Dungeon Overlord: My First SSS Gacha Summon Was a Yandere

The following week unfolded exactly like the last, with skirmishes here and there, ever more clandestine meetings, and every time a death or several needed mourning, the White Saintess of Veille appeared without fail.

It was in fact during one of these rounds that everything changed for Freya, much to her delight.

While she knelt as she always did before the body of a child who had lost his life a few hours earlier, under the eyes of several passersby and a handful of knights, the sound of running feet rose from the side streets.

A considerable number of knights and soldiers under Baron Frarken’s command came pouring in, roughly a hundred men who surrounded within moments a place that had held barely three of them a short while before.

As though the baron had known she would appear there.

As though the child had been killed there for the express purpose of luring her.

They took the square with entirely deliberate violence, shoving residents against the storefronts with shoulders and flat blades, overturning two stalls along the way, and forming a ring around the body and the kneeling woman until nobody could enter or leave.

And all of it in the Morio district, the very place where everything had begun, which made for a rather elegant twist of fate.

Finally, it’s time!

A knight stepped forward into the middle of the circle.

He stood close to 2 meters tall, with black hair cropped short, eyes just as black, a build that filled his armor completely, and a hard stare that swept the crowd without settling on anyone in particular.

He drew his sword and raised it high toward the people.

"Citizens of Evangel! Hear the word of your lawful lord!"

His voice carried to the far end of the square.

"It has been established and judged that the peasant girl proclaiming herself the White Saint practices witchcraft in order to toy with human minds, to corrupt your hearts and to win you over with counterfeit miracles! The flowers that grow beneath her knees are not the work of Gaïra but rather that of impious artifice! Baron Frarken, lord of this city and its lands, therefore declares her a heretic before the gods and before men!"

He let his words make their way through the crowd.

"I, Sir Casius, Captain of the Frarken Order, knight among knights, proclaim before you all that this woman..."

He lowered the point of his sword to aim it straight at Freya.

"...is a witch!"

Shock rippled through the crowd, which stayed perfectly silent for a few seconds before people truly grasped what was happening, while the knights were already hauling Freya up by the arms to take her away.

"Lies!"

"Another twisted stunt from that damned baron!"

"SCUM!"

A tomato flew across the square and burst against Sir Casius’s breastplate, immediately followed by another, then by a stone that just missed a soldier’s helmet, then by whatever else the crowd had within reach.

"SOLDIERS!" Sir Casius bellowed. "DRAW YOUR WEAPONS!"

Every last one of them drew steel and tightened ranks, blades leaving their scabbards in one single scrape, and the entire square found itself a second away from tipping into something nobody would have walked away from unscathed.

Then Freya raised her hand.

"Everything’s fine."

She had spoken calmly, without raising her voice, and yet everyone heard her.

"Lower your weapons, please. Lower your stones, lower your fists, and look at me properly."

She let a moment pass, both arms still held by the knights.

"I don’t want a single more death today. Not yours, not theirs. There’s already a child at my feet, and that’s more than enough for one day, don’t you think?"

Complete silence fell over the square.

"So if I must be taken away for no one else to fall here, then take me away. It’s only me. And I am certainly not worth the lives of those listening to me right now."

At those words, the people, and the knights as well, understood perfectly well what she meant by that, and everyone lowered their weapons, whether swords, stones, or anything else still clenched in their hands.

And so Freya’s replica was led away to a prison.

A thoroughly grim dungeon, in which the knights who had brought her opened the cell door before removing their helmets.

"We’re sorry, Lady White Saint. We fear for our families, the baron might turn on them if we refused his orders. Have mercy on our souls."

They said this while bowing their upper bodies, all while still urging her into the cage regardless.

Damned hypocrites! You apologize just to keep up appearances in front of the goddess Gaïra, just in case! Have you ever once apologized to the people you kill in cold blood?!

If it weren’t for this abominable, pathetic saint role I’m currently playing, I would have already gutted you both myself.

Despite her inner thoughts, she smiled a long and perfect smile, her eyes narrowing slightly, a smile that could have come straight off Aria’s face.

"Thank you for your kindness, sirs. Don’t trouble yourselves, I hold no grudge against you whatsoever."

They left thanking her and apologizing once more, and Freya then turned to look around at what she now had for a home.

A fine, pitiful medieval cell.

The place was damp and filthy, with moss growing in the stone joints and a smell that caught in the throat immediately, a bucket sitting in one corner in place of a toilet, and simply a scattering of straw laid directly on the floor in the other for a bed.

"...Last time I play this kind of role..." she muttered to herself, breathing out.

"A role?"

A small voice had just answered from behind her, which didn’t surprise her in the slightest, since she had heard the footsteps approaching well before that.

She turned to see the young girl who had spoken those words.

Amélia, Aldric’s little sister, the knights having stepped out to leave the two of them to their conversation.

The girl stood on the other side of the bars, both hands gripping the strap of a satchel slung over her shoulder, in a dress far too clean for this place and shoes she kept carefully clear of the puddles.

