Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

Greed Style 

THE MERCHANTS and adventurers surrounding Babylon’s gate stared in shock as I passed through the crowd with my two blood-soaked burlap sacks. I heard their whispers as I walked. 

“You must be joking.” 

“Whoa. Are those fat sacks filled with orc ears? Both of them?!” 

“If that’s the case, it means he took out two squadrons solo. Who the hell is that guy?!” 

I heard every word. The whispers turned into open conversations as onlookers gathered. I tried not to wince. It seemed like my name would spread through Babylon quicker than I’d anticipated. Now that I was officially hunting as the adventurer Corpse, there was no need to work in secret, keeping to the night and the shadows. This was not Seifort, where I’d had to live a double life as Corpse and as Lady Roxy’s servant. I wasn’t exactly doing things the way Greed wanted, but slaying monsters in broad daylight was a big step toward more confidence. 

Blood dripped from the two sacks as I walked through the crowds. The trading post was at the end of the main street, on the eastern side of the gates into the Military Sector. According to the landlady at the inn, it was the busiest place in Babylon. The trading post was always full of adventurers, not to mention the kingdom’s ever-present soldiers. This made perfect sense to me. More than anything else, adventurers wanted information about monsters and the bounties for them, and I wasn’t any different. 

I hoped I could avoid any further encounters with arrogant or conceited adventurers who felt they had a right to my time while I shopped. I was a little worried about a particularly rowdy group I spotted on my way down the street. They’d entered the post before I had. How might they react to my arrival? Not that I could do anything about what other adventurers thought. 

Greed seemed to notice my worrying, and he piped up through Telepathy. “Fate, so what if some group of adventurers reacts badly to your arrival? If anyone’s rude or disrespectful, you owe them no kindness. Split their head in two. Allow me to help!” 

“Would you give the calls for casual violence a break already? If I pick fights over every little insult, I’ll make an enemy of the entire city!” 

“That should be exactly what you want!” 

“Why?! Who would want that?!” 

Exactly what kind of awful person did my sword want me to be?! If I did whatever he suggested, I’d be just another wild adventurer riling up trouble. That, or people would assume—perhaps rightly—that I was completely out of my mind. 

“Anyway, brawls aside, what’s important now is that you be a little bolder,” said Greed. “Show some swagger. Some bravado. Isn’t that what I’m always telling you?” 

“Yeah, when you’re not telling me to knock heads with anyone I see. But until my Gluttony awakened, nobody treated me like a human being. My old life’s soaked into me. I don’t like to be seen. It’s a hard feeling to shake.” 

“How pitiful. To think such a person wields the mighty black sword Greed. Very well, I shall teach you. Just do exactly as I tell you, okay?” 

“I’ll try, but nothing excessive, all right?” 

“Worry not. Just do as I say.” 

Greed’s laughter did nothing to allay my anxieties. Still, it would make him happy if I actually tried to follow his advice. 

Babylon was a world where an adventurer’s strength spoke for them. Life would only get harder if I shied away and let somebody like Northern walk all over me. Greed gave me a basic lecture on the habits of courageous adventurers. Finally, with his pointers in my head, I walked into the trading post. 

It was amazing—a huge, spacious building, its soaring ceiling decorated with a stained-glass window tastefully crafted in vibrant colors. The window wouldn’t have looked out of place in a cathedral. As I stared up at that breathtaking display, the group of burly adventurers I’d seen in the street surrounded me. 

“Quit standing in the door and getting in people’s way, bumpkin. Shove off,” said one. 

“Hey, I haven’t seen you before,” said another. “What’s with that ugly skull mask? Which party are you with?” 

“And what’s up with those sacks, skull-boy? You running errands for your party because you can’t hang with the big boys? I bet you wear that mask ‘cause you’re real ugly underneath. So ugly you gotta hide it. Go on, take yer mask off.” 

It was just as Greed had predicted. Out of the street and into the fire. I wasn’t exactly proud of it, but because I didn’t have the most impressive physique, I looked pretty weak. Still, I was disappointed that the adventurers singled me out so quickly. I supposed there was some sense to Greed’s braggart lecture after all. It was time to put his teachings to work. 

“Enough yammering,” I said, doing my best impression of Greed’s deep voice. “I have no business with peons. Unless you’re looking for pain, get out of my sight.” 

“Huh?! Wait, what’d you just say, kid?!” 

The formerly smirking adventurers flushed red with anger, their mocking looks sharpening to glares. All the same, I knew they wouldn’t unsheathe their weapons inside the trading post. Spilling blood could get you banned from the building. Unfortunately, you could get away with punching people in the face, which was exactly what one adventurer tried to do to me. 

I caught the punch with my right hand. “Last chance to change your mind,” I growled. 

“Think you can stop me? Try it. I’ve got buddies!” 

Buddies, huh? Eight men flanked me in total. If they weren’t going to back down, they were about to get it. 

I crushed the adventurer’s curled fist in my hand. He let out a roar of pain as I threw my two sacks of ears high into the air. The man crumpled to the floor, clutching his broken hand, and I kicked him out of the way. 

