"Five, let's do something, a pledge, a pledge of truth, you and I will swear to speak the truth until we leave this room, how about it?"

"Is it reliable?"

"Of course, pledges are sacred to us monsters! It should be the same for you since you will soon become a dungeon master."

"Alright then."

...

While the two were eating, Harriet patiently talked to Five. Directly or indirectly, she enquired about his past, although he was very resolute at first, and directly avoided the topic. But Harriet was very stubborn, and she gradually wore down the defenses of Five, she was very sincere, explaining her own situation and how she only hoped that he would succeed in the future.

Five felt as if he was a child that was interrogated by his mother for being naughty. And naturally, the hardened heart of Five could only soften, under the constant assault of that harpy, he could not find the resolution to reject her, until finally, the 2 decided to share their respective pasts.

"Just imitate me," solemnly said Harriet,

She put her left hand on her heart while her right hand was raised just as if she was making the Hippocratic Oath, "I swear that to speak the truth and solely the truth to Five as long as we remain in this room, may Sancus witness my pledge"

Five naturally imitated her, he thought that there would be some weird things to do but it was much simpler than he expected. Sancus was in fact, the god of honesty, he was a neutral god and so all the races respected him.

"Now, I hope that you will believe me when I say that truly, this room has no ears, only us can hear this conversation, not even master can hear us," said Harriet.

"mmm," Five nodded. Although he had no absolute guarantee, it did not seem like Harriet was lying; either she was an extremely good comedian, or she was telling the truth.

Having progressed that far, Harriet decided to tell her own story first to gain his trust. "I guess I should be the one to start" and with a deep breath, Harriet started narrating her own story.

"A long time ago, during the holy war, the harpy race was about to be completely exterminated, we were surrounded by dragons and giants with no escape path. But at the last moment, the harpy queen sacrificed herself and made a pact with the gods; they would save the harpies, but in exchange, the future harpy queens would have to serve the dungeon masters who will summon them."

"As the representative of the Black Wings clan, I was the one who was sold at the auction once I came to age. We were all given 3 chances to reject our owners, it may happen that our personalities or the dungeon itself won't fit us. I myself, rejected 2 other dungeon masters before meeting Kroff and since he did seem to care about his own monsters, I decided to follow him."

A pained expression appeared for a second on Harriet's face, but she quickly hid it and continued:

"Everything was fine, Kroff was very nice at first, he spent some DP for my sake and summoned the harpies that you saw earlier. He gave us a nice village to live in, I can show it to you later if you want. And the other monsters were very friendly with a few exceptions."

"But one month ago, the dungeon masters, including Kroff received an oracle; soon, new dungeon masters would be born, and everyone would be tasked into guiding one for a period of time. It was great news for the dungeon masters community, everyone was glad to be able to raise the next generation."

"However, that did not last for long, one week later, Oroculos, one of the 5 strongest dungeon masters had a vision, and what he saw was destruction and chaos all over the continent. The new dungeon masters would rebel against the old ones, instead of allying to fight against the other races, the new dungeon masters would make their own alliances and fight against the old ones, causing many dungeon masters would perish."

"When they heard that, all the dungeon masters broke into panic, but they had already accepted the task of grooming the new dungeon masters and could not back out. I don't know about the situation in the other alliances but when it comes to the Cyclone Alliance, the Duke Shercliff made the decision to bind all the new dungeon masters to the alliance, this way at least, they would direct the fire towards other alliances."

"This is why Master is so inclined upon making you join the Cyclone Alliance, right now, you are a threat to him and to the other dungeon masters, if he cannot ensure that you won't harm him, then he has no incentives to raise a ticking time bomb."

Five nodded, he now understood why Kroff was so against him, but he felt that the situation was so unfair.

"Isn't that surreal, how can they all trust the visions of one person?" asked Five.

"That one person had never been wrong in his predictions, he is a powerful seer, that is how he was able to become one of the Big Fives, even though his monsters are not the strongest, he is able to use them with maximum efficiency every time. He started at the very bottom, but not once did he lose a war," answered Harriet.

Five stayed silent for a moment, quietly processing the information he just received from Harriet.

"And that's it, that's the current situation." concluded Harriet, "Now it's your turn, I hope that you will respect the pledge."

Harriet made a solemn expression as she looked at Five; she just opened herself and revealed her past to Five, she was honestly hoping that he would also do so. She was not doing it for Kroff, but for herself, she saw Five as a friend and she did not want conflicts to emerge between him and her master.

After a moment of hesitation, Five finally decided to share his own past, Harriet just sincerely shared hers, he had no good reason to go against his words.

"Do you really want to hear about me?"

"Of course, I am very curious as to why you are trying to act as an antisocial when you are clearly not."

"Fine," said Five as he gulped down the water in his glass before starting:

"Everything was normal for me, a normal human, living a careless life until 3 years ago when I graduated from university. I was just a normal entrepreneur, I helped my family grow the family business and we slowly gained popularity and attracted more and more customers, slowly conquering the market but the big rich companies were not pleased to see us stealing their customers."

"They initially tried to buy our shares, but we refused since we did not lack any help or capital. But they were not pleased with our attitude and so they applied pressure on us. But we did not give in, we persevered, and our small business slowly grew into a medium size company, we even opened a second branch. However, seeing that we were prevailing through their storm, these bastards did not stop there, they used more extreme methods."

"They started to aim at my family, I myself almost got into a car accident. They even sabotaged our products, causing a lot of health problems for the users of our products. And as a result, we were forced to shut down, in the end, they even succeeded in stealing our patent and then claimed to be the righteous creators."

"My parents could not support the shock, they were quite old and had weak hearts, in the end, they ended up suffering from mental breakdown and passed away all because of that incident. I brought that case to the court but in vain, they had huge backings and I ended up having to pay a fine for slandering instead."

Five made a small pause there, tears appeared at the corner of his eyes as he thought about his parents. It was all his fault, if he did not maintain such a firm stance, maybe they would still be alive and living well.

"I lost everything at that point, but I could not let these bastards enjoy their lives, I was recommended by a traitor that I considered as a friend to recruit an assassin. But the organization I contacted refused to carry out the job; instead, they invited me to join them and to do it by myself. At that time, I was blind, naive and mentally unstable, and so I agreed, they accepted me and trained me into one of their men. Now that I think about it, it was a really stupid decision!"

"I carried out several missions for them, did the dirty work. And when it was finally time for me to take my revenge, my supposed teammates turned against me and I ended up arrested by the police. That organization of assassins was, in fact, a long-time partner of those bastards. They were just using me as a pawn and as I was no longer useful, they revealed the assassinations that I performed, and I was sentenced to life imprisonment."

"And then, I thought everything was over, but I was given a second chance by Gaia. She gave me the task of building a dungeon in this world, so here I am."

"This is it, that's my story, pretty hard to believe right?" concluded Five with a sarcastic look. He was not aiming it at Harriet but at himself, for all the wrong decisions he took in real life. When he looked back at it, he could only laugh at how stupid he was.

Harriet calmly listened and did not interrupt Five as he was talking, even her facial expression did not change, but inside she was shocked to learn about the darkness of Five's world.

"Although there are many terms I do not understand, I do understand what happened to you. I am sorry to have brought that up..." apologized Harriet.