The Villainess and I, her Zombie

|WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!|

"!!!!!"

Patience cried out in disbelief when the woman disguised as the young boy, struck by the skill suddenly trembled and began clenching the status-points-increasing pearl close to her chest.

|Testing my new skill. Isn't that obvious?|

|On our ally?! You are a rotten-hearted playboy and an idiot!|

Zombie shrugged his shoulder and confessed and got scolded mercilessly.

Everyone was observing Orange, or rather Fig, wondering whether will she use the pearl for herself or does something else with it – many of the nobles in the audience were already pulling out money reading themselves to buy off the precious object as soon as it will be possible to casually approach the child- but the thing was - the fake boy didn't return to her own seat, instead, Fig beelined it right towards the seats in the back where Claymore, Mary, Roan, and Cranberry were sitting.

"Ah! Could it be...?! I've heard before that the Tart family wanted to butter up to my mother for quite some time already...!"

Roan gasped excitedly and straightened his back, fully expecting that he will receive the pearl since he was sitting right in the way that Fig had taken.

"Pffft...! Typical Greed, wants something for free just because of their name. Unfortunately for you, weakling prince, the outcome you are foreseeing is at most doubtful."

Zombie smirked and scoffed at the excited blond prince way before the disguised Envy passed him and stopped before the confused red-haired girl instead.

Fig, donning the face of the currently ill Orange Tart, blushed and extended both her hands, offering the pearl right to Cranberry.

The red-haired girl looked at the pearl and then at the bowing boy as if she could not process what was happening and why.

"Wait...? Rally, for me...?"

She asked in shock, glancing at the Roan, crossing his arms, and muttering something under his breath - probably nothing pleasant.

"Yes, that's right."

Fig confirmed, bowing her head.

"It's a present celebrating your improvement, young miss... Ah...!"

She smiled brightly using the stolen face of Orange and pushed the pearl in the red-haired girl's hands before she glanced at Zombie - which caused her to got so red that it looked like her face had been on fire - which most likely was the result of the heartthrob skill he had tested on her before, and only then did she finally returned to her seat.

"Improvement...? ...young miss...?"

Cranberry repeated, furrowing her brows before she turned to her blue familiar as if she expected him to have the answer, or at least tell her whether she could really accept such a gift from a random boy.

...quite funny, since Zombie did in fact had the answer or at least the suspicion about it...

But that did not mean that he reveal it to her in their current circumstances – after all, Zombie had both the liar title and the acting skills while the Cranberry of the current playthrough could barely hide her emotions properly not even mentioning her acting skills – explaining things to her with so many eyes focused on them was out of the question.

"Good for you! Do you want to use it right away or save it for later?"

Zombie asked trying to take Cranberry's mind away from Orange/Fig before the girl could figure the secret out on her own - after all, Fig left her with big clues about her identity right there in plain sight.

"...ha...? Ah! Using it of course! I need to catch up to you somehow, despite your unfair advantage of not having to sleep and using all that saved time on training!"

*crush*

The red-haired girl quickly shook off the confusion and crushed the pearl in her hands without a second thought.

The pearl shattered and turned into a white light that seeped into the girl's body.

"Ah! It gave me a +5 five to every stat!"

"+5 to every single stat?!"

She exclaimed loudly – causing a lot of people to let out anguished growls - +5 to every stat was basically two free levels worth of stats without actually leveling up! It was actually amazing.

...so amazing in fact that Zombie felt a bit dispirited that Cranberry had spoken about the benefits it granted her like that.

"Ha ha!"

But getting worried over the jealous eyes looking her way, she laughed triumphantly and tugged on Zombie's clothes, making him lower his head and lean his ear towards her.

"I actually got +20 to mana, + 15 to MAT, and +10 to every other stat, but I said the lower value out loud to cover it up."

She confessed triumphantly – which was honestly so adorable that her blue familiar didn't have the heart to tell her that she did not have to say anything at all since only she was the one who saw the system message informing her about the improvement, and only someone rude would actually dare to ask her about the details.

"That's amazing! You got so much stronger! Congratulations!"

Zombie's face lighted up with a proud smile and he patted the girl's head affectionately.

"Ha ha..."

Which in turn made her lower her head to hide a blush and fidget happily on her seat.

|Zombie, I don't want to bring down the mood, but you better be careful – the seal of the eternal is at 85% which means a really strong sigil monster can appear at basically any moment – and we are literally in an arena with tens of readily available monsters chained up in the pens below it, each of what would most likely give themselves to the Eternal's power to get back at the humans who beat them up and imprisoned them with intention of killing later on.|

Patience pointed out, bringing down the mood despite her own words.

...at least Zombie's mood.

|I know, Pati, I know. But why would I be worried? There is no emergency quest appearing as it did in the first playthrough, and now that I am a player character too, it would have definitely shown up by now if it was going to in the first place.|

The blue undead breathed out and explained, rather calmly.

|Zombie... If that's the reason for you being so laid-back, then I have bad news for you. Most of the emergency quests that the humans received during the previous playthrough were created by me messing with the system to force people to follow the story I wanted them to – the system itself does not care about what happens and will not send any emergency quests!|

Patience sounded as if she shook her head in disbelief and exclaimed.

|Wha... WHAT?! Why didn't you say that from the beginning?! I was messing around only because I thought we were safe!|

Zombie scoffed and in a fraction of a second, his aura changed from that of a laidback playboy loafing around in a bar into one of the most cautious adventurers on a high-stakes mission.