Chapter 171

Chapter 171: Chapter 171

Lucy never managed to get the answer out of Greed.

The little Apostle had happily explained everything right up until the most important part, but the moment she was about to reveal what Marshall was truly "greedy" for, she merely gave Lucy a sly little giggle and clamped her mouth shut.

Lucy nearly went insane from frustration.

"Hey! You can’t stop there!"

Greed just smiled at her.

Lucy paced back and forth in circles from sheer impatience.

Eventually, she even tried bringing Marshall into it.

"Marshall told you to obey us while you’re staying with us!"

Greed nodded.

"Yes~"

"Then tell me the answer!"

"My lord ordered me to obey commands. He never said I had to answer every question."

Lucy froze.

"...What kind of loophole is that?!"

She tried several different ways of phrasing it, even directly ordering Greed to "tell the truth," but none of them worked.

Greed simply refused to be pressured into answering and somehow found a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Marshall’s instructions every time.

Lucy eventually had no choice but to admit defeat.

Her curiosity tormented her for the rest of the evening, leaving her itchy and restless whenever she remembered the unfinished sentence.

Fortunately, Lucy possessed the constitution of an idiot.

After one good night’s sleep, she had almost completely forgotten about it.

Aside from that little incident, Lucy and Greed got along remarkably well.

They ate together, lived together, and quickly settled into a comfortable routine.

Although Greed had only recently been "born" in her current form, she was frighteningly intelligent and adapted to new things at an incredible pace.

Lucy only needed to teach her something once before she understood it, and when it came to etiquette, manners, and reading the mood of a room, Greed was so naturally capable that she sometimes looked more like a proper young heiress than Lucy did.

That alone was enough to make Lucy question several things about herself.

Then Greed cooked breakfast.

Lucy took one bite and stared at her.

"You can cook?!"

Greed blinked.

"Yes?"

"And it actually tastes good!"

"Is that strange?"

"Of course it’s strange!"

Lucy pointed at her with her fork.

"Marshall can’t even cook this well! Wasn’t there supposed to be some rule that artificial life can’t surpass its creator? I feel cheated!"

Greed simply giggled and continued eating.

After several days together, Lucy was forced to admit that she could barely find any flaws in her miniature counterpart.

Greed was clever, polite, thoughtful, independent, observant, easy to get along with, and even knew how to cook.

She was practically the perfect little girl.

Perfect enough to seem almost inhuman.

Lucy paused when that thought occurred to her.

Well...

She really wasn’t human.

In any case, Lucy officially withdrew her earlier assessment that Greed lacked individuality.

If anything, she was beginning to suspect that Greed’s defining trait was simply being ridiculously lovable.

The other six Apostles were cute too, which was probably why Lucy hadn’t noticed it immediately, but after living together for several days there was no doubt in her mind.

Greed had the best personality of the Seven Sins.

And while that surprised Lucy, it also left her feeling strangely flattered.

’My, my~’

She glanced at Greed and found herself becoming increasingly pleased.

’Marshall really went out of his way to make "me" this good?’

Her imagination immediately began running away with her.

’Does that mean this is how Marshall sees me?’

Lucy’s smile became smug.

’A perfect woman?’

Her mood became wonderful.

...

Wendy was in an equally good mood.

The Sloth she had taken home lived up to her name to an almost absurd degree.

She was lazy beyond belief.

If she could sit, she would never stand.

If she could lie down, she would never sit.

Most of the time she sprawled wherever Wendy put her, her entire body limp like some boneless little creature whose spine had simply decided to stop participating in life.

If Apostles actually needed ordinary food to survive, Wendy suspected Sloth could probably starve herself to death simply because getting up to eat sounded like too much effort.

But Wendy didn’t see any of that as a problem.

Quite the opposite.

Sloth looked almost exactly like Wendy herself had several years ago, and the moment Wendy brought her home, she began thinking of the little Apostle as a younger sister who desperately needed someone to take care of her.

It fulfilled nearly every big-sister fantasy Wendy had ever possessed.

Sloth was basically a cute little pet.

A very, very lazy one.

Not that Wendy meant anything bad about Carla, of course.

Carla was simply too strong-willed and independent to need looking after. Half the time, Carla was the one taking care of Wendy.

Sloth was completely different.

She needed help with everything.

Walking?

"Carry me~"

Eating?

"Feed me~"

Bathing?

"Too much work~"

Changing clothes?

"Do it for me~"

Technically, Sloth neither needed food nor regular baths.

Wendy simply decided that she did.

