Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"What did you wish to talk with me about?"

Everything about Irene changed… even though for a normal human she was bound to still be the same.

Her eyes turned into a mixture of unnaturally intense crimson decorated with pure black of the pupils. The air around her grew tenser as if stressed by the weight of the aura she unleashed. Even her face somehow grew more detailed and vivid, begging the question if this was just my perception or the way in which the world itself wanted to translate her overwhelming power.

Only one thing remained the same and it was her cold, wicked smile.

"Who are you and what did you do to me?" I didn't need to think to find out the right words or figure out what I actually wanted to ask about.

Or rather, I did all the thinking over this issue already, and right now all that was left for me was to express it.

"I'm Irene," this overlord of dark aura claimed only for her smile to grow a bit. "And I've been Irene for longer than you or Cassie knew me."

"I doubt the real Irene would hold such an overwhelming power," I countered while slightly squinting my eyes.

Irene, or whatever this being even was, only widened her smile and lowered her eyelids to the middle of her eyes.

"How could I be responsible for whatever misunderstanding you have about me? It's not my fault you guys were unable to notice it before, so why should I answer you for it?"

The girl's smile turned from wicked to one of open mockery and amusement.

"I'm not here for you to answer to me. Even with all my might, I doubt I could put a single scratch on you. And without the advantage of violence, how would I impose any sort of sanctions or punishment on you?" I asked, allowing myself this little deviation from the main topic.

There was no denying that in terms of power, then the being sitting right across the table dwarfed Madam and Etaria… And was likely far more powerful than I was even capable of perceiving.

But that was just her power. And while judging by my own circumstances, the limits of Irene's power also affected her ability to perceive, remember, recall, and process things at a much greater rate than a normal human…

Being in this modern world for as long as she claimed, she wouldn't be able to stop it from rubbing itself on her. And that…

That was the one and only vulnerability I had any hopes of exploiting if things really took a turn for the worst.

"It's nice that you are aware of your own limits, but it also begs the question," Irene's smile only grew as she lowered her eyelids even further down her eyeballs. "If you know you are no match for me, why did you confront me?"

I took a deep breath, readying myself to answer…

"You are here because you could no longer bear the burden of knowing about me and doing nothing about it," Irene claimed while stretching her finger to point right at my heart again.

And, in all honesty, she was right.

Sure, if I tried my best, I might've found some way to twist the words and reality and keep the discussion from advancing any further…

But what would be the point of doing that?

Irene sighed and closed her eyes again.

"You are clueless as to who I am. You don't know my goals. You don't even know why I'm here or why I humored your desire to talk."

Irene's smile grew smaller, proving she was now more interested in our conversation than she was in putting me down.

'It seems I've advanced from merely an amusing bug to an interesting one…' I thought with a sigh…

"You don't even know there is a…"

All of a sudden, the pressure of Irene's aura decreased, all the way to the point where I could hardly feel its presence at all.

It was still here, all over the place… but it no longer had this oppressive, overwhelming weight to it. The flows of her aura gave up on their semi-conscious attempts at solidifying, manifesting themselves as something more than just the ephemeral energy I knew it as.

This change instantly put my mind on an even greater alert… Allowing me to catch Irene pulling her hand back only to interweave her fingers and rest her chin on top of them.

Then, she opened up one of her crimson-dark eyes, looking at me with yet another kind of expression.

"So you've dealt with the core, huh?" Irene commented with a slight smile, proving I've once again advanced in her mind from an interesting bug… to a crafty one this time.

A bug that indeed had some sort of ability.

"So it was your doing?" I asked as if I didn't know the answer already.

"My doing or not… how did you remove… No, absorb it?"

'I need to keep going. As long as she is interested in me enough to ask questions, she shouldn't bother erasing me.'

"So it was you, after all," I sighed, ignoring Irene's question. Then, I pulled my eyelids up along with my chin and stared right into the one eye she kept open. "Why? Why did you take all this effort to make my life into a damn nightmare?!"

At this point, I failed to control my emotions, I feat that I've managed to achieve thus far.

And how could I not?

Assuming she was willing to answer… I was finally about to learn the reason why the greater part of my life thus far was so miserable.

'Why? Just why?!'n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Aren't you an adorable one," Irene's smile of amused superiority returned, thankfully without the heavy presence of her aura from before.

Her smile then evolved right as she opened up her other eye and leaned her head slightly to the side.

"Why, why, just why…" she muttered while rolling her eyes. "You tell me, why do your kind spend the greater part of their youth locked away in prison-like institutions, giving up on their youthful energy to study the laws of the world? Why is your kind so eager to spend an exobiriant amount of wealth, the lone indicator of effort in this world, to become educated?"

This sudden change of topic caught me off guard.

'What the hell is she on about?' I asked myself, but Irene had no plans of letting me figure out the answer by myself.

"The gift I've granted you is exactly the same. At the cost of your youthful energy, you would gain power, wealth, and standing at the end of the transaction. The difference is," Irene's smile grew even deeper… but lost its wicked nature.

Now, it was outright… evil?

"Instead of paying with your time, energy, and effort, you paid with your suffering. And mere months if not weeks before you were to gain your reprieve, just moments before I would," Irene's smile twitched, "get the return on my investment, you went and vanished only to return now, with my precious core all perfectly absorbed into your own soul."

All of a sudden, Irene's aura returned with all its might and weight…

But for some reason, it didn't burden me.

No.

All it did… was reveal the truth of who Irene was.

The living embodiment of darkness, a manifestation that came to solidify itself against the overwhelming restriction of whatever I saw it stop from happening before.

Her blonde hair turned dark. Her crimson irises turned white.

And her smile grew both wider but also emptier.

"The question for now, though, is, what am I to do with you now?"