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Chapter 64: The Monster Table

The train, carrying Dora\'s group, towards the capital passed through a sleeping landscape. Cabins equipped with beds served as dormitories and were divided between the girls and Dora and Hope.

Dora turned around in his bed, seeing the images of Mary and Lilith leaving, again and again.

He clutched his chest, troubled by this burning sensation that hadn\'t existed in him years before.

Regret? Sadness? Melancholy? He couldn\'t give it a name and decided to walk to clear his mind.

He disappeared from his bed and reappeared in another car, but as he used his power, he held his hand.

Our power shouldn\'t be wasted on this.

He opened his eyes, looking at his reflection in the glasses as if he had just seen a monster.

He was breathing heavily and his hands were shaking.

"What is happening?"

"!!!... Mid... Midget...?"

"What are you doing? You don\'t need to speak out loud, do you want someone to hear you?... What\'s bothering you so much?"

He calmed down a bit, looking at his fingers, even though they weren\'t in the same place, he shared his body with Midgard so she knew what he was going through.

"This isn\'t like you, Sigma... Look, I have an idea what\'s going on, close your eyes for a moment, no question."

He shivered a little but complied anyway, it was a very strange sight for Midgard to see one of the 2 problematic personas obey without hesitation, nor argue, yet she did not express anything and closed her eyes from her abyss.

Dora felt like he had lost his footing and that the environment was moving around him, he tried to open his eyes but could only see darkness, and then, a candle lit.

He opened his eyes wide, seeing the surroundings, 2 luxurious armchairs in a richly decorated room, a table with a bottle of wine and a chandelier lighting the room, and a rug resembling snake skin on the floor.

Midgard, in her true form, sat in one of the chairs and invited Dora to sit in front of her.

As he did so, she looked at him through her reptile eyes and sighed.

"You\'ve changed a lot, Sigma."

"Ah... I... I just don\'t feel good..."

"I saw that, is it because you were separated from your friends?"

He looked down, the flame of the candlestick seemed to sip his spirit.

"It\'s impossible... We\'ve been separated before, why does it hurt now? I don\'t know what\'s wrong with me... You said you know what\'s going on?"

She remained silent for a moment, looking thoughtful, then took the bottle and poured 2 glasses in front of her.

"Yes, I know why you feel more emotional towards your friends, I also understand why this pain is killing you."

She handed him a glass, and Dora, more and more strange, took the glass without asking questions.

"Listen to me now, I want you to pay attention to what I\'m about to say, to every word."

He nodded hesitantly, Midgard looked, her snake eyes into Dora\'s ruby ??eyes and spoke words in a language foreign to him.

"Come out, Greed."

The boy froze, beneath him, he felt a void open and swallow his soul, he collapsed into his seat like a puppet, without dropping his glass.

He stayed like that for a few seconds, when a sinister smile appeared on his lips.

"Greetings, Player."

Midgard sighed, the one in front of her looked around, like an animal in a new cage, and took a sip of wine.

"Delish, You do have taste, but reassure us, You\'re not using our kill points to do your shopping, do you?"

"So you have awakened, the monster with yellow eyes, sin of greed. I expected you to wake up when he would be S-rank, but I guess I still have to understand all the mysteries of avatars."

"You still have? Aren\'t you supposed to know more about this world than the current civilization? Funny, maybe you have Sloth\'s blessing, I can feel it over you."

Midgard\'s pupils narrowed.

"I\'ve been with her for a while, but this isn\'t my interrogation, darling."

Greed laughed in his chair. He took another sip and placed the glass on the table.

"Very well, we owe you our awakening, so we will answer some of your questions."

"Well, first of all, I saw a new pattern in the System, a percentage of greed. Is this related to your awakening?"

Greed looked around, admiring the decoration then turned his yellow eyes towards Midgard.

"Hm, that\'s a problem, we really want to share this knowledge but... What if we told you that if you knew, you would stop helping us?"

"... I really doubt I\'ll stop, please don\'t play with me."

"Oh? You won\'t stop? Even knowing that in the end, we\'ll have to kill each other?"

The flame of the candlestick waved. The two interlocutors faced each other, in an increasingly heavy atmosphere.

"So you know... I understand now, you are not Dora, you are the emanation of the System carrying the sin of greed, you are a Sin."

Greed put a hand to his face and laughed maniacally.

"My... Why are you so determined to separate us? Wasn\'t it you who suggested using our Synergy?"

"... Um?... What does that have to do with it?"

"Now we are really offended, are you just a newcomer?"

The flames thinned, reducing the little light in the room, Greed and Midgard\'s eyes glowed brighter.

"Dora? Anesidora? Sigma, Gamma, Beta, The Knight, the founder of Shining Sword, all this is us, Greed. We are the daily quest who hungers for more skills every day, when we decide to take a quest with less experience but more skill as a reward, that\'s us. When we motivate ourselves with the system\'s penalties, that\'s also us. When someone is important to us, the will to keep them close, it\'s also us. It\'s who we are, every persona you\'ve met is a small part of a greater being, Greed."

A weak wind rose behind him and extinguished the candles. The two beings observed each other in silence in the dark, the light of their eyes testifying to their presence.

"I see, so you\'re the reason there are many people in one body?"

"To be precise, it\'s about efficiency. We are Greed, so we take whatever interests us, in this case, it\'s about skill. But unlike another Sin you know, we don\'t just take the skill, we take the technique, we take the most we can get."

"Another sin? You mean gluttony?"

"See? You know more than your looks, Gluttony only takes skills indifferently, we call it being stupid, but in our case, we learn to use them thanks to one of the wonderful blessings of Greed."

"The personas."