So Wendy fed her anyway, helped her bathe, dressed her, combed her hair, and fussed over her appearance every day with the enthusiasm of a mother spoiling her favorite child.

Sloth never resisted.

Mostly because resisting would require effort.

Despite how dependent she looked, she was actually incredibly easy to care for.

She was too lazy to complain, too lazy to make trouble, and durable enough that Wendy could probably leave her in one corner for several years and come back to find her in exactly the same position.

Wendy would never do that, of course.

She was having far too much fun.

Everyone had always treated Wendy as the little sister.

But Wendy had a big-sister heart too!

Now she finally had someone she could spoil to her heart’s content.

After only a few days, Wendy was already starting to wonder whether she really needed to return Sloth to Marshall at all.

...

Lucy was happily drowning in her own imagination.

Wendy was happily drowning in the joys of motherhood.

But the other girls were having a much rougher time.

Erza, for example, had been rather depressed lately.

She had spent the past several days repeatedly sparring with Pride, mostly because she was genuinely interested in the Apostle’s unusual sword-control techniques.

Pride’s Curse technique resembled Erza’s Requip: The Knight in several ways, particularly in how it allowed her to manipulate numerous weapons simultaneously.

The major difference was that Pride didn’t need armor changes at all.

She could metalize her own body in a manner somewhat similar to Gajeel, then use her control over metal to propel herself through the air while directing flying swords around the battlefield.

That alone was troublesome enough.

More annoyingly, Pride appeared to possess an ability similar to Marshall’s mind-reading or information-prediction techniques.

She could anticipate attacks.

Whenever Erza tried to pressure her, Pride often reacted before the strike was fully committed, making it unexpectedly difficult for Erza to land clean hits.

Pride had also developed a strange sword formation that could drastically increase the initial acceleration of her flying blades.

The technique was apparently still incomplete, but according to her, once it was perfected, she would be able to launch a sword with the force of a thunderbolt.

Pride was strong.

Extremely strong.

And fighting her forced Erza to acknowledge something she had been trying not to think about.

The distance between herself and Marshall was growing.

Everything the Seven Sins Apostles could do was, in principle, built from abilities Marshall himself understood.

Which meant if Pride could do something, Marshall could theoretically reproduce it as well.

The little brother Erza used to protect was steadily leaving his older sister behind.

That bothered her.

But it wasn’t the main reason she had been in such a bad mood.

The true culprit was Pride’s trash talk.

Pride’s spoken language wasn’t nearly as fluent as Greed’s yet, but she was the only Apostle capable of using telepathy.

So during their sparring matches, her voice would constantly appear directly inside Erza’s head.

[Sparring? No. You are the challenger.]

Erza’s eyebrow would twitch.

Then, after dodging another attack—

[Other me, is this really all you can do? How disappointing. I suppose I’ll forget you soon enough.]

Another vein appear on Erza face.

And then:

[My lord often praises your talent. Now I understand. You are merely a mortal who happened to be born in an age before I existed.]

Erza had to admit it.

Pride was genuinely prideful.

There was something uniquely aggravating about watching a miniature girl wearing her own face stare back at her expressionlessly while delivering insults directly into her brain.

Several times, Erza had nearly lost her temper.

Worse still, a ridiculous thought had begun sneaking into her head.

Pride was Marshall’s creation.

Her personality and thought patterns were ultimately derived from concepts Marshall had provided.

So... did Marshall secretly see Erza this way too?

Erza knew perfectly well that the idea was unreasonable.

Pride’s personality had been deliberately pushed toward the sin she represented.

Knowing that did absolutely nothing to stop the thought.

And unfortunately, Pride could read it.

The response came immediately.

[Hmph. When did you begin imagining you could catch up to me?]

Erza’s grip tightened around her sword.

[You wish to stand beside my lord with such pathetic strength? Delusional.]

Then came the finishing blow.

[Admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding. Mortal, you understand nothing of my lord’s greatness.]

Erza stood very still.

Very, very still.

She had officially begun considering returning Pride to Marshall.

If she kept this little thing around much longer, she felt as though she might actually become depressed!

...

If Erza was merely having her mentality destroyed by Pride, Mira felt as though she herself was about to become the real Wrath.

After taking Wrath home, Mira finally understood what Marshall had meant when he once tried explaining the concept of an obnoxious little brat with absolutely no filter.

Wrath looked almost exactly like Mira had as a child, complete with the twin tails she liked wearing.

Unfortunately, she also resembled young Mira in temperament.

She was a complete menace!