Now there were seven. Three flew at me from the left. I needed to take them out quickly. That meant using Ruinous Strike. I’d absorbed that tech-art from a crowned beast; it was a powerful attack that destroyed your opponent from within. It bypassed armor, inflicting damage on organs, bones, and blood flow alike. It was perfect for swiftly putting opponents out of commission in hand-to-hand combat. 

I charged my left fist and punched the ribs of the shortest, stockiest adventurer, then sent a one-two strike into a bald adventurer’s shoulders. The remaining adventurer got a swift kick between the legs. The breaking of their bodies echoed through the trading post. All three men slumped to the ground, drooling and unconscious. 

And then there were four… 

I expected the last four men to flee, but instead they grasped the weapons hanging at their waists. To do so here in the trading post meant only one thing: murderous intent. I understood that, but I wasn’t about to unsheathe my own weapon in retaliation. I couldn’t get kicked out of Babylon. Not when I still had shopping to do. 

Their incoming attacks were basic. Simple. By watching their footwork, as the Blessed Blade had taught me, it was all too easy to predict their clumsy attacks. It was just as easy to bash them into the ground with a few well-placed Ruinous Strikes. 

The eight men lay broken on the floor, groaning and unconscious. I guess that’s as good as they’ve got, I thought, and I caught the two sacks I’d thrown into the air. 

“Well, that takes care of that,” I said. 

The unconscious adventurers sprawled across the floor said nothing in reply. Sure, I’d hit them with Ruinous Strike, but had been careful to avoid any really vital organs. None would die, but none would be back to hunting anytime soon. I stepped on their prone bodies as I made my way over to the trading post counter. I usually wouldn’t have gone to such extremes; stepping on the defeated bodies of my enemies had been Greed’s idea. It wasn’t like they didn’t deserve it. 

It’s because of rude adventurers like you that ordinary people don’t trust the rest of us, I thought. 

I walked through the hushed silence of the trading post with polite thanks to the other adventurers, who hurriedly opened a path for me like they were fleeing my presence. 

The girl at the counter greeted me with a smile that had slight tension at its edges. I hoped the nervousness was just my imagination, and I tried my best to be friendly. 

“I’d like to trade the contents of these sacks, please,” I said. 

“Y-yes!” the girl squeaked. “Please wait while we confirm their contents.” 

I placed the two sacks on the counter. They were too much for the girl to handle on her own, so she called for help from the back. The staff were all practiced hands, however, and this was work they were well used to. They finished totaling my hunt in mere moments. 

“Er…in total, there are four hundred pairs of orc ears, and two high orcs. Um, just to confirm, did you hunt all these solo?” 

“Yes, of course,” I said as I adjusted my mask. “Orcs aren’t really that much trouble.” 

There was no need to lie. Compared to the chimera I had fought with Myne, orcs were kind of cute. Still, the girl at the counter went pale when she heard my reply. 

Hm? What’s wrong? This can’t be the first brawl she’s seen. 

“My apologies,” said the girl. “Are you by chance a holy knight?” 

Ah, right. 

To the ordinary world, the only people capable of single-handedly taking out a squadron of orcs were holy knights. As long as the Skills of Mortal Sin lingered in the shadows, that was the obvious conclusion. 

In other words, the receptionist was terrified, because if I was a holy knight, she had no idea what I might do next. She probably feared I’d use the tussle with the adventurers as an excuse to threaten her job by claiming the trading post couldn’t control its own facility or something. 

Looks like the pecking order’s no different here than in Seifort. Wherever you go, holy knights are the be-all end-all. 

First things first; I needed to put everyone at ease so I could get my money. 

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I go by the name Corpse, and I’m just a regular adventurer. I’m no holy knight.” 

“Really?” the girl said dubiously. 

“Look, you’ll just have to take my word for it. In any case, please prepare my payment. As you can see, I’m in dire need of new gear.” 

“Understood. We’ll get it ready as quickly as possible.” 

In the end, she presented me with an astounding one hundred gold coins. It turned out that each orc was worth twenty silver, and each high orc worth ten gold. Including the coins I was already carrying, my wallet now contained a hundred and three gold. 

Talk about the perfect place to earn riches! 

If Myne loved money so much, why didn’t she just stay in Babylon for a while to earn some coin? Then again, Myne had seemed apprehensive about actually visiting Babylon at all. When I thought about it further, she didn’t show even the slightest interest in hunting monsters for money. Perhaps this city represented something to her of which I wasn’t aware. 

Anyway, my newfound riches left me beaming behind my skull mask. However expensive things were in Babylon, this was surely enough to get me some new equipment. I gave polite thanks to the girl at the counter and began to exit the post in high spirits. 

Then a voice called out, stopping me in my tracks. 

“It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who started the brawl.” 

I’d heard that dignified, courageous voice many times before. I turned to find myself facing a holy knight garbed in white. The very holy knight I was hoping to meet after I had a chance to replace my tattered rags with new clothes. 

I stood face-to-face with Lady Roxy.