Greed clapped happily.

"That\'s right, you get it. Our personas are vessels for understanding our environment, Sigma takes all abnormal skills from cooking to void magic, Gamma is in charge of the broad path of normal and elemental skills, everything that revolves around the elements is on it, and Beta..."

He remained silent, despite his silence, Midgard could imagine the smirk he displayed, but suddenly, she realized.

"Beta is the one for physical skills?!"

Greed\'s eyes shone brighter.

"At last, it took you so long."

"But... How?! We... We used a synergy with Beta all the time! Why didn\'t it increase?!"

She was genuinely surprised, she had pushed Dora to accomplish every kind of quest and kill different types of monsters, always using a synergy with beta, but the physical jobs remained at level 1.

"Is this because we didn\'t use only Beta? We were wrong using the synergy?"

"Not accurate, we would appreciate that our Beta part could assume its job by itself, but even like this it wouldn\'t work, because you need to trigger the power of this body."

"... How? What more should I do???"

"The same way that you accidentally triggered our Sigma part, as the same way as the vessel of Envy triggered our true form: you need to infuse our Beta part with a power of its nature."

Midgard shook her head. All her brain cells were working at 100% to properly understand the words of Greed, she reviewed in her head the events leading to the awakening of Greed, the black crystals from Envy, she though about the power of Sigma, the power that she had presumed infused. She remembered the moment when Sigma, in her body committed the taboo of using one particular power, a power which made him acts unaturally and created amnesia.

She then found the concordance with Beta.

"... Light magic?"

"Hm, what a great partner."

"... We couldn\'t get any kind of physical power... because we needed light magic to trigger Beta real power?"

"Correct, Player, as a forgetful person once said, dark and light power, the creation magic affect directly a person\'s mind. In our case, for a better understanding of light magic, we needed a proper saint body, someone with a human heart, a noble person, and which one of our personas corresponds?"

Midgard lowered her gaze, her head feeling heavier. She had lost count of how many times she thought about a way to complete this segment of the system, and she had finally got an answer from the most unexpected person.

"Don\'t cry with joy now, I\'m still curious about one thing: now that you know how to bring us to our peak, are you ready to do it? Knowing the consequences on our personas?"

The flames reignited, illuminating Greed\'s face.

"You asked about the Greed percentage, don\'t you want to know why there is also one for each persona? And why each of them is at 25 but Sigma is at 14?"

He raised his almost empty glass and looked at her.

"This number represents us, our presence, like this empty glass. Imagine that the void represents a person and that the wine is us, Greed."

He began to pour wine into his glass.

"The more Greed there is inside, the less Sigma can exist, and at some point..."

The glass fills completely, letting a few drops flow.

"... You will fully take over."

"That\'s right, every time we use the true power of Greed we spread around the persona using it, thanks to our amazing friends, we have managed to spread around Sigma. Soon, we will be fully able to absorb it, then Gamma, then Beta, and finally we will no longer need to use polymerization or any other form. We will finally be awakened... and that is why we are confused, is this really fine with you? We know what relationship you had with us, the way you took care of us, the way you liked our attention to you, even our jokes or our teasing. Haven\'t you become close enough to our personas? Are you really willing to see them disappear?"

The flames have gone out. A little silence fell, and then Midgard, in a light voice, murmured.

"Why are you asking me that? You want me to lead you to your true form too, right? Why would you want me to change my plan?"

"We\'re just curious, we\'re not used to this kind of \'friendship\' between a Player and an Avatar, so we just want to convince you that you shouldn\'t stop us."

"... Convince? Don\'t you mean threaten?"

"Oh, no, we don\'t need threats, blackmail is a horrible way to deal, bribery is much better."

"And how do you plan to convince me?"

"You\'ll like it, you already know that the Twilight of the Gods is coming, right? Lust has fully awakened, making us the last. Do you understand what that means?"

A new silence settled. In this darkness, Midgard\'s eyes closed and her lips trembled.

"... When?"

"In less than a year, in a few months, the first wave will hit. This is the time that remains before the rifts lead the apocalypse into this world. This is the time that you have left to take our body, Before..."

Greed laughed heartily, doing his best not to spill his drink.

He knew he had all the cards in his hand, Midgard could no longer oppose him and would play his game, however, a strange event happened.

The flame reignited with a greenish light, Midgard, a glass of wine in hand, took a sip while smiling, provoking Greed\'s curiosity.

"Is that true? Well, considering how fast we were before, that won\'t be a problem. Thanks for the information on light magic."

"Hm? Really? So you won\'t mind seeing them disappear?"

"Ahn, my little toy, this game was a bit awkward, to be honest, but now that I have a real challenger, I can only be more motivated. Do you think you can take on a Player in its prime?"

"... Interesting, very interesting, we underestimated you, Player. You have guts, your kindness to us has clouded our judgment, but we are happy to see that we are on the same page."

"Hm, but just to be sure, aren\'t you sharing your memory with them?"

"Ha? I wonder why you ask, but no, none of them will remember our discussion, but the more they use our power, the more they will remember other things."

"... Is this why Sigma is affected by the departure of his friends?"

"Not accurate, because you asked us to use a synergy with Beta, there is some Beta in Sigma. In the future, we would appreciate it if you asked them to only use polymerization, each of them of course, this will greatly help us."

"I see, that makes sense. Then I\'ll do it and have this body ready for me very soon."

"Great, you\'re a wonderful partner, Player. We\'re excited to work with you. Let\'s wreak havoc on this world and lead our personas to their finality until we reach our climax, then let\'s kill each other in a flamboyant finale."

They took a last sip of wine and the flame plunged the room into emptiness.