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Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 23




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Chapter 23:

The Laplace Lineage

MYNE COULD ONLY BE talking about one thing: Greed’s Second Level secret technique, Deadly Inferno. I had used it when Myne and I fought the chimera Haniel, a creature capable of healing so fast that it was essentially invincible. In that case, Myne’s strength alone hadn’t been enough to take it down. It was for that reason she’d asked me to help her.

In order to kill Haniel, I’d needed the Deadly Inferno attack. For it, I sacrificed 20 percent of my stats to Greed, and my scythe transformed, unlocking the ability to use the technique. The blades of the transformed scythe were filled with a curse so powerful, it corrupted even immortal opponents, rotting them from the first touch. However, the attack had to hit the enemy’s weak point—the point where all their magical energy converged. It was from there that the scythe’s curse flooded through the rest of the body, rendering even healing abilities useless against its decay. In other words, there was no room for error. If I missed, I would sacrifice 20 percent of my stats for nothing.

But in my half-starved state, as long as I concentrated, I could read the flow of magical energy in my opponent. Under ordinary circumstances, I didn’t have this advantage.

I motioned for Myne and Eris to step away from the undead archdemon. Even now, the monster remained trapped beneath the weight of the black axe, writhing but unable to move. I focused energy into my right eye and read the flow of the archdemon’s magical energy, which I followed to its source—the point on its forehead right between its two black horns. Fortunately, this part of the archdemon wasn’t trapped under Sloth. We wouldn’t have to worry about removing him, and therefore, we wouldn’t have to worry about the archdemon attacking us again. Thus, I transformed the black bow into the black scythe.

“Greed, I’m giving you 20 percent of my stats. We’ll use Deadly Inferno on Rafale. Call it a cremation, if you will.”

“All right, but…are you sure you’ll be okay? This is a soul in the Domain of E, you know…”

“I’ll be fine. I’m not the person I was back in Galia.”

After devouring the soul of the Divine Dragon, I’d almost lost my own soul to Gluttony. I had only been saved by Lady Roxy, who had brought my consciousness back from the brink. But I had to accept that since I bore a Skill of Mortal Sin, and that so long as the skill drove my hunger, I would never be able to walk away from battle. Furthermore, my enemies wouldn’t always be weak, and some of them would be in the Domain of E. I had a feeling more such foes awaited me. In fact, I was certain of it.

As long as I was with other bearers of Mortal Sin like Myne and Eris, I would never be able to escape fighting such monsters—at least not now that I had nearly reached their level. If I always waited for Lady Roxy to save me, then my own weak heart would forever leave me in danger of losing myself completely.

“I’m counting on you, Greed!”

“Ah, I can feel your commitment now. Very well. Allow me to feast upon those stats!”

As the stats drained from my body, the black scythe in my hand grew and transformed. It sprouted three long blades at its head, like the claws of a wild beast. With this newly enlarged scythe in hand, I turned toward the archdemon, the beast that had once been Rafale. “You let the power lead you astray—as I almost did, once…”

I had killed Hado Vlerick. He had played a role in sending Lady Roxy to Galia, and he had been kidnapping and killing orphans to satisfy his own twisted desires. I had despised him for that, as I had despised him for the five years during which he treated me as less than human.

Even so…I knew I shouldn’t have killed him. Nobody had sentenced him to death. I had decided that I had the right to judge him purely on account of my newfound power. I now knew that such actions only brought sadness to the people most important to me. When I had told Aaron what I’d done, he had been unable to hide his feelings.

I’d told Roxy about it too, in the letter I left her in Galia. I’d told her how I killed Hado Vlerick. Told her I had destroyed the Hart estate’s northern valley to slay a wild crowned beast—and that I’d let someone else take the blame. The lies had piled up one after another until there were too many to count. I’d wanted to be her strength, but I hadn’t wanted her to know about Gluttony, and in the end, through all the lies, I had received my just desserts for my selfishness. The guilt had weighed so heavily on me as I wrote those words.