"You must have misheard, young lady. I was merely praising how tasteful this prison is."

Amélia didn’t rise to it and glanced away for a moment at the back wall.

"It hardly matters to me, either way. I came to see you because I wished to speak with you, and I feared that if I waited too long, it would become impossible from now on."

"That’s fair enough. So what do you want from me?"

"I wanted to thank you."

Freya leaned one shoulder against the bars.

"Thank me?"

"Yes."

The girl lifted her chin and held her gaze.

"I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done. I don’t know what role you’re playing, or who you are, or even what you’re hiding, and it hardly matters to me. I wanted instead to thank you because thanks to you, or at least through you, my brother has grown, and so has our household. So thank you, for all of it."

"You’re most welcome, young lady. Is that all you had to tell me?"

"Yes, that’s about everything."

Her fingers tightened on the strap of her satchel.

"Except that I’m sorry for your fate. I wish there were something I could do about it, but I don’t yet have the strength or the influence to do so, and I apologize for that. And if it offers any comfort, know that I swear on my name, I will make Evangel a better place, one where nobody will ever again have to pray for the dead the way you have."

"Hahahahahaahaah....."

Freya broke into laughter with her entire being at the girl’s words.

The girl looked thoroughly shocked by this reaction, unable to understand why the woman in front of her was behaving this way.

Was it the approach of a plausible death that was doing this to her? Had madness taken hold of her pure heart? Why was the woman before her laughing at words meant to comfort her, words she had prepared and spoken from the very bottom of her heart?

Then the woman in front of her changed all at once.

Her body, which trembled under normal circumstances, stopped moving entirely. Her shoulders rose. Even her bearing shifted completely. And two things would mark Amélia for life.

The smile and the eyes of the woman before her, filled with happiness and something far closer to depravity, as though this woman, imprisoned in the baron’s own dungeon, branded a witch and standing at the edge of death, were thoroughly enjoying the situation.

As though the White Saint too had only ever been a...

"...role."

"I thought you were already aware, young lady? And wasn’t that of some importance to you?"

"I-I... I thought you were playing a role, of course... but not to this extent... I thought it stopped at... at-at... at..."

"Oh, but no."

Freya spread her hands in a perfectly relaxed gesture.

"In truth, there is a great deal more to it than that, far more than you could imagine. But don’t be too hard on yourself, after all you’re only 11 years old, and if I may say so, even if you’re called a prodigy, given the mentors and examples you’ve had, it’s perfectly normal that your full potential hasn’t yet been reached... or well, something along those lines, I suppose."

Freya appeared to be turning something over in her mind, while the girl in front of her likewise sank entirely into her own thoughts.

If her death as a saint wasn’t the end goal, then what was all of this leading to?

What more was there? What could happen? What could...

CLAP—

Freya clapped her hands, snapping the girl straight back into the conversation.

"Right. I’ve enjoyed this little chat, and I happen to be in rather a good mood, so here’s what I propose," she said with a smile.

She stepped closer to the bars and crouched down to her level.

"If you promise to grant me a favor when the time comes, when I come to find you, I’ll give you a book containing knowledge beyond this world, along with two small extra gifts. Tempting, isn’t it?"

"Bu-but you... you’re going to make it out of this?"

"No, no, no. Amélia, that isn’t the question."

She tilted her head slightly to one side.

"I’ll ask you one last time. Do you accept, or do you not accept? That’s all that matters right now, Amélia. So think carefully."

While the little girl simply nodded, bringing a hand to her chin to think over everything that had been said from the start, as well as everything this exchange would commit her to, Freya couldn’t help laughing inwardly.

Hahahah... it’s certain now, I was definitely a demon in another life. Why does it amuse me this much to strike a pact with an 11-year-old?

Beyond the sheer amusement she got out of it, finding the whole situation thoroughly funny, there was also the practical gain that had pushed her to propose it in the first place.

After all, if the young girl in front of her, who was certainly quite advanced for her age, learned the knowledge of Earth from a book Freya would later hand her, she would become far more useful to Aldric than she currently was, and this would form a future asset she could call upon at any moment, for anything at all, thanks to the favor owed.

On top of that, it would simply strengthen Evangel and the Paydragons, who already worked for her, through the knowledge she would be giving her.

It was win-win for Freya.

And as for the two small extra gifts, she simply hadn’t pulled today, neither the base Gacha nor the rune Gacha, so she found it rather amusing to pull for someone else for once.

And in a way, depending on the pull, it might end up benefiting the Paydragons too, which made it win-win all over again.

"I accept," said the girl in front of her.

"Are you certain of your words? There will be no going back, Amélia."

"Yes. I’m certain."

"Did you hear that, Aria?"

"Yes, mistress."

She appeared behind the girl all at once, exactly as though she had always been standing there.

Amélia flinched violently at the voice and spun around to see the woman in servant’s attire, before stepping back until she bumped into the bars.

So Freya brought her mouth close to the child’s ear and whispered.

"Don’t worry, she isn’t the devil."