Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13:

The Past, Resurrected

THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE the room pulsed an angry red. The sirens continued to wail, likely howling throughout the whole facility. Even then, I saw no evidence of any guards running to investigate. The hairs on my arm stood on end. I had a very, very bad feeling about this.

With Memil over my shoulder, I left the containment cell and ran into what lay in wait for me. Not humans, and not monsters, but the deformed creatures that had once been goblins. These beasts had been transformed through horrific experimentation, just like the ones I’d seen in the pit earlier.

Fifty of these hideous creatures crowded the passageway. They were the reason no guards had come despite the alarm. Nobody intended to capture me alive. Instead, by giving me up to these beasts, they could ensure no identifiable part of their intruder ever left the facility. The alarm bell didn’t summon guards to investigate, it warned staff to evacuate.

As the creatures crept closer, a strange sensation crawled through me. Unlike the black eyes of regular goblins, the eyes of these beasts were stained the color of fresh blood. Not the red of my starved state, nor the red of my Gluttony—it didn’t make me freeze in place—but all the same, an uncomfortable pressure seethed from their crimson gazes.

I hadn’t considered them any kind of threat while they were trapped in the pit, so I hadn’t used Identify, but now it was time to better understand my enemy.

“Huh?!” I backed up a step. Identify didn’t work. At first, I assumed these goblins somehow carried the Conceal skill, but…even if they did, I should have been able to see their stats. What’s going on? This is like when I tried to use Identify on Myne…

But I didn’t have time to solve this mystery, because the monsters were fast approaching. Their teeth were misshapen and deformed, and they bared their dog-like fangs as they leaped toward me.

“Ugh!”

I cut the creatures down before they reached me. But instead of the metallic voice that spoke whenever my Gluttony ate the soul of my enemies, a different, sinking feeling filled my gut. Suddenly, I was assaulted by a searing pain, as if my body were being torn apart from the inside. This wasn’t my Gluttony, nor was it my starvation. I had consumed poison. I coughed, spitting blood on the ground.

“What the hell is this?! It’s making me sick.”

The blood on the black sword turned to steam and evaporated into the air, leaving no trace of the violence I had committed with it.

“Fate, you must not kill these monsters,” said Greed. “I didn’t want to believe it at first but…I’ve seen their blood evaporate, and now I’m seeing the effect they have on you. It’s worse than I thought. These are nightwalkers.”

“Nightwalkers? I thought they were goblins!”

The monsters didn’t give me stats and they didn’t give me skills. Instead, they poisoned me from the inside, racking me with pain. I used the face of the sword to beat them back as I cleared some space.

“Why doesn’t Gluttony work on them?”

“Because they died a long time ago. What’s left of their soul is rotten, but it keeps them moving. Eating decayed souls will only hurt you, Fate, so you can’t kill them. Eat too many of their souls, and you’ll die.”

Even the goblin variety of nightwalkers were proving to be a formidable foe. They turned my strength into my weakness. I’d never fought anything I couldn’t simply kill and devour.

“So I’m up against an enemy I can’t kill.”

What really unsettled me were the nightwalkers’ apparent healing abilities. They regenerated unbelievably fast. Almost as soon as I broke their bones with the flat of the black sword, the bones cracked back into place as if nothing had happened.

“Yeah. There’s one more thing you have to know. Under no circumstances can you let one of the nightwalkers bite you. The curse inside them can break through even the Domain of E. If any of them get you, you’ll turn into one of ’em.”

“What?! Give me a break!”

Then I saw that at the very back of the rows of nightwalkers were the guards I had pushed into the pit earlier. Every one of them now had a mouth filled with fangs and eyes stained a deep red. They too crept ever closer, and I saw in their eyes that when they had lost their humanity, they had not lost their hatred for me. They pushed through the crowd of monsters, coming straight at me.

“These freaking things are hard to handle,” I grunted as I beat them back.

They kept growing in number too. More kept coming. It seemed the pit I’d seen earlier wasn’t the only place these creatures were being kept. Did I need to find out where they were being released from?