Everything annoyed her.

Everyone annoyed her.

Her temper was awful, and because she had never wanted to leave Cake Tower in the first place, she treated every interaction with Mira as a personal confrontation.

Her vocabulary was still limited, so instead of producing long insults, she simply spat individual words at people.

Her favorite was:

"Scrub!"

The moment Mira brought her home, Wrath looked around the house with open disdain.

"Small."

Mira’s smile tightened.

"Old."

Her eyebrow twitched.

"Poor scrub."

Then Elfman walked into the room.

Wrath stared up at him.

"Big."

Elfman grinned proudly.

"A man should be—"

"Still lives with sister."

Elfman froze.

Wrath pointed at him.

"Useless scrub."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"

Things became even worse when Lisanna appeared through a communication lacrima.

Wrath stared at her for several seconds.

Lisanna smiled uncertainly.

"Um... hello?"

Wrath tilted her head.

"Couldn’t become Seven Sin."

Lisanna blinked.

"Only Guga’s."

Wrath nodded.

"Scrub."

Her first day in Mira’s house managed to anger almost every member of the Strauss family.

By evening, Elfman was furious, Lisanna was offended from a completely different location, and Mira had spent hours stopping arguments before they turned into actual fights.

Mira had no idea whether Wrath herself became angry easily.

What she knew was that Mira was becoming furious.

The next morning, she dragged Wrath out for sparring.

Marshall had once suggested that the Apostles and demons were fundamentally similar enough that Mira might be able to use Take Over on them.

She decided to test the theory.

The good news was that it worked.

Mira successfully Took Over Wrath, proving that the Seven Sins Apostles could indeed be treated similarly to demonic life by her Magic.

The bad news was that the transformation wasn’t particularly impressive.

Wrath specialized in Fire Magic and Lightning Magic, and those happened to be two disciplines Marshall was only moderately skilled with.

Her physical strength also wasn’t remarkable compared with the demons Mira had already absorbed.

Using Wrath’s form meant giving up Mira’s normal demonic forms in exchange for access to fire and lightning.

The actual improvement to her combat ability was tiny.

Mira could theoretically Take Over the other Apostles too.

But there was an obvious problem.

Why bother?

The Apostles were much more useful fighting independently.

Absorbing one merely removed a powerful extra fighter from the battlefield in exchange for giving Mira a slightly different transformation.

Unless Marshall someday created an Apostle specifically designed for Mira to Take Over, the whole idea was basically pointless.

After finishing the experiment, Mira released Wrath.

The little Apostle dropped back onto the ground as Mira smiled at her.

Wrath immediately looked up.

"Weak."

Mira’s smile stiffened.

"Gave chance."

A vein appeared.

"Still useless."

Another vein.

Wrath pointed.

"Scrub witch."

Something inside Mira snapped.

She was done with this shit.

She did not care whether Wrath went back to Cake Tower, moved into the guildhall, lived in the forest, or climbed onto a mountain.

Anywhere was fine.

Just not her house!

Mira... was furious.

...

Ironically, Wrath still wasn’t the Seven Sins Apostle with the worst personality.

She was foul-mouthed, obnoxious, and almost professionally irritating, but at least there was something almost entertaining about how shamelessly awful she could be.

The genuinely dangerous one was—

Envy.

Juvia discovered this immediately after bringing her back to the girls’ dormitory.

The moment Envy stepped into Juvia’s room, she stopped.

Marshall posters covered the walls.

Marshall pillows sat on the bed.

Marshall figurines occupied the shelves.

Various other pieces of Marshall merchandise filled practically every remaining surface.

The entire room was effectively a Marshall museum!

Envy’s already cold expression went completely flat.

Slowly, she turned toward Juvia.

"Kill you."

Juvia blinked.

"Kill you."

Envy’s eyes narrowed.

"Kill you. Kill you. Kill you."

Juvia’s smile became increasingly strained.

Then she felt it.

Killing intent.

Real killing intent.

The little Apostle genuinely wanted to attack her!

Juvia was stunned.

If Marshall hadn’t apparently placed a restriction preventing the Apostles from harming their originals, Envy might already have tried to kill her.

And because Envy wore Juvia’s own face, a terrible thought immediately entered her mind.

’Does Marshall think Juvia is like this?!’

Her heart nearly shattered.

Yes, Juvia could become jealous sometimes.

Maybe even quite jealous.

But she had limits!

She would never actually hurt one of her guildmates because of it.

Surely Marshall didn’t view her as some horrible woman who would attack anyone who got close to him!

