Nanatsu no Taizai Special: The Young Girl's Unbearable Dream
So we're picking up where we left off with the Diane backstory, and as everyone who's ever read a manga and saw a flashback starring a parental figure that doesn't exist in the present time, Matrona dies. It's a truly well-written death, though, easily changing Matrona from the callous bitch that sent Dolores to her death into a more motherly figure... but still retaining her hard values and not immediately doing a 180 and turning her into an unrecognizable character.
The chapter starts with Diane and Matrona meeting up with Gyanon, a member of the Holy Knights of Liones. Apparently around this time Meliodas hasn't became famous amongst Liones yet and the other Holy Knights treat Meliodas with disdain. Matrona and Diane exchange some words with Matrona telling Diane to basically kill her emotions and stuff. Gyanon talks about how the savages they're fighting seem to have hidden themselves, and keeps pointing out places in the distance where there's sound. Matrona does her Creation thing, basically ripping up the earth wherever Gyanon points, until at one point she jumps in to the location and gets pulled underground by a trap.
Gyanon monologues about how his power is Hollow Sound, which is basically super ventriloquism. Gyanon talks about how defeating a giant, especially one who has gone berserk, would earn him a far higher promotion than just beating savages. Matrona, of course, being able to control the fucking earth, can't be trapped in a hole. Gyanon is kind of stupid. Matrona remarks about how the knights brought ballistas which aren't suitable to fight savages, and said ballistas begin firing. Matrona and Diane use rocks to block the arrows, and one shoots straight towards Diane. Diane uses Heavy Metal... but Matrona intercepts the arrow and takes it in her unprotected knee.
Apparently Gyanon has laced all the arrows with poison potent enough to kill a dragon even if it makes a scratch on a metalized giant. And as he monologues, well, he forgets once more that giants can control earth and he gets whapped into the sky by a chunk of the ground. While still batting soldiers around with earth spikes, Matrona tells Diane to be more callous, to shed compassion, how Diane's parents had left her in Matrona's care. Matrona talks about how she always thought about Diane like a little sister, but since all she knew was combat and nothing else, she doesn't have words to comfort a crying Diane. Matrona keeps telling Diane to protect herself, to become callous and discard benevolence...
And then does this awesome two-splash thing where she creates a whole lot of giant earth needles that impales that jerkass Gyanon (in full graphic view) and a shit-ton of Liones knights.
And then Matrona dies, still telling Diane not to be weak. The remaining knights reported that Diane of the giants, driven mad with envy towards the giants' leader Matrona, killed her with poison as well as murdered 300 of Liones' knights to cover it up, but Meliodas recruits her before her execution. So that was why she got the Sin of Envy moniker. Again, like both Ban and King, the other members of the Sins whose "crimes" are known, they aren't completely true. And unlike King's sloth and Ban's greed, I don't think Diane really has any envy taking part in her origin story beyond maybe envying the peace that she can't have since she's part of a warrior clan.
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