I transformed Greed into the black shield to defend myself from the incoming nightwalkers, then shoved through the crowd. I ran until I spotted a dark room, and when my Night Vision confirmed it was empty, I ducked inside to take cover.

“Fate! Cut down the ceiling above the entrance to block the way in.”

“Already on it.” I leaped into the air. A few slices with my blade brought debris crumbling from the ceiling, creating a barrier the nightwalkers couldn’t pass. I heard them on the other side, clawing at the debris in an effort to get to me, but they wouldn’t get through any time soon.

I gently laid Memil on the ground and surveyed the room. By the look of things, it was another room used to raise the nightwalkers. Fortunately, based on the lack of scratches or blood on the floor and walls, I gathered that it hadn’t been used recently. As the alarm continued to ring, I tried to figure out how to escape this research facility.

“That might be the way to go,” I said, looking up.

“The ventilation shaft?”

“Yeah. It’s probably our best bet for getting Memil out of here safely.”

I hefted the still unconscious Memil back onto my shoulder. Just as I was about to head up the shaft, I noticed light leaking from a gap in the wall. What was that? I hadn’t yet seen any seams in this building’s structure, but now light peeked from between what appeared to be two sections of wall. Was that possible? I approached curiously just as Greed made a sound like he was clicking his tongue.

“I see,” the black sword said. “A hidden room. Something caused a shift in the room that bent the wall slightly out of shape. That’s why you can see the light on the other side. What do you wanna do, Fate?”

Memil was still asleep, and it didn’t seem like she’d regain consciousness any time soon. I had to get her to safety, but I’d come to uncover what the Vlericks were up to. If I’d stumbled on a hidden room…it likely contained more secrets that the Vlericks didn’t want found.

“Let’s check it out.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

I cut open the wall with the black sword and stepped into the room.

The scene before my eyes was, yet again, one I could never have imagined. The room stretched out about a hundred feet to the back wall from where I stood. I heard a propeller whirring distantly through the dimly lit space. The room housed huge glass cylinders filled with the clear red liquid I’d seen earlier. Creatures were submerged in these tubes, suspended in the liquid—ordinary animals like cats and dogs, but also monsters. The room was filled with row after row of them.

“Are they doing experiments on these too?”

“By the look of it, yes. I bet it has something to do with those nightwalkers. The liquid in those cylinders is diluted blood. It’s probably the source of the nightwalkers’ curse.”

“What do you mean by source?”

“Nightwalkers are derived from a Galian biological weapon. In short, the weapon carries an affliction. If a creature infected with it bites you, you also become a nightwalker. The Vlericks must have acquired one somehow. Of all the things they could’ve gotten hold of for their experiments, it had to be this. Did they think they could control the curse? Unbelievable.”

“It’s like a contagious disease, then? It spreads quick, and these nightwalkers are naturally inclined to grow their numbers. …If they escaped this place and got out into Seifort, we’d never be able to stop them.”

“Exactly.”

I moved deeper into the room. I hoped we might discover this “source.” Instead, the contents of the last glass cylinder jolted me to my core. Inside of it hung the body of a man I knew all too well. “That’s impossible—is that…Hado Vlerick?!”

The cylinder contained the very holy knight I had killed before leaving for Galia, floating, asleep. In our battle, I’d severed his right leg and both of his arms, yet the Hado unconscious before me had a fully intact body. Somehow, they’d grown back.

I moved up to take a closer look, and Hado’s eyes shot open. His blood-red irises locked on mine, and the glass cylinder began to fracture. I’d been careless. I’d assumed everything in the cylinders was in the same deep sleep as Memil, and now I would pay for my arrogance.

I leaped backward to put space between us just as the cylinder shattered, spilling torrents of the clear red liquid over the floor. Hado had the same crazed look as the other nightwalkers. This wasn’t the man I’d fought. This creature had lost all semblance of rational thought.

Regardless, the sheer loathing in his eyes as he stalked toward me was entirely genuine. He glared at me through a haze of hatred, and his mouth moved clumsily as he roared. “F…ate…Fate…! Faaaaaaate!”