That was why, at the end of my letter, I told her that when I could live true to myself—when I could let go of my skull mask—I wanted to apologize to her once more, face to face.

But it wasn’t pleasant, reckoning with my true self. The version of me that lived behind the skull mask whispered in a dark, heavy voice. In many ways, that voice felt like it belonged to my Gluttony.


Perhaps what lurked inside of me was what had lurked inside of Rafale. I had felt it eating through me since my return to Seifort. Aaron had noticed it. He’d tried to say something after I brutalized Lanchester. It had reared its head again while I snuck into the Vlerick research facility and lost myself to the horror of what took place within those walls. Greed had been the one to rescue the real Fate that time.

Now that I was in the Domain of E, I understood more than ever that no matter how strong you became, your humanity wasn’t something you could maintain on your own. Great power could lead to great mistakes. At times like those, you needed friends and allies to guide you in the right direction. Because of them, although I held within me a fantastic power, my heart remained unchanged. I was still the person I once had been. As obvious as it seemed, it was only now that I could recognize it myself.

“You said we were the same, didn’t you, Rafale?” I asked.

The monster didn’t seem aware that I was speaking to it. It didn’t respond. I wondered if Rafale’s soul was no longer within it. All the same, I went on.

“At the start, I think you were right. We both lived within our hate. You were me, and I was you. We truly were no different.” I lifted the black scythe high above my head. “But let’s end that now. Now…you are you, and I am me. Our connection ends here, Rafale, and I will keep moving on.”

With that, I brought the scythe down upon this monster that was beyond the ability to understand human speech. Three deep lacerations tore open its head as if it had been clawed, and from those wounds, the curse took hold, blackening the monster’s body. When the blackening entirely overtook the archdemon, its body crumbled to ash piece by piece.

Finally, a metallic voice rang in my head.

Gluttony Skill activated. Stats increased: Vitality +6.10e8, Strength +6.30e8, Magic +9.30e8, Spirit +9.90e8, Agility +7.20e8. Skills added: Dark Magic, Undivided Mind.

I pushed down the wild ecstasy of Gluttony as it scrabbled through me, writhing at the taste of the Domain of E stats. As I did, I heard the voice of the girl who had once been the core of the chimera Haniel, Luna.

“Don’t forget, Fate. I’m here, lending you my power…”

Her voice faded along with the pangs of Gluttony, and all that remained was the blood that poured from my right eye. Luna had helped me once again, controlling my Gluttony from the inside. She’d told me I had to do it myself, but…she’d also promised to fight alongside me, when we met in my dreams. The next time we met, in that dream world, I wouldn’t forget to give her my thanks.

Greed’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “It begins, Fate.”

A change of some kind was taking place in the archdemon. Its now-black stomach rapidly swelled, exploding when the corpse had expanded to its limit.

“Is…the connection broken?” I asked.

After the explosion, some thousand black bats poured out of it into the sky. I had expected something to escape from Rafale’s—the archdemon’s—body, but…how were we supposed to bring down an enemy of such numbers?

I cut at the bats with my scythe while Eris fired at them and Myne crushed them with her black axe, but we barely made a dent in the swarm. The bats were immortal, and whether we cut, shot, or squashed them, they regained their original form. Deadly Inferno wasn’t an option either; each bat was a single monster unto itself, meaning I’d need to use the technique more than a thousand times to kill them all. My stats would drain long before I ever got there.

“What…what is this?”

Myne coolly crushed another bat under her axe. “This is the source of the nightwalkers, an unnatural swarm that lives as one being. It is the enemy that will lead me to what I am looking for.”

Myne glared at the mass of bats as one stray swept in to bite her. She caught the bat in her left hand and crushed it in her palm. The remaining bats whirled together, coalescing into a single form—the shape of a human boy. That figure held the black spear Vanity as though the weapon had never been taken from it.

“We meet again after such a long time, and yet you’re so cold to me!” the figure said. “And to think we were once such good friends, Myne. Or should I say…Wrath?”

The bats had gathered into the shape of a boy with white hair, his face split by a toothy grin.



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