50,000 mana points to upgrade the system to level 5? ]
"Yes!"
[ Congratulations! You have reached the threshold required for the dungeon system to evolve to Level 5! ]
[ Dungeon System — Level 4 -> Level 5! ]
[ Upgrade of the Upgrades category to Level 5 available: 10,000 mana points. ]
[ Mana capacity increased to 100,000! ]
"Yay~!"
She said this while spinning on the spot, her silk nightdress flaring out around her in a perfect circle before she landed with her feet together and her arms still up in the air.
Laïa, who hadn’t stopped stuffing her face for a single second throughout all of this, watched her over the top of her mango with her head tilted to one side, then started talking with her mouth still half full.
"My pink flames would suit you, big sister!"
"You think so?"
"Yes! Imagine the hem of your dress catching pink fire when you spin like that, it would be beautiful!"
What if I tried it?
She turned her attention to the mana flow running through the room, following a few particles of pink Quantimana drifting past her, some of them detaching in the tiniest quantities to join the small pink mist of Quantimana that hung permanently around Laïa.
On top of that, couldn’t I bring more of it over to her? Divert the flow myself instead of waiting on her favorability to do it, and turn her into a mage with an absolutely insane reserve, even if it would only hold until she burned through all of it?
Then her gaze naturally turned toward her big sister, Naïa, who was quietly sipping her cup without the faintest suspicion of what was going on inside her mistress’s head.
And her, with no favorability toward mana whatsoever, couldn’t I simply create some for her from scratch by drawing Quantimana around her?
While she was working through all these questions, her mind catching fire once again at the possibilities that control of the flow opened up to her, the remaining notifications appeared in front of her and cut her off mid-thought.
[ Congratulations! Your existence rises alongside your dungeon, and you grow stronger! ]
[ New feature: Dungeon Remodeling! ]
"What?"
Feeling her body growing stronger, her vision sharpening and her reflexes tightening as it did every time, she nonetheless waited a few moments, watching for another line, an explanation, some additional detail, absolutely anything at all.
But nothing.
"System, don’t tell me there’s no Gacha skill this time?"
[ Unique skills are granted during the dungeon’s first evolutionary phase. ]
"So that’s it? I won’t get any more Gacha skills? No more new pleasures? Just four measly little pull skills? You’re telling me I have to make do with four pulls a day for the rest of my existence?"
[ ... ]
"Come on, man, don’t go all distant system on me, please, just tell me, is it because I asked too many questions at once? Don’t leave me, please, Syyyysteeeeeem."
This time no notification appeared in her field of vision at all, not even the usual haughty ellipsis.
In its place there was simply the girls’ habitual look of judgment.
Naïa had set down her cup. Mei had pulled her cushion up to her chin. Laïa had stopped chewing. And Kaguya was nodding slowly with a thoroughly knowing air, without the faintest idea of what had just happened.
Once again Freya looked away and cleared her throat, her eyes landing this time on the first notifications she had skimmed over rather too quickly in her enthusiasm.
"WHAT?! 10,000 mana points?! Are you kidding me?! It was 1,500 at the last tier!"
Realizing she had just shouted once again, she shot a thoroughly furtive glance sideways at the girls, then flinched.
"Eeeek..."
It went without saying that their judging looks had only intensified.
"Don’t judge me too harshly, girls! I’m going through a difficult phase, all right?!"
They all nodded in response, in perfect unison and with absolutely impeccable seriousness, but Freya was under no illusions whatsoever, it wouldn’t change a single thing about their preconceptions.
Then that thought was crushed by another.
She thought back to the fact that ever since she’d become a Mana Transcendent the costs had risen considerably, with 50,000 points spent in one go just to level up and now 10,000 straight away for the upgrades category alone, when only a few weeks earlier she’d been buying entire buildings for next to nothing.
Is this what the system meant by the end of the first stage? So this is where it gets serious, then?
With that she thought of the poor Dungeon Lords who had no 1% faction income per day the way she did, and with these new expenses now required she already knew it, she was going to pull well ahead.
Or rather, the seven Dungeon Overlords were going to pull well ahead, and the gap would only widen with every tier cleared.
Isn’t this a little too unbalanced?
Knowing the system as she was beginning to know it, she nonetheless expected something to come along and change the situation, to restore some minimum degree of balance, almost certainly an upcoming mission that would reshuffle the cards a little.
In any case, for the moment, she only had to wait two more days to gather the 10,000 points, whereas the others would technically have to wait a little over eight days, which came out to nine full days barring any outside source of mana.
She couldn’t help laughing to herself after that little calculation.
"Hihihihi~ Completely unbalanced! Being an Overlord really is the best~~~"
Then she heard a breath somewhere in the room, followed by another, then a small laugh stifled behind a hand.
"That’s enough, girls, isn’t it?!"
Naïa, who was on the verge of bursting out laughing, looked at her and opened her mouth between two hiccups she was doing her level best to hold back.
"Madam, it’s just that—"
The door of the luxury bedroom swung wide open all at once behind Freya, cutting Naïa off mid-sentence, and every gaze in the room turned toward it.
Laïa was the first on her feet, her half-peeled mango abandoned on the cushions, running straight toward the woman standing there.
"Ariaaaaa~ I missed you so much! I have so many things to show you, come and see! Come and see!" she said, already tugging at her sleeve with both hands.
Aria shot a glance toward Freya, as though asking permission to postpone whatever she had come here for.
Freya answered with a simple wave of her hand.
"Go on, go on, don’t worry about it. And besides, I’d like us all to have dinner together tonight, it’s been a while and I have a few questions for you."
"Very well, madam," she said with a warm smile before letting herself be dragged out of the room by a Laïa who was already talking far too fast to be understood.
With all of that, Freya had completely forgotten about the new dungeon remodeling feature.
Focusing instead on a personal vendetta which, in this particular case, she most certainly had not forgotten.
She first waited for the door to close and for Laïa’s footsteps to fade down the corridor, then she let a few more seconds pass so the silence could settle in properly.
Then she stretched at length, laced her hands behind her head, and let herself sink back against the couch cushions while adopting the most casual tone she was capable of.
"Aaaah... It’s so nice having mana, and a body that improves all on its own with every dungeon level!"
She left a perfectly calculated pause, examining her nails.
"Lucky me for not having a body deprived of all that..."
Naïa set her cup down on the table, very slowly, then folded her hands in front of her and straightened her back.
Her gaze turned hard.
"If I may say so, that was very petty, madam."
Ooooh~ She bit!
Except that she held Freya’s gaze for far longer than expected, and her expression slowly gave way to something else entirely, her eyebrows drawing upward, her shoulders sinking, and her eyes clouding over until she finally lowered her eyelids without finding a single thing left to say.
Which stripped Freya of every last notion of vengeance in the space of a single second.
She scrambled up off the couch, went around the low table knocking over a cushion on the way, and hurried to Naïa to throw her arms around her.
"I’m so sorry, I let my emotions run away with me! Forgive me, Naïa, I promise I’ll get Silent Viper back to you soon, and I promise I’ll find plenty of other things for you, things that are just for you! Sorry again..."
Naïa didn’t move.
She let Freya cling to her for a while, looked down at her from above without saying anything, waited another two or three seconds more, then broke into a haughty smile before murmuring quietly enough that only she would hear it.
"You little amateur."
WHAAAAT?! She played me?!!!
Naïa’s smile only widened as she watched her.
Since when did you start going bad, Naïa...?