Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 29

Chapter 29:

The Third Level 

THREE BLADES EXTENDED from the scythe like the sharpened claws of a wild beast. Just as the black bow had, the black scythe grew in size, making itself into a weapon that was difficult to wield. The scythe was transforming into its own version of an Apocalyptic Weapon of Mortal Sin. 

Even before I swung it, I knew this scythe contained tremendous power. I felt it in the overwhelming pressure reverberating through my hands. I stared at my target. Haniel was still focused on its own regeneration. 

“This is it!” 

“Focus, Fate,” said Greed. “Find the source of Haniel’s magic.” 

I focused my gaze and searched. Magic flowed like a pulse through Haniel’s body, spreading like the branches of a tree. I looked for its roots. As I expected, the source of the magical energy was the core, the girl of white. She was the heart of the monster. I would only end this if I tore that heart open with my scythe. 

My problem was the speed of Haniel’s regenerative abilities. At the start of our battle, the beast regrew its arm and head moments after Myne and I severed them. Now its regeneration had slowed. Haniel’s lower half was taking longer to regenerate, as were its arms. 

“Have Haniel’s abilities weakened, Greed?” 

“It forced its own evolution, and its regenerative skills have slowed as a result. Make no mistake: it will still heal, but it’s going to take a little more time.” 

“Then now’s our chance.” 

“Obviously.” 

I raised the scythe high above my head and prepared my attack. I would slice Haniel clean in half as my momentum moved me straight through the mechangel. I didn’t care whether it saw me coming or not. 

It did. Haniel raised a crackling barrier that trapped us together in midair. The girl in the core made a familiar summoning motion with her hands. 

I’ve seen this before. No way—is she serious?! 

Blue fireballs filled the space inside the barrier. 

“She’s intent on trapping you both in a horrific inferno,” Greed said. 

There was nowhere to run. What I thought was my coup de grâce had quickly become a self-sent invitation to my own doom. In this enclosed space, the blue fireballs would reduce me to ash before my Health Regen responded. That skill couldn’t heal fatal wounds, after all. On the other hand, although Haniel’s immense regenerative abilities had slowed, the beast could still recover from this attack. 

Should I abandon Deadly Inferno to cut down the fireballs with the black scythe’s skill-negation ability? No. If I did that, I’d have given up twenty percent of my stats for nothing, leaving myself vulnerable regardless. And we’d have no more opportunities. 

There would be no next time. 

“It’s now or never!” I shouted. “We feast before we burn!” 

“I like the sound of that, Fate!” 

The blue fireballs expanded, bursting alight one by one. They were incredibly, searingly hot, burning my clothes and enveloping me in scorching heat. My vision wavered with blue, but my stare did not stray from my target. 

“Watch out, Fate!” 

“We’ll be fine! I saw this coming a mile away!” 

I had already predicted Haniel’s defensive movements when I saw the beast pour its magical focus into regenerating its right arm. As I expected, the arm burst through the whirlpool of blue flame to snatch me out of the air. I used the hand as a launchpad, stepping off the massive metal claws to throw myself at the weeping core. 

“Do it, Fate!” Greed cried. 

“Aaaaaaaaah!” I launched toward the near-empty core with a battle cry. 

The girl woven inside the core stared at me. Her red eyes, dripping with blood, bored into mine. I had expected her to put her hands up to defend herself, but she didn’t move. It was almost as if she yearned for this strike. 

As if she wanted me to kill her. 

The Deadly Inferno ripped into the girl’s chest, tearing through the very core of the monster’s magical energy. The girl’s frail hand reached out and, for a brief instant, brushed my cheek. Immediately, the feelings of her heart bled into my own through Telepathy. 

Fragmented memories flashed through my mind. Her memories, from before the girl had become the monster Haniel. 

I saw a facility of some sort. It was completely white—walls, furniture, doors. Kids lived inside this bleached facility, and there was something…similar about all of them. At first, it was lively and vibrant—children playing and living together. But one by one, the children were taken away and never came back. Eventually, the girl’s name was called, and she knew that she’d be taken to a dark, murky place. She cried out in fear, but another girl held her tightly. 

The girl holding her looked just like Myne. 

What are these memories?! 

The girl’s hand fell from my cheek, and her memories dissipated into the ether. 

When I looked at Haniel now, the monster’s pristine white body bubbled an abyssal, lifeless black. 

“Greed, what’s going on?!” 