So Juvia immediately decided to reason with "herself."

"Envy!"

Envy stared at her.

"Do you even understand what you’re saying?!"

Envy pointed toward the room.

"Woman who covets my lord."

Juvia recoiled.

"Woman who stains my lord."

Envy’s expression darkened.

"Kill you."

"H-How can you think like that?!"

Juvia pointed at herself.

"Juvia loves Marshall! Juvia is Marshall’s older sister! Juvia is not some wicked woman!"

"Kill you."

"You can’t just say that!"

"Kill you."

"You’re too extreme! Girls are supposed to be generous and tolerant! If you behave like this, Marshall won’t like you!"

Envy paused.

Juvia’s eyes lit up.

Then—

"Kill him."

Juvia nearly fell over.

"That’s even worse!"

She grabbed Envy by the shoulders.

"Why don’t you understand?! Being jealous of everyone won’t lead anywhere good! You have to learn to trust people and be more open-minded! Listen to Juvia—"

And so began a truly bizarre journey.

Juvia was now attempting to persuade an embodiment of her own jealousy not to be jealous.

In other words—

she had begun trying to PUA herself.

...

And finally, there was Lust.

After bringing Lust home, Levy spent a long time carefully examining the miniature girl from head to toe.

The resemblance to Levy was obvious, but Lust had already modified herself enough that nobody could possibly mistake the two.

Curved ram-like horns.

A heart-shaped tail.

Pink eyes.

And an overall appearance that made Levy’s eyelid twitch the longer she stared.

’This is totally a succubus from one of those storybooks!’

Eventually, something slipped out before Levy could stop herself.

"Why did you even make yourself look like that?!"

Lust leaned back slightly, smiled, and flicked her tail.

"Jealous?"

"I am NOT!"

Levy’s face immediately turned bright red.

"And stop using my face while modifying yourself into weird shapes! You’re going to ruin my reputation!"

Lust touched one of her horns.

"My Life Curse... new."

Her speech was still somewhat clumsy, but her smug tone was crystal clear.

"Can do little."

She smiled.

"Small tests."

Levy narrowed her eyes.

"What are you testing for?"

"Next... modify inside too."

Lust giggled.

"I’ll become even better."

"For what?!"

Lust’s smile widened.

"So my lord will like me most~"

Levy immediately grabbed both sides of her head.

"I KNEW IT!"

She threw herself onto the bed and began rolling back and forth.

"No! No! No! You really are plotting something against your own creator! You can’t do that! That’s cheating!"

Lust watched her roll around.

"Like?"

"Don’t play dumb!"

Levy sat up and pointed.

"Artificial creations aren’t supposed to start scheming against the person who made them!"

Lust tilted her head.

Then she smiled.

"No ’like.’"

Levy stopped.

"What?"

"We Apostles... toward my lord... only respect. Loyalty."

Lust placed a hand against her chest.

"Human ’love’... hard to understand."

Levy slowly relaxed.

"R-Really?"

"For now."

Levy’s shoulders dropped.

"Oh, thank goodness..."

Lust continued.

"But..."

Levy stiffened.

Lust’s smile became mischievous again.

"I am always prepared."

"For what?"

"If my lord needs me..."

She proudly placed both of her hands on her hips.

"I will be the most useful hole for my lord~"

Levy’s entire face exploded red.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

She covered her ears and threw herself back onto the bed.

"DON’T! DON’T! DON’T SAY WEIRD THINGS LIKE THAT!"

She rolled violently from side to side.

"I DON’T UNDERSTAND! I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING YOU’RE SAYING!"

Lust giggled.

Levy continued writhing on the mattress like a dying worm, her worst suspicions seemingly confirmed.

She had spent so many years looking after Marshall as a precious little brother, and now some bizarre artificial creature wearing her own face was announcing increasingly suspicious plans right in front of her.

How was that fair?!

Was there no justice in this world?!

How was she supposed to stop these things?!

Then Levy suddenly stopped moving.

A thought occurred to her.

’Wait.’

She slowly lowered her hands.

Why did Lust know any of this?

Artificial lives weren’t supposed to possess knowledge out of nowhere. In theory, the information they started with should come from their creator.

Which meant...

Levy slowly sat upright.

Her eyes began gleaming strangely.

Lust tilted her head and Levy smiled.

"Little Lust."

"Yes?"

"Let’s play a little game."

"What game?"

Levy’s smile became increasingly dangerous.

"A knowledge quiz."

Lust brightened immediately.

"Sure~"