“This is the Second Level secret technique Deadly Inferno. It annihilates all life it touches. When this attack severs your enemy’s magical core, they die. It doesn’t matter who, or what, the enemy was. The curse of the scythe’s blade spreads, decaying everything it touches. Even the strongest life cannot resist its power.” 

Despite Haniel’s high-speed regenerative abilities, it was falling to pieces. Blackness stained its body as it fractured into shards that the wind picked up and blew away. The girl in the core did not meet a different fate. Slowly, her movements faded, and she became little more than a jet-black statue. 

I fell to the earth along with the remains of the chimera Haniel. The beast’s body broke as it landed, sending chunks of the crumbling chimera’s corpse across the remains of a ruined village. 

I felt as though the countless graves had been placed here for her, all that time ago. 

Gluttony skill activated. Stats increased: Vitality +26,000,000, Strength +29,000,000, Magic +24,000,000, Spirit +28,000,000, Agility +14,000,000. 

Together with the echo of the metallic voice, more stats than I’d ever imagined flowed into me. They were not accompanied by skills, perhaps because of the error message Identify had given me earlier. And…this felt different from my other feasts. Whenever I consumed a large number of stats, Gluttony went wild with ecstasy, a bliss so intense that it hurt. Now, it was eerily silent. My starvation state subsided, and I felt none of the satisfaction that usually came with it. 

After the metallic voice rang out, all I felt was crushing loneliness wrap my heart and squeeze it tight. 

“What…what is this feeling, Greed? Is it because I ate a chimera, not an actual monster?” 

“That’s how it goes. This is how it feels to eat one of your own, corrupted or otherwise. There’s no happiness, no excitement. All that’s left is…” Greed trailed off and didn’t finish. 

As I stared at the blistered remains of Haniel, Myne joined me. “You’re not a kid anymore, Fate. Now, I’ll treat you like an adult.” 

“It’s an honor, I assure you,” I mumbled. “Hey, by the way, can I ask you something?” 

“What?” 

“You and the girl in the core of Haniel, did you…know each other?” 

Myne stood in silence for a time. “Maybe,” she said, finally. “I’ve forgotten so much of the past.” 

However, she knelt and gently put a hand on the remains of Haniel. 

So, they really had known each other. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was really acceptable to devour the soul of a person so important to someone. Well, it was too late for me to feel apprehensive. The souls Gluttony swallowed were already doomed to an eternity of suffering. 

“There was no other way,” Myne said, seeing right through my pensive expression. “When she became the chimera, the only answer left was to kill her. If we didn’t, more people would have died.” 

I mused about the Galia of the past, long since destroyed. To think that a deadly relic of that past had been asleep, intact, for such an immensely long time. Perhaps other Galian weapons were still out there, resting, waiting. Haniel had sat in the open; it might even be likely that stronger, more menacing adversaries were hidden out in the wastelands. Just thinking about the possibility gave me goosebumps. 

Glimpsing the Heavenly Calamity had filled me with fear unlike anything I’d ever known. I felt the chimera Haniel had given me another brief look into that terrifying past. 

Myne fought ceaselessly against a world I did not understand, and she would continue that fight long into the future. I sensed that as a person bearing a Skill of Mortal Sin, the time would come when I would have to join that fight. But that time was not now. I had something more important to do first. I had not come all this way to Galia just to fight a chimera. 

“Greed, surely those stats have to be enough.” 

“They are. I’d ask you what you want to do…but that seems pretty obvious.” 

“I need more power, Greed. Take the stats I’ve earned until now, and please, release your Third Level.” 

“Very well. But first, give me those stats!” 

With a laugh, Greed absorbed the millions of stat points inside me—everything I’d devoured on the course of our journey. The stats from the battle at the village I once called home, the battle I’d fought beside the Blade of Light, and the battle against the mechangel Haniel. Every single one of those victories slipped away. 

Though the skills remained, my stats returned to their base level. I was right back where I’d started. 

The black scythe emitted a great, dark light as it changed shape. As Greed pulled my last stats from my body, the light subsided, and I stared at Greed’s new form. It was perfect. I was at a loss for words. 

“No way. Greed, is this…?!” 

“It’s what you most wanted, isn’t it? This is the Third Level: the black shield. Learn to wield it well!” 

“You just watch me.” 

I took the shield in hand with a smile. It was bigger than I was, and it represented what I had long desired—the power to protect others!